These are the biggest pros and cons of iPhone 17 Air’s rumored ultra-thin design

Apple is going to debut its thinnest ever iPhone later this year, at just 5.5mm thin. While this new cutting-edge iPhone will have some compromises to shave nearly half the thickness of a normal iPhone, there’ll still be a number of features you won’t be compromising on. We’ll be delving into some of the pros and cons here.

Pros

#1: Battery life

You might expect a much thinner iPhone to have substantially compromised battery life. However, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that isn’t going to be the case:

Skinnier phones require thinner batteries, and that often mean fewer hours of battery life. Apple didn’t want to compromise here, so it sent engineers back to the drawing board to redesign display and silicon components, as well as software, to make the device more efficient.

iPhone 17 Air is rumored to feature a 6.6-inch display, so it’s unlikely that Apple will still match the Plus-sized battery life while being substantially thinner. However, it should still be able to pack standard iPhone battery life into the Air, which should be enough for most people.

#2: Price

Despite being a cutting-edge form factor, iPhone 17 Air is expected to retain the same sub-$1000 price point of the outgoing iPhone 16 Plus, according to multiple sources.

#3: Display tech

Apple’s thinnest iPhone won’t be compromising on the display technology. It’s going to pack a 6.6-inch OLED display with LTPO, which’ll be a first for non-pro iPhones. This means that you’ll have a bunch of great display features, such as 120Hz ProMotion and always-on functionality.

#4: MagSafe

After MagSafe was removed from the iPhone 16e, some had speculated that it wouldn’t be able to fit in the ultra-thin design of the iPhone 17 Air. However, recent dummy model leaks have revealed that MagSafe will continue to stick around on the iPhone 17 Air.

Cons

#1: Cameras

While iPhone 17 Air will still pack a flagship 48MP rear sensor, that’s all its going to get. iPhone 17 Air is sticking to a single camera setup. While the 48MP sensor will provide the versatility of taking 2x optical zoom shots, you won’t have the flexibility of an ultra-wide camera.

There also won’t be a native telephoto camera, although that historically. hasn’t been an option on non-pro iPhones. If you care about maximizing your smartphones camera, other iPhone 17 models will be a far better choice.

#2: Speakers

iPhone 17 Air will only feature one speaker, apparently. According to The Information, the device is too thin to fit a second speaker at the bottom. Instead, Apple will implement an enhanced earpiece speaker to make up for the shortcoming.

You’ll probably be better off using a pair of AirPods Pro for audio-listening, rather than using the built-in speaker.

#3: Connectivity

iPhone 17 Air will make the switch to Apple’s first in-house modem, the C1 chip. This means that the iPhone 17 Air won’t support mmWave in the US, something that the outgoing iPhone 16 Plus had supported. It also means that the iPhone 17 Air won’t support every cellular band that the iPhone 16 Plus had supported, although in real world testing, it doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference.

#4: Physical SIM cards

While Apple removed the physical SIM card tray from US iPhones a couple years ago, physical SIM trays have continued to remain available worldwide.

However, the iPhone 17 Air will likely remove it for good in all regions, due to its ultra thin design. From The Information:

So far, Apple’s engineers haven’t been able to fit a physical tray for a SIM card in the thin device, according to two people working on the project and two others with direct knowledge of it.

This may be an issue for sales of iPhone 17 Air, as China still requires devices to support physical SIM cards.

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