The iFixit teardown for the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra could explain why your phone heats up

Tech teardown specialist iFixit has published a new article on the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra, giving us a better look at what lies beneath the giant camera hump of the Samsung smartphone equipped with a stylus pen. $ 1300 and its cheaper brother. Surprisingly, iFixit found that both phones lack the steam chamber and copper heat pipes that Samsung used on previous phones to cool their CPUs during extended gaming sessions.

Instead of copper, iFixit found a multi-layered graphite thermal pad inside each device during its teardowns and says that JerryRigAll would have found one too. But oddly, at least one other Galaxy Note 20 Ultra has the copper heat pipe and vapor chamber cooling, as you can see in this teardown video.

Image: iFixit

We’re not sure why some phones have graphite thermal pads instead of copper, but it could be of concern. Some reviewers noted in their Galaxy Note 20 Ultra reviews that the phone runs hot regardless of how they use it.

“The Note 20 Ultra got hot all the time. Do you use the camera? The phone is heating up. Play a game? The phone heats up ” Android Authority said in their review, noting that it had gotten hotter than similar Snapdragon-powered phones. UK wired said download Fortnite inside, the Note 20 Ultra is “warmer than you might expect”. PC World used an infrared thermometer to measure temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit with the phone under a heavy load. And SamMobile pointed out that “its temperature rose to 45-46 ° C with only 5-6 minutes of 8K recording”. Amusingly, two of the reviewers mentioned how some rival phones come with specialized cooling systems these days, the same type of cooling system we thought Samsung had as well.

It is important to note that my colleague Dieter Bohn did not notice such issues when he reviewed the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra for The edge, but maybe our phone had different cooling.

Before you buy a Galaxy Note 20 or Note 20 Ultra, you might want to know what kind of cooling it will have and if it could be an issue. However, Samsung did not respond to a request for comment, so we don’t know what to tell you.

Aside from the strange copper switcheroo chamber, iFixit also spotted something interesting about the new motherboards: Samsung seems to have fashioned them to look like AT-ATs, those huge four-legged fighting machines from Star wars.

Image: iFixit