Chevrolet's Active Phone Cooling will keep phones from overheating

Chevrolet has developed a neat glovebox technology that will help keep your phones cool. Continuously using cellphones for turn-by-turn navigation or music streaming while driving often results in heavy battery wear and overheating. Chevrolet will fit a wireless charging box along with an air conditioning vent, that will cool the phone down as well as charge it up wirelessly, providing that the phone is compatible with Qi and PMA wireless charging standards.

This is a useful feature, seeing that recent processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 are known to overheat with extended regular usage. Plus, with the advent of in-car technologies like Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, phones might need to be always active, integrating calls, messages, navigation, music streaming and video playback constantly. Such extended usage can heat up any phone, and will be sure to run down the battery uber-fast. A feature like this might be a first in present times, but is sure to become a standard in most cars in future.

There is no complicated or super-advanced technology involved behind this useful little feature. Chevrolet is simply redirecting an air-conditioning channel to inject cool air directly to the phone. "Innovation doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. Sometimes simplicity offers the most elegant solution to a problem," said Dan Lascu, designer of the Chevrolet Impala.

The Active Phone Cooling will start featuring in the 2016 Chevrolet Impala, Malibu, Volt and Cruze vehicles. They will also have Chevrolet MyLink in-car entertainment technology integrated within the cooling zone.