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Apple’s smartphone lineup has shifted this year: we’re now minus a Plus and the empty space has been filled with Air. Specifically, the long-rumoured iPhone 17 Air is Apple’s answer to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, adding an ultra-thin option to the line-up, alongside the standard iPhone 17, and the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.
So for the time being, the Air will be replacing the Plus variant in the lineup – a move that is widely suspected to be Samsung’s game plan as well when it comes time to release the Galaxy S26 series.
And good news for fans of the iPhone Plus, the Air is not all that different. The new slim and lightweight build is the main change, with the iPhone 17 Air measuring a slender 5.5mm thick and weighing an incredible 146g – by comparison, last year’s iPhone 16 Plus was 7.8mm thick and weighed 199g. It even outdoes Samsung, with the S25 Edge measuring 5.8mm thick and weighing 163g.
Interestingly, while the Pro models have downgraded to aluminium, the iPhone 17 Air has a titanium frame. The rear is once again glass and you have a choice of four colours: black, white, gold and Sky Blue.
On that skinny frame, the Air has a larger display than the iPhone 17, fronted by a 6.5in OLED panel with a peak brightness of 3,000 nits and an LTPO refresh rate that can adjust between 1 and 120Hz. There’s also a layer of the new Ceramic Glass 2 sitting over the display, which apparently offers three times the scratch resistance of the first generation.
Inside, we’ve got the expected new A19 Pro chipset, which Apple claims offers MacBook Pro levels of computing and has the fastest CPU in any smartphone. That sort of hyperbole usually raises my eyebrow but given Apple’s track record, I actually believe it. There’s no confirmation of RAM but I expect it will be the same 8GB as last year, and you can pair that with 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage.
What I’m less sure about is the claims that battery life will last you all day. Apple was suspiciously coy about the exact specification of the battery, which makes me think that it’s going to be a disappointment. We’ll see when it comes to testing.
As much as the battery is a concern, I know for a fact that the other points of compromise annoy me more. First up, Apple is ditching nano SIMs altogether with the iPhone 17 Air, only supporting eSIMs, which can be fiddly at best.
The other, and perhaps most egregious, difference is that the iPhone 17 Air only has the one rear camera, just like the mid-range iPhone 16e. It sounds like the same 48-megapixel (f/1.6) main camera as the iPhone 17 and look decent enough but the complete lack of a secondary shooter doesn’t sit right for a flagship phone.
Otherwise, there are a few broader changes that affect most of the iPhone 17 lineup. Just like the Pro models, the iPhone 17 Air has a full-width camera bar, reminiscent of the Google Pixel 10 series. It may not be the most distinct choice but it looks much better here than the chunky rectangle on the Pro series, at least.
We also have dual front-and-rear video recording for content creators, expanded wireless connectivity with support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 and a handful of new Apple Intelligence features, including Visual Intelligence (basically Apple’s version of Google’s Circle to Search) and live translation.
The iPhone 17 Air joins the line-up between the 17 and the 17 Pro, priced at $999 for the 256GB model. All four new iPhones are available to preorder from Friday 12 September and will be hitting shelves a week later on 19 September.
We’ll be getting our hands on review samples very soon, so check back in with us to see if the iPhone 17 Air is the ultra-slim smartphone you’ve been waiting for, or if you’re better off sticking with one of the other, tried-and-tested models.
