The ‘iPhone 17 Air’

The rumor mill has also been abuzz over the past few months about a replacement for the iPhone Plus that will represent an entirely new direction for Apple: an ultra-slim “iPhone 17 Air.”

As Gurman notes, Apple plans to use its “miniaturization skills and its push into new types of silicon to make the thinnest iPhone to date.” Like the iPhone mini and iPhone Plus, this is still an experiment on Apple’s part, but it hopes that it will fare better than those two iPhone sizes, which never caught on.

It’s still an open question how thin the iPhone Air will be. Last week, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested it could get as low as 5.5mm, and Gurman believes Apple will shave about 2 millimeters off its existing iPhones, which would put it in the 5.8mm to 6.25mm range, depending on which iPhone 16 model you measure that against.

The other three iPhone models are expected to have less dramatic design changes. Gurman doesn’t comment on recent reports about new Google Pixel-like camera arrays, which suggests those three will be business as usual. However, the “iPhone 17 Air” is not only expected to create some buzz but also serve as a proving ground for new technologies, from Apple’s new in-house 5G modem and Wi-Fi chips to miniaturization technologies that could serve its foray into foldable iPhones.