Following the report of a redesigned iPhone 17 Pro, The Information‘s Wayne Ma details Apple’s efforts to release the ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air next year. According to the journalist, Cupertino will remove several features to make this innovative iPhone that thin.
Ma reports that iPhone 17 Air prototypes are between 5 and 6 millimeters thick, which could possibly make it thinner than the iPhone 6, released a decade ago. While the iPhone 16 is 7.8mm thick, this could make the iPhone 17 Air as thin as the new M4 iPad Pro.
Unfortunately, not everything is good news. Apple will have to sacrifice several crucial features to achieve this ultra-thin design. For example, The Information says Apple engineers are “finding it hard to fit the battery and thermal materials into the device,” which means Cupertino will likely have to add a smaller battery to this iPhone.
Besides, a major compromise on the iPhone 17 Air might be a single earpiece speaker. According to Ma, “the iPhone will only have a single speaker in its earpiece because there’s no room for a second speaker at the bottom, which is standard in other models.”
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The journalist also confirms another rumored change: the iPhone 17 Air will have a “large, centered camera bump.” That said, forget about one of the iPhone’s most widely-used camera features, the optical zoom.
While Apple’s in-house 5G modem is expected to be available with this iPhone, the chip doesn’t perform as well as Qualcomm’s. The report says it’s more efficient, but it won’t be as fast, and it will lack a feature some US users benefit a lot, the mmWave 5G technology, which Apple’s future processor won’t have.
Finally, Apple engineers couldn’t figure out how to add a physical SIM tray to the iPhone 17 Air. While iPhone users in the US are used to that, Apple will have issues, at least in China, which requires phones to be sold with a SIM card. Without this market, sales of this upcoming iPhone might not be as enticing as they could.
Wrap up
Considering all that, I wonder if these trade-offs are worth it for an all-new iPhone design. I still think Pro users will keep buying Pro phones, while regular iPhone users won’t be enticed to pay extra for this new design. So, who might be this new iPhone for?
