While not as slim as the incredibly slim 5.1mm iPad Pro, the 5.6mm iPhone 17 Air is so slim, it lacks a SIM slot and more than one camera.
How do you make a super slim iPhone? That’s a question Apple has been toying with in the past year, as the company grapples with the idea that big phones are staying big, but also not getting smaller in all the right ways.
There are some solutions, foldable clamshell phones being one of the options, of course, and Apple isn’t alone in its pondering: earlier this year. Samsung released the first of this news super-slim breed, the 5.8mm Galaxy S25 Edge.
Trust Apple to find a way to one-up Samsung where it counts, because its iPhone 17 Air is even slimmer. Almost remarkably so, even if it needed to make a few changes to get there.
An iPhone made slimmer
Before we talk about what the 17 Air doesn’t have, let’s talk about what it does have, and what it’s basically replacing.
In 2025, there’s no Plus model this year, meaning no 6.7 inch iPhone for everyone, only the 6.3 inch iPhone 17. It seems there’s no need for a bigger iPhone standard model, and that gives Apple the chance to try something different.
Instead of releasing an iPhone 17 Plus to replace the 16 Plus, Apple is putting the iPhone on a diet, building a much slimmer approach to the iPhone you can see in numbers alone: the iPhone 17 Pro is 8.75mm (thicker than the 8.25mm iPhone 16 Pro), while the iPhone 17 is 7.95mm (marginally thicker than the 7.8mm iPhone 16).
By comparison, however, the iPhone 17 Air is 5.64mm, dropping over 3mm from the Pro model and a little over 2mm on the standard model. Granted, it’s not as slim as the 5.1mm M4 iPad Pro, but the 5.6mm iPhone 17 Air is the thinnest iPhone around right now.
It also happens to be lighter, weighing 165 grams compared to the 177g of the iPhone 17, 204g of the iPhone 17 Pro, and 231g of the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
To do this, Apple has slimmed down the hardware, building a slim titanium frame to house a 6.5 inch 120Hz ProMotion display, and protecting both the front and back with Ceramic Shield, version two on the front and version one on the back.
The hardware inside is more or less like the iPhone 17 Pro: an A19 Pro powers the system, and Apple’s N1 wireless stack offers up WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread smart home support. Meanwhile, Apple also includes a custom modem designed in-house, the C1X, providing 5G support while using less energy.
Only one rear camera is found on this phone, with Apple optimising the space by including a 48 megapixel F1.6 main wide camera capable of doing the 2X telephoto trick, though the design is like a slimmer camera bar to what Apple has added to the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max design.
Meanwhile at the front, Apple is using the same Centre Stage 18 megapixel selfie camera it’s rolling out across the rest of the iPhone 17 range.
And then there’s the change made to accommodate the battery.
No physical SIM, only eSIM
If you want the iPhone 17 Air, you’re going to want a telco that supports eSIM. Or more specifically, you’re going to need one.
That’s because to make use of all the space inside, Apple has removed the SIM slot, saving space on the inside and affording Apple the room to throw in a bigger battery.
In terms of actual battery size, Apple notes “all day battery life”, with up to 27 hours of video playback. However, Apple will make a MagSafe battery pack specifically for the iPhone Air built to be slim, and that will give the phone more life to work with, boosting it to as much as 40 hours of video playback, it seems.
Pricing and availability
A super slim iPhone will come at a cost, but interestingly, it may not be as expensive as you may expect.
In Australia, the iPhone 17 Air will come in four colours, priced from $1799 for the 256GB model, $2199 for the 512GB, and $2599 for the 1TB offering, while in New Zealand, folks in that part of the world can expect the 256GB iPhone 17 Air for $2149 for the 256GB model, $2549 for the 512GB, and $2949 for 1TB.
From a release date perspective, we’re all in the same boat, it seems, with the iPhone 17 Air set to be available on September 19, 2025, just like the AirPods Pro 3 update announced alongside.
