Phone Heat Pipes: Sign of Progress, or Contingency?

By now we’ve all heard about the S7’s heat pipe, which had raised concerns of a return to the Snapdragon 810 woes. The 810 was also accompanied by similar cooling solutions in the Z5 and through the Lumia 950XL’s so-called “liquid-cooling”, which was not really liquid-cooling at all. Now that we’ve seen what the S7’s heat pipe looks like, and that it’s certainly not liquid-cooling either, we ask you:

Do you think the presence of heat pipes is a sign of progress targeting better performance and thermals, or a contingency measure to ensure that hot chips don’t go overboard?

Feature image made possible thanks to JerryRigEverything’s awesome S7 Edge teardown!