The OnePlus 11 Concept’s rear LED back is actually its new liquid cooling system

Andrew Romero | Feb 27 2023 - 9:10 am PT

At MWC 2023, OnePlus finally unveiled the OInePlus 11 Concept with “Active CryoFlux,’ a new device that adds some flash to the original OnePlus 11. With that, this concept design features a glowing rear panel, which is a cooling system rather than an LED light show.

Last week, OnePlus teased a new set of photos that showcased a OnePlus 11 with some added flare. That flare looked like a set of LED coils running down the back of the OnePlsu 11 and up to the camera, surrounding the array with a nice ring light.

Well, it turns out we were only sort of correct. At MWC 2023, OnePlus unveiled, in total, the OnePlus 11 Concept, which uses “Active CryoFlux,” a cooling method consisting of a couple of different liquids that brings the phone’s temperature down a few degrees for heavy gaming sessions or charging break.

It turns out, rather than LED lanes laid throughout the rear of the device, the layer that holds those blue lines is actually filled with a piezoelectric ceramic mixture, which is pumped through lines that are less than 0.2 square centimeters in overall area. That coolant is meant to circulate around the majority of the phone’s back without taking up much space. Behind that cooling system, OnePlus did add an LED backlight to show off the pipelines throughout the rear.

According to OnePlus, the coolant can cool the device down during heavy sessions by about 2.1 degrees Celcius and 1.6 degrees Celsius when charging, which can come in handy when using the company’s proprietary SuperVOOC charging, which can get a little heated.

At the camera, there does look to be an LED light wrapped around, though it’s meant to look as if the Active CryoFlux liquid is running around the array. In images, you can see the liquid running through the tubing, though you don’t see that in the camera. On one hand, OnePlus has added some tasteful features to the camera setup, like Guilloche etching, appealing to those with specific tastes.

While the OnePlus 11 Concept with Active CryoFlux seems like a neat design, we will never see it in production. OnePlus has a track record of concept devices with no real release to follow suit. However, the ideas could show up in future OnePlus devices. Then again, we never did see anything come from OnePlus’ last Concept phone, so it’s hard to say for sure.