Next year, Apple reportedly aims to shake up its smartphone lineup with the slimmest iPhone ever, beating the record currently set by the iPhone 6 and its svelte 6.9mm frame a decade ago.
Despite some reported battery teething problems that mean it apparently won’t be as thin as originally intended, it seems that the iPhone 17 Air (or iPhone 17 Slim) is on course to join the lineup next September as planned.
According to a new report on the DigiTimes Asia website citing supply chain sources, the handset has entered the new product introduction (NPI) phase at Apple’s Taiwanese manufacturing partners, Foxconn.
The NPI phase is where a design concept starts to become reality. It’s where Apple’s product engineers work with the production team at Foxconn to figure out how the product will be assembled, and to make sure the approach is practical. At this stage, the design is largely locked in, with very little wiggle room for change.
Once this is agreed upon, pilot productions run to ensure the assembly process works and quality control is maintained across a few devices before the process rolls out into mass production. That means we’re on target for a September launch to make the slim model the thinnest member of the upcoming iPhone 17 family.
It’s a case of third time lucky for Apple, with the iPhone Air set to replace the underperforming Plus model, which in turn was brought in for the equally poor-performing iPhone 12 and 13 mini. It’s rumored to be just 6mm thick, with a 120Hz screen and a single camera lens on the back.
While that 6mm figure, if correct, will comfortably make it the thinnest iPhone ever, it’s worth noting that the latest iPad Pro is thinner still at 5.1mm. That’s because the iPad has a significantly wider shell for the battery to sit in, and Apple has presumably decided that the sacrifices to stamina required to make the iPhone even thinner weren’t worth making.
Interestingly, the DigiTimes report draws a parallel to the long-awaited folding iPhone, which recently passed a significant landmark on its own journey to becoming a commercially available product. If Apple can successfully build a super-thin iPhone, the piece reasons, then that will help with the development of a folding model too, given its closed state will double the thickness.
Every millimeter Apple can shave off counts, in other words — though this remains a long-term product, with the iPhone Flip not expected until 2026 or 2027.
