iPhone 17 rumored to return to curved sides with new material blending

A new rumor claims that the iPhone 17 range will feature a redesigned chassis that does away with straight edges.

Previous rumors have claimed that Apple is returning to aluminum for the iPhone 17 range, although those claims were disputed. Now a further leaker has come forward to claim that there will be a significant redesign that sees Apple going back to smoothly curved edges.

According to Fixed-Focus Digital on Chinese social media site Weibo, Apple has developed a new manufacturing process concerning how different materials can be blended together to avoid straight edges.

"The splicing materials of the iPhone series have been shared," writes the leaker on Weibo, in translation. "The key is that the Deco connection area of the fuselage and the rear shell is a slope rather than a step."

That phase, "Deco connection" is unclear but from the context appears to refer to the appearance of the edge. The claim is that the front and back glass of the iPhone will be blended with a single smooth transition, instead of having a separate frame around the chassis.

While if the report is correct, the manufacturing process is new, Apple has very often used curved sides for the iPhone. The original iPhone was curved, for instance, and so were all of them up to the iPhone 4 in 2010.

Curved edges then returned for the iPhone 6. They remained until the iPhone 12 range.

So iPhones were curved from 2007 to 2010, then straight until 2014, then curved again until 2020. It's not as if Apple alternates, then, but it's certainly possible that it will return to a curved design, if only to help differentiate the next model.

Straight edges do give iPhones fractionally more interior space, though. It really is fractional, but it all counts in such a tightly-packed device.

Then whether the sides are curved or straight, Apple has applied the design to the whole range at once — with the exception of the iPhone SE. There has never been a September launch of the iPhone where some models were curved and others straight.

Which is relevant now because the iPhone 17 range is also rumored to include a slim model. Apple is said to be having problems making the thinner version, so it deciding to sacrifice some more space to a curved design seems unlikely.

Plus while this has to be personal preference, there is an argument that a straight-edged iPhone is easier to pick up. And with ever larger iPhone models, it's more difficult to hold a curved sided model when trying to operate it one-handed.

Note that Fixed Focus Digital does not have a long track record in Apple leaks, and their hit rate is not great. He or she has claimed that Apple had given up on the iPhone Fold when more usually reliable sources deny this, for instance.

Most recently, Fixed Focus Digital announced that the forthcoming iPhone SE 4 would be renamed the iPhone 16E.