iPhone 17 Air could be Apple's thinnest iPhone yet, with a thickness of just 6mm

Well before the release of the iPhone 16 range in September 2024, rumors of an iPhone 17 Slim or iPhone 17 Air started popping up.

Apple reportedly wants to replace its existing Plus line with a redesigned iPhone 17 Slim, with a 6.6-inch display, ProMotion, and a single rear camera. The most noteworthy characteristic of the upcoming iPhone, however, is its thickness.

Relative to the current iPhone 16 Plus, which has a thickness of 7.8mm, the iPhone 17 Slim will allegedly feature a housing that's only 6mm thin. This would make the device thinner than any iPhone Apple has released so far, though not the thinnest Apple device ever. That honor belongs to the 2024 iPad Pro with the M4 chip, which is only 5.1mm thin.

As first spotted by MacRumors, analyst Jeff Pu believes this will indeed be the case. Pu has previously provided other details about the upcoming iPhone 17 Slim, saying in October 2024 that it would feature a 6.6-inch display.

Multiple sources, including analysts Ross Young, Ming-Chi Kuo, leaker Ice Universe, and others, have all reported that a similar device is in the works, giving more credence to the claim.

Apple could opt to use a titanium-aluminium alloy for the iPhone 17 Slim to prevent bending. The iPhone 6, currently still the thinnest iPhone ever made, was prone to bending in people's pockets, with some users even calling the phenomenon "bend-gate" at the time.

As for why the iPhone 17 Slim is not thinner than the iPad Pro, one rumor from October 2024 suggests that the battery is to blame. Apple is supposedly not using the newer battery technology it originally developed for the phone. This claim comes from a user with a mixed track record, though, so it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Apart from the altered dimensions, the iPhone 17 Slim is also expected to introduce a 24-megapixel front-facing camera. The device could also receive Apple's next-generation A19 chip with improved efficiency and thermal management, and a thinner motherboard made of resin-coated copper.

The iPhone 17 Pro, meanwhile, is expected to feature the A19 Pro chip, with TSMC's state-of-the-art 2nm technology and 12GB of RAM. The iPhone 17 lineup is expected to be revealed in September 2025.