The OnePlus 11 Concept was an early highlight of Mobile World Congress 2023, thanks to its striking looks and innovative new tricks added to the already excellent OnePlus 11.

The most important of these features is active CryoFlux cooling, easily seen in the phone's images, and the blue piping that OnePlus had teased prior to MWC. This is effectively a miniaturized version of the cooling system used in gaming PCs, with the blue color coming from the cooling fluid inside.

The cooling fluid is actually circulated by a tiny diaphragm-like structure called an "industrial-grade piezoelectric ceramic micro-pump," which sends liquid up and down the phone to keep heat away from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset.

OnePlus claims that this coolant can lower the phone's temperature by 2.1 degrees Celsius (3.78 degrees Fahrenheit) while gaming and 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.88 degrees Fahrenheit) while charging.

We previously had phones with built-in cooling fans and external cooling accessories such as the RedMagic 8 Pro and the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro. OnePlus says it considered fans as a cooling option but decided they were too big, too heavy, and too noisy The company decided that it was not a good idea.

The back glass of the OnePlus 11 Concept is see-through. What is less obvious, however, is the metal scattered around the phone to give it character. The phone's camera system is surrounded by a unique cooling "halo," which also benefits from this subtle detail. The guilloche pattern etching is also a OnePlus first, and is commonly found on luxury watches.

The front of the phone has also been slightly modified for this concept model. The curved display of the regular OnePlus 11 has been curved further, giving it a completely different rounded feel in the hand. However, given that many people intensely dislike curved displays, this is part of the OnePlus concept and should probably not be brought to regular phones.

While one would never mistake the OnePlus 11 Concept for a production model, it is a bit of a shame. Avid mobile gamers will no doubt want to see how liquid cooling affects the phone and see it working through the back panel. Maybe someday a scaled-down version of this technology will appear, but for now OnePlus is content to let our imaginations run wild with the 11 Concept, not to take money out of our bank accounts.