Everything We Know About the ‘iPhone 17 Air’

By Dean Blake - News

Published: 22 Jul 2025

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Readtime: 4 min

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As we enter the second half the calendar year, it’s time to turn our attention to all the fun stuff our friends at Apple have been cooking up for us: and while it’s no secret there’s an iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max are coming soon, there’s something special on the way.

For the first time, Apple is bringing it’s Air moniker to the iPhone, and is set to deliver a surprisingly thin entrant to the iPhone lineup this September: the iPhone 17 Air.

Beyond the name—which finally fits the iPhone into the same naming convention as the iPad and MacBook product lines—we do have quite a bit of unofficial information leaked from journalists and the production line to look at.

Obviously, until we have official confirmation from Apple everything in this article should be taken with a grain of salt. But if you’re keen to get the scoop on what will likely be the most existing iPhone launch in recent years, read on.

What will the ‘iPhone 17 Air’ Look Like?

When you imagine what an iPhone Air would look like, you’re probably not far off from what Apple has in mind. The key feature of the rumoured phone will be its overall thinness and weight: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has noted he believes, based on his sources, that the Air will shave around 2mm from the current iPhone 16 Pro, which would put it at around 6mm thick.

However, other estimates put it as thin as 5.5mm and as light as 145 grams (for reference, the current iPhone 16 clocks in at 170 grams), but ultimately we won’t know the proper measurements until Apple itself shows the phone off this September.

We’re also not entirely clear on the overall size of the display, though the common ground between each rumour is that the Air will land somewhere around the size of the iPhone 16 Plus (6.7” display)—that is, with a display measuring somewhere between 6.55” and 6.65”. That puts the phone between the 16 Pro (6.3” display) and 16 Pro Max (6.9” display), but quite a bit bigger than the base iPhone 16 (6.1”).

The design of the phone isn’t necessarily going to radically differ from what we’ve seen from Apple (or it’s competition, actually), though one big difference leakers point at is the fact the iPhone 17 Air will probably only feature a single 48 megapixel fusion camera similar to the one used in 2025’s iPhone 16e. This would mean a less cluttered camera bump, but also means videophiles are likely looking at sticking to the Pro and Pro Max models for another year.

What are the likely specs of the ‘iPhone 17 Air’?

While the iPhone 17 will act as the base model of the new line-up, the 17 Air is actually very likely to share a lot of the technical DNA, with a few caveats here and there to account for the slimmer build. The biggest one, of course, being the battery size.

Rumours all point to the new device having a sub-3,000mAh battery—considerably less than even the budget-focused iPhone 16e’s 4,005mAh—which will struggle to maintain battery life for an entire day.

Hardware and software optimisations could go a long way in mitigating the relatively small battery size, as well as a very likely iPhone 17 Air-compatible battery case, which will give users back some battery charge in exchange for adding bulk to what is supposed to be a thin device.

Here’s the rumoured tech specs of the iPhone 17 Air:

When is the ‘iPhone 17 Air’ Releasing?

Given Apple’s propensity to launch its phones in September, it’s very likely the iPhone 17 Air will launch alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max, in mid September. The 16 series were launched on Friday, September 20, meaning the new line-up is likely to land on shelves on Friday, 19 September, or 26 September, 2025.