According to all the rumors in recent months, Apple plans to launch a new ultra-thin iPhone 17 model. Known as the iPhone Air or iPhone Slim, today we learned more details about what it will look like.
Apple plans to launch the thinnest iPhone in history, or at least that's what experts say. Originally called iPhone Air, it now seems that in other places they are starting to call it iPhone Slim, but the truth is that if iPhone Air seemed like an unlikely name, the new iPhone Slim seems even less likely. be. be faithful. The fact is that the extreme finesse of this device, which It would only be 6mm thickrepresents a big challenge for the company which had to make important decisions to carry out its manufacturing.
The first of these decisions is get rid of SIM tray. This is not something new, in the United States in fact only iPhones are sold without this tray, using only the eSIM, but outside the North American market this type of technology is not so widespread among operators, this could therefore pose a problem for its international distribution. The same thing has already happened with the Apple Watch, and that did not stop Apple from launching it internationally, thus forcing operators to intervene when their customers demanded this type of technology, so that it could be reproduce.
The real problem would be China, where regulators do not allow the use of eSIM on phones because they require personal identification of the user, something current eSIM systems do not allow for as precisely as physical SIM cards. Could Apple exclude China from the international iPhone Air/Slim market? This seems unlikely.
Added to this problem is the 5G modem that it would use. An iPhone this thin will have its weak point in the battery, so achieving maximum consumption efficiency will be essential. This is why it will, according to rumors, use its own 5G modemabandoning Qualcomm, which until now was the supplier of this component. Apple encountered many problems in the development of its 5G modem, to the point that it was even rumored that it would abandon the project. Will this new modem be reliable? According to experts, it will not have as high a speed as those of Qualcomm but it will be smaller and will consume less. Additionally, it won't have mmWave connectivity, so it won't be able to use the faster 5G networks.
Finally, there's the camera issue. If we reduce the thickness of the device to 6mm there is no room for the camerathis element will therefore have to stand out even more than in current models. Aesthetically, this will be a challenge for Apple. We already have very thin devices like the iPad Pro, but the camera is nowhere near the quality that iPhones can offer. Another sacrifice for the benefit of extreme thinness? everything seems to indicate that they are too much effort just to have a very thin device. Will it be worth it?
