Apple Applies for Cooling System Design Patent, No More Hot Hands
Anyone who has ever played a videogame like Order and Chaos Online for long periods of time, or watched a movie on their iPad will have noticed how hot their tablet gets. No, it does not cause third-degree burns on thighs, but it emits a heat that, when it is 100 degrees outside, can really be uncomfortable. Apple is working on a solution for that.
The company recently submitted a patent application for the design of a cooling system that would essentially cool a device by “deflecting or redirecting a flow of ionized air generated from an ionic wind generator.”
Currently, cooling systems in mobile devices use a system of mechanisms that are electric-based, such as fans or heat sinks. There have been proposed plans that would use ionic wind-generator cooling systems for mobile devices, but those are limited to specific areas of the device due to their linear path design. Apple seeks to remedy this limitation with a cooling system that uses a deflection field to redirect the path of ionized air that would, in the above-mentioned plan, be traveling in a linear pattern. The deflection field would redirect some of the air to other parts, thereby cooling the whole device instead of only a select area.
The mechanism would monitor various heat attributes of a device to detect when things are getting heated up. If a part passed the threshold for overheating, the deflection field generator would set to work cooling the overheated part, as well as other areas of the device.
If Apple follows through with this design, it could make a huge difference in how warm you device gets, how much battery power is needed to cool it, and how long you can keep playing Real Racing 2 HD without getting sweaty palms.
[Images courtesy of: US Patent and Trademark Office]