The rumored iPhone 17 Slim (or maybe iPhone 17 Air — but we’re going to call it “Slim” for the purposes of this article) is reportedly coming next year to freshen up Apple’s smartphone lineup. After underwhelming sales of both the mini and Plus models of iPhone, Apple will be hoping that a thinner version is the variant that buyers have been waiting for.
But while the handset is expected to be an upgrade in a lot of appealing ways, one way it is expected to lag behind the Pro versions is camera performance. And a new report from Korean outlet The Elec seems to confirm that once and for all.
The article explains how LG Innotek, the main supplier of camera modules for Apple, is investing 357.9 billion won (just over $255 million) into new facilities for producing iPhone 17 Pro hardware. That means next year’s non-Pro models — the regular iPhone 17 and, presumably, the iPhone 17 Slim — will go without the 5x optical zoom that the more expensive models enjoy with their tetraprism camera system.
That’s not all that surprising for a few reasons. Firstly, optical zoom has been a Pro exclusive feature for generations, and there was no real reason to suspect 2025 would see that strategy changed.
On top of that, the iPhone 17 Slim is rumored to be just 6mm thick, making it 13% thinner than the reigning titleholder for Apple's thinnest phone, the iPhone 6. It would be an extreme engineering challenge to fit multiple bulky camera modules into such a svelte shell — and given that thinness is tipped to be the Slim's main selling point, simplicity has to prevail.
Perhaps for this reason, it’s suggested that the handset will have just a single camera lens, doing away with the ultrawide module that’s a familiar part of the vanilla iPhone 16 and making it look more like the entry-level iPhone SE. Of course, with a 48MP sensor and Apple’s impressive ability to emulate a 2x zoom via pixel binning, it should produce far more impressive results than the latter. But for casual buyers who simply go into the Apple Store and count the lenses, the Slim model could be a tough sell.
That’s especially true if the early rumors about a sky-high price turn out to be correct. It was reported that the iPhone 17 Slim could be the most expensive Apple handset ever, which means it would eclipse the $1,199 starting price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Personally, I find that price hard to believe. Slimness is appealing in hardware, but not that appealing. It would essentially mean Apple only has one mid-range handset unless the company pitches the upcoming iPhone SE 4 as a partner to the regular iPhone 17 (not impossible, given its rumored increased $499 starting price puts it closer to the iPhone 16’s $799).
Even then — with nothing but gut feeling to go on here — I’d be surprised if the iPhone 17 Slim goes over the $999 mark. That still makes it markedly pricier than the retiring $899 Plus model, but not to the level predicted — though that would require a shift of the $999 iPhone 16 Pro, of course (again, not impossible, given it has maintained its $999 price point since the Pro line launched five years ago with the iPhone 11 series).
We’ll just have to wait and see how Apple squares its pricing circle when the iPhone 17 family lands in September 2025. But the iPhone SE’s confirmed MSRP may give us a better feel for things in March.
