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This iPhone 17 Air dummy unit looks incredibly slim next to an iPhone 16 Plus, it’s just a shame about the big camera

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Very thin, except where it's not

Apple iPhone 16 Plus Review
The iPhone 16 Plus (Image credit: Future)
  • Photos show an iPhone 17 Air dummy unit next to an iPhone 16 Plus
  • The iPhone 17 Air looks far slimmer than the iPhone 16 Plus
  • However, the Air's camera sticks out similarly far

We fully expect the iPhone 17 Air to be one of the slimmest phones of the year, perhaps even beating the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, but a new apparent leak gives us a clear look at just how thin it might be compared to one of Apple’s current phones.

Leaker Majin Bu (via GSMArena) has shared photos of what’s presumably an iPhone 17 Air dummy unit alongside an iPhone 16 Plus. We say ‘presumably’ because they simply refer to it as an iPhone 17 Air, so it could instead be a prototype, but it’s more likely a non-functional dummy.

In any case, in these images it appears little more than half as thick as the 7.8mm thick iPhone 16 Plus. It’s actually probably a little more than that, with leaks suggesting the iPhone 17 Air is 5.65mm thick, but it certainly appears extremely slim.

Camera concerns

But while the bulk of the phone is very thin, the single-lens camera juts out noticeably from the top. In fact, it looks like the bit with the lens might be around as thick as that section of the iPhone 16 Plus – meaning that at its thickest point the iPhone 17 Air wouldn’t be much if any slimmer than current iPhones.

And because the rest of the body is so slim, that camera bump is far more noticeable than on the iPhone 16 Plus, so that aspect of the design arguably isn’t ideal. Of course, there's a chance the design of the phone in these images is wrong, but it lines up with previous images.

Still, this problem is probably unavoidable. Apple is reportedly equipping the iPhone 17 Air with just one rear camera in order to slim the phone down, but actually reducing the size of the lens and other camera components likely isn’t possible without a reduction in quality.

So the iPhone 17 Air will probably be a very slim phone – just as long as you ignore the thicker camera bar at the top.

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James Rogerson

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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