Apple is expected to release its thinnest phone yet later this year with the iPhone 17 Air. Rumors have held that the phone will be thinner than the 6.9mm iPhone 6 was, but recent leaks give us a better idea than we’ve had before of what to expect.
But where Kuo said the phone will have a 6.6-inch screen, Ice Universe says it’ll actually be 6.9 inches like the iPhone 17 Pro Max — they say both phones will have the same “length, width, screen size, and bezel” as the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Later, they posted a video showing an apparent render of the device.
On Friday, YouTuber iDeviceHelp posted a video in collaboration with leaker Majin Bu, who published similar-looking renders last month. iDeviceHelp claims to be showing mockups of the standard, Pro Max, and Air models “based on internal documents.” The video lingers on the edge of the phone at moments, and I was immediately struck by how much seeing it reminded me of looking edge-on at the 5.1mm 13-inch M4 iPad Pro, the one Apple device thinner than this is rumored to be.
It’s hard not to also notice the Google Pixel-like camera bar stretching left-to-right on the back of iDeviceHelp’s mockups of the iPhone 17 Air and Pro Max. It’s unclear whether the bar is functional or just Apple trying out some new aesthetic, but I welcome it all the same, if for no other reason than my iPhone 15 Pro is so dang floppy when laying on its back on my desk. iDeviceHelp demonstrated with the 17 Pro Max mockup that the bar seems to help there. But in both cases, the rear cameras themselves still stick up out of the bar, so it may not be perfect. Oh well, maybe next year.
As for the rest of the design, these renders and mockups appear to show it with buttons in all the same places as current iPhones (not counting the iPhone 16E, which lacks the Camera Control button), along with a USB-C port and speaker holes on the bottom. The phone is also expected to have a Dynamic Island and Face ID on the front. We won’t likely know for sure how close the renders are until September, when Apple typically reveals its latest batch of flagship iPhones.
