Sony’s latest smartphone accessory is pretty cool

Sony has launched a smartphone cooling fan accessory that’s designed to lower the temperature of its Xperia 1 IV under intense gaming loads. The Xperia Stream also offers a selection of extra ports in addition to working as a cooling accessory. It’s available to preorder now in Japan for 23,100 yen (around $162) with shipping expected on October 14th. 

The aim with these kinds of accessories, which have also been produced by the likes of Asus and Razer, is to let a phone’s processor run at higher speeds for longer, by preventing the kinds of high temperatures that can lead to performance throttling. Asus has the AeroActive Cooler for its gaming-focused ROG Phone lineup, while Razer recently released an RGB cooling fan that’s designed to be attached to whatever smartphone you choose.

Sony’s cooler plugs into the Xperia 1 IV via USB, and offers four additional ports on its bottom side. There’s a USB-C port for charging, an Ethernet port for wired internet, a 3.5mm jack to attach a gaming headset, and an HDMI port for outputting game footage to a capture card. The fan’s speed can be controlled automatically by Sony’s software, or you can fine-tune its RPM manually.

As well as selling the Xperia Stream by itself, Sony is also selling it in a bundle named the Xperia 1 IV Gaming Edition for 189,200 yen (around $1,330). The version of the phone sold in this bundle has 16GB of RAM, up from the 12GB of RAM in the base Xperia 1 IV model. It’s unclear when or if either the cooling fan or the Gaming Edition smartphone will be released in Europe or North America.