OnePlus Ace 7's fan blows two ways to keep your hands cool

What happened. OnePlus has confirmed that its Ace 7 series launches in China this month, and on 20 October it explained how the phones' built-in cooling fan works. In a Weibo post, OnePlus China president Li Jie said many phones now have active cooling fans, "but having a fan doesn't mean the experience is good". When you play in landscape, hot air blowing on your hands or a fingertip over the air intake can ruin the session, IT Home reports.

The four details. Alongside a line drawing of the phone, Li listed what OnePlus did differently:

• Two airflow paths: one stream cools the chip, the other blows across the back panel. OnePlus calls this split design an industry first.
• Intake placement: the air inlet sits where your fingers are less likely to cover it during landscape gaming.
• Exhaust direction: hot air leaves upwards, away from the fingers gripping the phone.
• Cooler back: the second stream of cool air over the rear panel is meant to cut the clammy, sweaty-hand feeling during long sessions.

What we don't know yet. OnePlus hasn't given a launch date. A teaser poster on 19 October only said "see you this week". Reservations for the Ace 7 and Ace 7 Pro are open on Chinese shopping sites, and leaked images show the fan built into a rectangular camera module, as Gizmochina notes. Specs are still unofficial. A Weibo tipster claims Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5-series chips, 185Hz screens and a 200MP main camera, and other reports mention a battery of around 9,000 mAh. Treat all of that as rumour until launch day.

Our take. Fans are quickly becoming the gaming-phone trend of the autumn. The iQOO Neo 12 also has one when it launches on 28 October, and the Redmi K100 arrives a day earlier with a dedicated gaming chip. A fan's job is to stop the chip throttling during long sessions, but where the air goes matters just as much as how much heat it moves. OnePlus is right to focus on the hand, not only on the processor temperature, and it's also the cheaper fix. Whether a fan this small makes a measurable difference, and how loud it is, are questions only independent reviews can answer. Until then, the flagship OnePlus 16 shows how much battery and performance the company already fits without one.