iPhone 17 Air might be even thinner than expected

Later this year, Apple is expected to mix up its smartphone lineup yet again with a new slim iPhone 17 Air rumored to be replacing the underperforming Plus handset (which itself replaced the poorly selling mini phone).

To be the thinnest iPhone ever, it needs to be slimmer than the 6.9mm iPhone 6, and most recent rumors have suggested it’ll be around the 6mm mark. But despite reports that this search for thinness was causing Apple design problems, the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted that the upcoming handset will be even thinner than that.

On point 4 of Kuo’s latest Medium post, the analyst describes the “ultra-thin iPhone” as having its “thinnest part around 5.5mm”. That’s so much thinner than the 7.8mm/8.25mm iPhone 16 series, in fact, that Kuo says it “will likely only support eSIM” with no space for a dedicated SIM card slot. That won’t be a problem in the U.S., but could cause difficulties elsewhere in the world where the technology has seen less enthusiastic adoption.

But what about the camera bump?

The key phrase here is “thinnest part” which indicates that the iPhone 17 Air won’t achieve this remarkable thinness consistently. This probably just means that the camera will jut out a little bit, as it does on almost all modern smartphones, but it’s possible that this could refer to a tapered design of some kind.

If it is the camera protruding, then this could distort things quite a bit, of course. While Apple refers to the iPhone 16 as being 7.8mm thick, this is also a measurement taken at the thinnest point and the official accessory design guidelines show that the camera adds an additional 3.48mm, taking the least generous reading to 11.28mm.

If Apple included exactly the same camera bump on a 5.5mm thick iPhone Air, it would come to 8.98mm — or to put it another way, the jutting lens would make the phone 63% thicker.

That’s a big if, of course. One of the persistent rumors about the iPhone 17 Air is that it’ll have a single camera lens, and it won’t be a telephoto one. This needn’t be worrying on its own, given recent non-Pro iPhones have done a great job mimicking 2x zoom via pixel binning, but we do have to wonder what other sacrifices Apple might have to make to maximize its slim credentials.

Indeed, when forecasting that the new slim model “won’t significantly boost iPhone sales overall”, Kuo explains that the handset will feature “downgraded components paired with a high price” which certainly doesn’t sound appealing.

Thankfully, rumors that the slim model will be the most expensive iPhone ever have gone away, with recent reports suggesting it’ll directly replace the $899 iPhone 16 Plus on the pricing pyramid instead (though it’s possible all iPhone prices will rise in 2025, of course).

We’re still a long way from the iPhone 17 Air being released. Kuo refers to it as the “2H25 ultra-thin iPhone”, meaning it’ll arrive in the second half of 2025. That’s exactly what we’d expect: Apple has only released one numbered iPhone outside of September for over a decade — and that only slipped a month because of COVID-19.