![A picture of what looks like an iPhone 11 Pro with a dual-turbine fan attached using clips that hold the sides of the phone, which is covered in ice and icicles.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qFhDWnYNtKk_qI7CtxAvTBcgcW8=/0x25:1092x753/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73314070/Neveika_phone_cooler.0.jpg)
I don’t know about you, but when I have a nasty case of the hot phone, I have to get rid of that heat this instant. Just kidding, I usually just put it down for a while or restart it when it’s being especially stubborn. But there are companies out there marketing a different solution: little stick-on phone-cooling fans that purport to draw all that heat away. And their product images are a little, uh, excessively icy.
How did it come to this? What kicked off this arms race of increasingly frosty phones? I have to assume things started innocently enough, but these RGB-riddled things are pretty squarely aimed at gamers — I’d guess it didn’t take long for these product shots to snowball into the wildly unrealistic pictures on Amazon today.
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