Apple has long been rumored to replace the iPhone 16 Plus with the iPhone 17 Air (or iPhone 17 Slim) next year, thanks to the Plus model’s most disappointing sales of the four models the company releases each year. .
Last week a rumor claimed the Air would be 6mm thick, and today it turns out it’ll be even thinner than that, courtesy of a new in-depth report about the upcoming device. Apparently, its thickness will be between 5 mm to 6 mm. He is really thin.
iPhone 16 Plus
For comparison, note that the iPhone 16s is 7.8 mm thick and the iPhone 16 Pros is 8.25 mm thick. Even the latest iPad Air is 6.1mm thick, so the new iPhone Air will live up to its name. The new iPad Pro, on the other hand, is 5.1mm thick, and Apple is aiming for a similar profile for thinner smartphones.
Due to extreme thinness, some things had to be eliminated: for example, support for physical SIM cards. It also has a single speaker that also serves as an earpiece, as there is no room for a second speaker at the bottom. The iPhone 17 Air will use an Apple-designed modem that is expected to be smaller and more power-efficient than the Qualcomm modem currently used by Apple. However it will lack mmWave support and have slower overall data speeds than Qualcomm chips.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the iPhone 17 Air will have a smaller battery than current iPhones – meaning it will be smaller than the 3,561 mAh cell in the vanilla iPhone 16. As previously rumoured, today’s report reiterates the use of a single rear camera along with a large centered camera bump.
Previously rumored features for the iPhone 17 Air include a 6.6-inch screen, an aluminum frame, an A19 chip, Face ID, Dynamic Island, 48 MP resolution for its single rear camera, a 24 MP selfie camera, and 8GB of RAM. It is expected to launch alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max in September 2025.
