iPhone 17 Air design revealed: 5-6mm aluminum case, single camera, more

Apple’s iPhone 17 lineup is widely expected to include a new iPhone with some radical new design goals. The most important of which is a thickness of 6mm or less, about 25 percent thinner than the iPhone 16. Most have taken to calling this phone the “iPhone 17 Air,” though analysts have referred to it as the iPhone 17 Slim.

According to a new report in usually-reliable The Information that cites “multiple sources,” Apple is going to have to make a few compromises in order to meet its goals of producing the thinnest iPhone of all time. At less than 6mm, it will be even thinner than the iPhone 6, which currently holds the iPhone thinness record at 6.9mm.

First, it will be made of aluminum rather than titanium/steel. In fact, the entire iPhone 17 lineup is said to be switching to aluminum frames and bodies, rather than steel frames and aluminum. Frankly, it’s a good move—the advantages of titanium are overblown for an iPhone, and most iPhone 15 Pro or 16 Pro owners wouldn’t even realize it was titanium if they weren’t told.

• The iPhone 17 Air will only have one speaker, in the earpiece, because there won’t be room for another one on the bottom.
• It will use Apple’s own 5G modem, which is apparently “slightly less reliable” than Qualcomm’s latest modem and doesn’t support high-speed mmWave.
• It will have only a single rear camera, housed in a “large, centered camera bump.”
• So far, they haven’t been able to fit a SIM tray in the device, which means it could be eSIM-only, which would prohibit sales in China.

Apple seems to be willing to make significant compromises to slim down this particular iPhone 17 variant. For those who want a more full-featured iPhone with a little more heft to it, there will still be the standard iPhone 17 and the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max to choose from.

Speaking of the iPhone 17 Pro, the Information’s report also claims the Pro models will switch to a part-aluminum, part-glass design, with the top half made of aluminum and the bottom made of glass. The phones will also reportedly feature a “rectangular camera bump made of aluminum” as opposed to the square glass bump on the last several iPhones. The whole thing sounds similar to the Google Pixel, which originally had a half-glass, half-aluminum design but has adopted a unique “camera bar” design in recent years.