Chevy builds A/C vent for hot phones into new cars

Chevrolet

The Active Phone Cooling vent and charging platform.

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Smartphone heat output has been in the news lately. This year's flagship Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 810, is one of the hottest SoCs on record; due to the heat, it can throttle so much that for some workloads it's actually slower than its predecessors. Batteries don't work well when they're hot, either, to the point where—despite having a power source—they will stop charging completely at high temperatures. A hot car can exacerbate all these heat problems.

Now, Chevy has a solution: it built a special air-conditioning vent just for your smartphone.

Chevy calls it "Active Phone Cooling." On select vehicle models equipped with Qi and PMA wireless charging, Chevy has a smartphone charging bin with a vent aimed right at the phone. Turn on the AC and, in addition to cooling the cabin, cool air will be blasted at the charging phone. Chevy calls this an "industry-first technology" and says the feature is available on some versions of the 2016 Impala, Malibu, Volt, and Cruze.

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