William Gallagher
A new rumor claims that both Apple and Samsung are having difficulty making thinner batteries, thereby limiting just how thin phones like the expected iPhone 17 Slim can be.
What's currently rumored to be called the iPhone 17 Slim is believed to be an iPhone with a 6.6-inch screen, and to be significantly thinner than regular iPhones. Just how thin has not been known, but a new rumor says battery problems may mean it can be no less than 6mm.
The rumor comes from yeux1122, who has a mixed track record — most recently claiming the Apple Ring project is still on, and regularly if erroneously claiming that there will be a 2TB version of the Pro iPhone models.
"[The] supply of new internal substrates will not be possible next year," writes yeux1122 in his or her blog (in translation). "It was expected that the new substrate would be thinner and secure more batteries, but due to the unadoption of the new substrate, the slim model in the industry is around 6mm."
If correct, a 6mm iPhone 17 Slim would compare to the current iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max's 8.25mm. The current iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are each 7.8mm thick.
It's likely that a difference of 2.25mm or 1.8mm will be noticeable, but it's not known how much slimmer Apple had been aiming to achieve.
According to yeux1122, Samsung is facing the same difficulty with its plans for a slimmer phone.
The rumors of an iPhone 17 Slim go back to October 2023, and a report by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. At the time, the report claimed that Apple was working to make its future iPhone mainboards using resin coated copper (RCC), which can reduce the thickness of the board.
Kuo's report also said that RCC was fragile and, at the time, unable to pass drop tests.
As well as being intended for an expected iPhone 17 Slim, though, the thinness has been believed to be a step toward Apple finally releasing an iPhone Fold. Such a folding iPhone would benefit from being slimmer, since folding obviously then doubles the width.
Christine McKee
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AppleInsider Staff
10 Comments
Apple isn’t going to make an “iPhone Fold” anyway, so this isn’t a problem.
If iPhone Slim is a real device in development for release next Sept... and that's a big IF as most rumors thus far don't make a lot of sense... but if it is real, I find it impossible to believe that Apple would just be finding out, six months or so before initial production would begin, that it can't make batteries that are thin enough. Again, assuming that a groundbreakingly thin iPhone was intended as a product, one of the biggest initial hurdles to overcome in R&D would be the battery tech required, and Apple would have either had the solution or not a while ago. I wouldn't be surprised that battery tech isn't where it needs to be for such a device, but I don't think Apple would be just realizing that now.
Both Honor and Huawei have slimmed their (folding) phones down (4.4mm and 3.6mm respectively) so I very much doubt that batteries are the whole story here although those batteries are silicon-carbon and third gen now so not considered new technology.
https://www.wired.com/review/honor-magic-v3/
https://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Huawei-Mate-XT-Preview-Heres-to-the-crazy-ones_id6594#battery
Folding phones have a reason to be thin. I'm not sure that making a regular phone thinner would achieve much as phones are already thin enough.
These battery performance challenges should not come as a surprise at all to Apple because they have been through this many times before.
Notably, the iPod touch (6th generation) was 6.1mm thin making the battery very small. Apple intentionally underclocked the A8 SoC to decrease power consumption and thus increase battery life for this device. Even then, the battery performance still sucked (I own one of these iPod touches). It was fine as a music player playing local audio files but any task that required more CPU cycles quickly drained the battery (video playback, web browsing, etc.).
There are plenty of other instances of Apple sacrificing battery performance in the interest of slimness. The MacBook Air 2017 was another (I owned one of these for a couple of years).
It's not like they're discovering for the first time that thin batteries mean less device time.
The iPhone Fold isn't an imminent product. They're likely just experimenting with the technology to understand its strengths and weaknesses (there are lot of the latter). Apple does this (prototype concepts) without the intention of quickly taking it to market. Apple Silicon M-series SoCs probably went 10+ years of covert development before it was announced in 2020. Apple admitted that they were developing a tablet before they pivoted efforts to the handset that would become the iPhone.
In short, battery problems have influenced all Apple products powered by batteries, not just the mythical "iPhone Slim" and "iPhone Fold."
The iPhone 6 was 6.9mm thick, and that felt like magic at the time, and even more so as newer models got thicker and heavier. The 6s was 7.1mm, and you could definitely feel the difference if you were used to the iPhone 6 (and not using a case). I would love to see phones get thinner again, but I’d be very happy with a 6.9mm iPhone 17 (Pro?). I know cameras have gotten better, and that’s probably a big factor in the thickening of phones, but the biggest difference for me in daily use between my current phone and the iPhone 6 is that I now have to use a dongle with my headphones, so it seems like a thinner phone should still be attainable if they set their minds to it. Faster processors and the larger batteries they require mostly just enable websites to serve up web pages with more complex and invasive advertising, for those of us who don’t need the processing power for things like gaming or AI.