The iPhone 17 Air almost makes the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge look thick in new dummy unit photos

- New photos show an iPhone 17 Air dummy unit alongside the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
- Apple's phone looks quite a lot slimmer than Samsung's
- However, its camera appears to stick out further
It looks like we’re going to see a battle of the super slim smartphones this year, as not long ago, the 5.8mm thick Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge launched, and we’re expecting the iPhone 17 Air to follow very soon – a phone that could be even slimmer.
Tipsters haven’t yet settled on exactly how thick Apple’s upcoming phone will be, with various sources putting it at between 5.0mm and 6.0mm. But the bulk of recent leaks position it somewhere in the middle of those figures, with 5.44mm, 5.5mm, and 5.65mm having been put forward by separate sources.
If the iPhone 17 Air does come in at any one of those rumored thicknesses, it will be slimmer than the Galaxy S25 Edge, and while a difference of roughly 0.15mm – 0.35mm might not sound like much, a leaked photo suggests the difference in thickness between these two phones could be really noticeable.
Be honest, S25 Edge or iPhone 17 Air? 👀 pic.twitter.com/F81O7Q1WeIAugust 17, 2025
Shared by @theonecid, the photos above show a Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge alongside what’s presumably an iPhone 17 Air dummy unit, and you can see that the latter looks much slimmer.
Having said that, it also looks like the iPhone 17 Air’s camera lens might stick a bit further out than Samsung’s, so at the widest point, it might not be much slimmer. Still, for the most par,t the iPhone 17 Air looks impressively thin here.
Coming with compromises
Of course, there are inevitably compromises in having such a slim phone, with the biggest rumored one being just one camera lens on the back. The Galaxy S25 Edge has two, and the standard iPhone 17 is expected to have two as well.
Beyond that, it’s also likely that the iPhone 17 Air will have a small battery, so you might have to sacrifice quite a lot if you choose Apple’s slimmest phone.
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But options are good. If you want something slightly thicker, there’s the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, and if you don’t care about slim phones at all, then there are all sorts of other devices to choose from – including the rest of the iPhone 17 line, all of which we’re expecting to launch in early September.
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James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.
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