Apple is planning a liquid cooled iPhone

The race to take the title of "World's Most Advanced Smartphone" is drivingApple [AAPL], Samsung and HTC to explore increasingly advanced technologies, with a Digitimes report claiming all three firms are working to develop liquid cooled smartphones in order to boost power efficiency.

These won't be the world's first mass market liquid-cooled smartphones, that title belongs to the NEC Medias X-06E which will be made available on Japanese carrier, NTT DoCoMo.

"Smartphone players such as Apple, Samsung Electronics and High Tech Computer (HTC) have started showing interest in adopting ultra-thin heat pipes for their smartphones and are expected to release heat pipe-adopted models in the fourth quarter, at the earliest, according to sources from cooling module player," Digitimes reports.

I'm inclined to doubt we will see these players introduce liquid-cooled devices as soon as Q4 on the basis that the report confirms yield rates of the cooling modules used in such devices stand at only 30 percent -- I should imagine that's way too low a yield for inclusion of such tech within mass market devices, but yield rates will improve in future.

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