Apple's supply chain will be challenged to produce the rumored iPhone 17 Slim. Here's what features the company is rumored to jam into the thinnest iPhone yet.
The iPhone 17 Slim is expected to form part of the next batch of flagship launches in fall 2025. To prepare for that launch, Apple's supply chain is starting to perform the initial tasks required to actually manufacture it.
According to supply chain sources of DigiTimes, the iPhone 17 Slim or Air has moved to the New Product Introduction (NPI) phase of manufacturing.
The NPI process is an early phase, where assembly partners check Apple's design and determine ways that they can construct what's required in a production line. Due to the sheer volume of iPhones made each year, this is an important time to perfect the actual construction process.
The iPhone 17 Slim is arriving at this point slightly late versus others in the same generation. In late October, it was reported that a factory in India started the NPI process for the iPhone 17, with Pro models continuing in China.
While DigiTimes isn't necessarily that accurate when it comes to product features, it does tend to fare well with supply chain rumors and leaks. Given the typical timing of Apple's production schedules, the iPhone 17 Slim NPI claim seems quite plausible.
iPhone 17 Slim - Ultra-thin design & advanced tech are a complicated challenge
The NPI process is usually a puzzle manufacturers have to solve, but the iPhone 17 Slim could be tougher than usual. The ultra-thin design expected to be about 6 millimeters thick leaves less room than usual to hold all of the components Apple requires.
This has already resulted in some design changes, including having to lose the SIM tray completely, because it's simply too thin to fit one in. This is somewhat unsurprising, as Apple has already moved to an eSIM-only approach in the United States, which it could eventually roll out into other countries.
The battery has been a supposed issue, with expectations that a design with a new substrate which can be made thin enough won't be possible until 2025.
A thinner battery in a more constrained space than usual introduces the problem of physical strength, since there will be less physical material in use. It will also affect the capacity of the battery, simply because it will be occupy less internal volume than other designs. This has been practically proven by the iPhone mini designs having notably shorter battery life than the contemporaneous mainline and Pro models.
The rear camera bump is also an element facing change, with rumors in December claiming it will use a horizontal bar design high on the back to hold multiple cameras. The radical redesign of the camera is questionable, considering Apple's aims for thinness and positioning of other components.
This includes affecting how the iPhone 17 Slim has to be held to capture Spatial Video, a format used to produce video viewable on the Apple Vision Pro. Currently, this entails holding an iPhone in landscape orientation, but a bar design could force holding it in portrait.
Since Spatial Video uses stereoscopic image capture, it needs the two sensors to be relatively far apart for the effect to work. Moving to a portrait orientation could limit how much space is available to separate the two sensors for that purpose.
The positioning of the rumored camera bar was also questionable when considering the front TrueDepth camera array. The rear cameras would be placed in the same physical space as the front camera system, making it improbable to be implemented that way.
One analyst also believes that Apple could reduce the camera count to just one 48-megapixel rear sensor and the front 24-megapixel TrueDepth camera for Face ID.
With one high-resolution camera, Apple could still offer consumers a level of optical zoom, using the cropping trick employed by current-gen iPhones to fake a second camera sensor.
Expectations also include the use of a 6.6-inch display, the A19 chip using a 3-nanometer process, and 8GB of memory, with the chip and memory probably being adopted by the iPhone 17 as well.
