The next series of iPhones, due next fall, will include an all-new design for one of the models, it’s thought. The iPhone 17 series is expected to include a phone which has so far been named the iPhone 17 Air. And it seems that it could be just 6mm thick.
The iPhone 17 Air could be slimmer than the iPhone 16 Pro (left) and the iPhone 16 Plus.
This would make it the thinnest iPhone ever. Building on a recent rumor of a super-thin iPhone Air, the new report from analyst Jeff Pu, seen by MacRumors, refers to the Air as the Slim model, saying, “We agreed with the recent chatter of an 6mm thickness ultra-slim design of the iPhone 17 Slim model.”
If correct, this confirms that the idea behind the iPhone 17 Air is that it will likely replace the Plus iPhone in the range. Instead of a phone roughly the size of a Pro Max with two cameras, the predicted Air seems to be all about a radically different look.
A slim profile is highly desirable in tech, and it certainly turns heads: the reaction to the super-thin iPad Pro released earlier this year has been considerable.
Apple touted it as its thinnest-ever product at 5.1mm, a shade thinner than the previous record-holder, the iPod nano. If the rumors are true, the iPhone 17 Air wouldn’t beat that, but it would still be a game-changer.
Not least, that’s because the thinnest iPhone so far was the iPhone 6, released back in 2014. This was 6.9mm thick.
The iPhone 17 Air, then, would shave almost 1mm off that and, to put it in perspective, would be noticeably thinner than the current iPhone 16 and 16 Plus which are 7.8mm thick, or the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max which measure 8.25mm from front to back.
The thing is, none of those phones is what you’d call chunky, but it’s clear that an all-new iPhone, with the other models roughly duplicating the current models’ size and thickness, would really make the profile stand out.
It could be that the svelte design will be the key to the Air: after all, it’s thought it will have just one camera, unlike the regular iPhone with two and the Pro models with three.
That’s a bold choice at a time when cameras are key to smartphones. Personally, I suspect the Air will have two cameras like the regular iPhone 17. Oh, and one other thing: however thin the iPhone 17 Air might be, the cameras will protrude as much as they do on all the iPhones now.