Phone coolers aren't snake oil. They're just solving a problem most people don't have.

The short answer is no, at least for most people. That may sound strange in a discussion about phone coolers, but this isn't a clickbait question with an obvious answer hiding at the bottom. Active cooling can help prevent heat from degrading a phone's sustained performance. But most folks simply don't push their phones hard enough, for long enough, for this to become an issue.

Put enough strain on your phone, and heat can become an issue. Like using your MacBook outside, when temperatures get too high, performance may drop while charging can slow. A phone cooler can help with this, though most of us don't need one.

The term "phone cooler" covers a broad spectrum of gadgets. Basic models circulate air over the back of the phone, while thermoelectric (Peltier) coolers draw heat away with a cold plate. Passive cooling cases spread heat over a greater area. Then there are so-called "cooling apps," which may lower workloads or alter performance settings but can't magically remove heat from the hardware.

The real question is whether heat is hurting performance. The CPU and GPU produce plenty of heat when they're busy, and when a phone gets too hot, it begins throttling performance to protect itself. You may notice this in a game that performs well at first, but slows down as the phone heats up.

External cooling can make a measurable difference here. 8 percent with the cooler attached.

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