The iPhone 17 Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim might not be all that thin after all

• A leak suggests both Samsung and Apple have failed at making more energy dense batteries
• The result of this is reportedly that the rumored iPhone 17 Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim won't be as thin as hoped
• This raises the question of whether these 'slim' models will even be worthwhile

Leaks suggest that we’ll see slimmer smartphones from both Apple and Samsung next year, with reports suggesting that a Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim could land in the first half of the year, and an iPhone 17 Air (which could potentially launch as an iPhone 17 Slim or something else altogether) could land in September, alongside the rest of the iPhone 17 series. But now we’re hearing that they might not fully live up to those names.

According to @Jukanlosreve, citing South Korean leaker yeux1122, both Samsung and Apple have failed in their attempts to increase the density of the batteries they were planning to put in these phones through the use of new materials and techniques.

Had they succeeded, they’d have been able to equip these rumored slimline handsets with small yet high-capacity batteries, but as they’ve reportedly failed, @Jukanlosreve says they’ll instead make the phones thicker than initially planned, so that they can still have reasonable battery life.

In the case of the iPhone 17 Air, Apple will apparently now use the same battery technology as its existing phones, and the iPhone 17 Air will be thicker than 6mm. Neither of these leak sources say how thick, but around 6mm is apparently what Apple was previously aiming for.

In the case of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim, Samsung is said to be using different battery technology to that used in its current handsets even though the company reportedly hasn’t seen the results it hoped for, and the phone will apparently be sold in limited quantities.

Is there still any point to these phones?

This begs the question as to whether there’s still much point in Apple and Samsung making these phones, when their key selling point is supposedly that they would be a lot slimmer than the rest of the Samsung Galaxy S25 and iPhone 17 models, if in reality they may not be much slimmer.

We don’t know exactly how thick either phone will be, but for reference the iPhone 16 is 7.8mm thick, so if the iPhone 17 Air is thicker than 6mm as rumored here, it might not be noticeably slimmer than standard iPhones.

Of course, this is all just rumor for now – we don’t even know for sure that these phones really are in the works, let alone that they’ll be thicker than planned. So take all this with a pinch of salt – but this latest leak doesn’t sound promising for anyone who's hoping to get their hands on a slimline phone next year.

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