iPhone Air: everything you need to know about Apple’s thinnest phone

By Cristina Alexander and John McCann Updated September 9, 2025

The iPhone Air has finally been launched, and it looks like a real jump forward for the iPhone design team, as Apple joins the growing trends of ‘ultra-thin’ smartphones.

Apple was at great pains to talk about how thin and well-designed the Air was, before spending as much time ‘proving’ how durable and long-lasting it was, clearly trying to assuage instant fears that it wouldn’t have good battery life or would break easily.

This phone sits between the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro Max in terms of screen tech, size, battery life and features – it’s got the advanced chipset and modem, but lacks the vapor cooling. Its battery is shorter-lasting than the iPhone 17, and it comes with the same display tech.

We’re still digging through all that was announced at the iPhone 17 launch event, but to make sure you stay up to date, here are all the important features you need to know about as we update this article.

The iPhone Air starts at $999 for 256GB of storage, moving up to 512GB for $1199 and 1TB for $1399. Pre-orders begin Friday September 12 and the phone goes on sale from September 19.

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As we’ve already mentioned, the iPhone 17 Air is expected to launch today, September 9, at Apple’s upcoming event. We’ve got all the details on how you can watch the iPhone 17 launch so you can keep up to date with all the news.

If the super-slim handset does arrive at this event, based on previous release schedules, we’d expect the iPhone 17 Air release date to be September 19.

Barring any tariffs, reports suggest the iPhone 17 Air might cost around $900. If accurate, that would make it cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, which retails at $1,099.

It’s unlike Apple to drastically undercut rivals on price, so we wouldn’t be surprised if the iPhone 17 Air price matched, or even exceeded the S25 Edge.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: the iPhone 17 Air is thinner than most smartphones have any right to be, least of all the iPhone. Rumors from early March said that the iPhone 17 Air might be as thin as 5.5mm, but after examining the dummy unit for it, the chassis has been slimmed down enough that it looks to be about 5.1mm thick. Though that’s not the final measurement, it would be as thin as the side of a mirror if it wasn’t covered by a frame.

Seeing as Samsung’s S25 Edge measures 5.8mm thick, we’d expect Apple will be looking to closely match, or even beat, this measurement.

For reference, the standard iPhone 16 is 7.8mm thick, while the iPhone 16 Pro is 8.25mm thick. The iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro are rumored to be about .50mm thicker than that – 8.75mm each – but those measurements aren’t final, either.

Leaked photos also show the iPhone 17 Air having a pill-shaped camera bar just like the Google Pixel 9, with the only difference being that the panel is the same color as the glass shell instead of black. And just like the iPhone 16e, it looks to have only one camera lens.

The iPhone 17 Air being almost paper thin gives the impression that the battery is going to be smaller and therefore the battery life isn’t going to be as sufficient as it is on the other models.

However, according to Marc Gurman of Bloomberg, Apple isn’t going to compromise the quality of the battery life, saying that it will be “on par with current iPhones” despite carrying a slimmer battery.

Interestingly, the week before the iPhone launch we saw the launch of another slimline smartphone from Chinese maker Tecno. The Tecno Pova Slim is a hair thicker than the Galaxy S25 Edge at 5.95mm, but packs in a considerably larger 5,160mAh battery (versus Samsung’s 3,900mAh power pack).

If the iPhone 17 Air is really as thin as the reports suggest (at 5.1mm), the hope will be Apple has utilized new battery technology to ensure capacity remains substantial.

While there’s no word on how long the phone’s battery will last, Apple considered making the iPhone 17 Air a “portless” iPhone, but they kept the USB-C port on it after all due to regulations imposed by the European Union.

Otherwise, iPhone 17 Air users would have to using either wireless charging or MagSafe charging ports — both of which are not accessible everywhere, nor are they affordable for some people.

Rumors say that the display for the iPhone 17 Air will be 6.7 inches in length. That’s smack in the middle of the iPhone 16 Pro’s 6.3-inch display and the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s 6.9-inch display. In other words, it’s not too big, but it’s not too small either.

The display is said to have an OLED panel and a 120Hz refresh rate, which is pretty smooth for a phone of that size. The display is rumored to have a ProMotion display, which means that feature would no longer be restricted to the Pro models.

The iPhone 17 Air is expected to have a single rear camera lens, just like the iPhone 16e. But, as we said before, it may be housed inside a pill-shaped camera bar, which the budget-friendly version of the iPhone 16 doesn’t have. Rumors suggest that the rear camera will be 48 megapixels, while the selfie camera will be 24MP.

The 24MP selfie camera would be a big jump from the 12MP cameras currently present on the iPhone 16, as that would improve the quality of photos and videos taken from that angle. Especially if the iPhone 17 Air users happen to be social media influencers. However, the single-lens rear camera may not capture spatial photos or videos.