July 10, 2025, 3:05 pm | Read time: 3 minutes

iPhone 12 and 13 mini models didn’t perform well, and the 14, 15, and 16 Plus also fell short of Apple’s expectations. To boost disappointing iPhone sales, the company is trying something new: the iPhone 17 Air. However, if the smartphone looks as the leaks suggest, Apple may face challenges selling the device.

Design of the iPhone 17 Air Appears in Videos

TECHBOOK has already extensively reported on the iPhone 17 Air. About the small battery, which, paired with a giant display, means miserable runtimes. About the ultra-slim casing, making the device–similar to the MacBook Air–likely the thinnest iPhone ever. We’ve also discussed the camera bar, which is supposed to look like the one on the Google Pixel 9.

Also interesting: Google mocks leaked iPhone 17 in ad

We also covered the videos with dummy units of the iPhone 17 Air. But while watching a hands-on by leaker Majin Bu with a current dummy, one detail particularly caught my attention: Apple might be making a huge mistake with the camera. I really hope the smartphone doesn’t look like this:

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iPhone Cameras Are Getting Bigger

A little history lesson. In earlier iPhones up to the SE of 2016, the camera was flush with the casing. But with first flatter casings and then increasingly powerful camera hardware, the lenses steadily protruded beyond the edge. The iPhone 6 was the first to have a camera ring that extended beyond the casing. With the iPhone 11 Pro and the introduction of the triple camera, an “island” was added under the rings of the three lenses. Rings and islands have continued to grow, so that the cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro Max now protrude several millimeters from the casing. Officially, Apple states a casing depth of 8.25 mm–including the camera, it’s more like 13 mm.

The idea of a camera bar, as we know it from the Google Pixel 6 and newer, is to hide the protruding lenses in a flat surface. Apparently, the iPhone 17 Air is supposed to have a camera bar–yet the lens will still protrude further from it.

More on the topic

Design Leaks First Pictures of the iPhone 17 Pro! Smartphone Looks Completely Different

Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max to Feature the Most Powerful Battery Ever

Coming This Fall Apple Logo Changes on iPhone 17 Pro: What It Means

Apple Needs to Find a Better Solution

In my view, this completely misses the point. Why have a bar that spans the entire width of the back of the casing if the camera lens is still not flush within it? I understand that it’s challenging to integrate the same 48-megapixel camera as in the other iPhone 17 models into a 6 mm thin casing. Samsung also had to integrate a combination of protruding lenses and an island for the 5.8 mm thin Galaxy S25 Edge (which is also used in the Fold devices). However, the S25 Edge also has two cameras–the iPhone 17 Air only one.

So far, the iPhone had a subtle solution to integrate powerful camera hardware–not perfect, but at least not too obtrusive. I can’t say the same for the camera in the iPhone 17 Air. While I don’t fundamentally consider the new design with a camera bar to be flawed, Apple needs to find a way to integrate the camera so that it doesn’t protrude even further from the bar than the bar itself already stands out from the casing. Considering the insane $30 billion the company spent on research and development in 2024 alone (source: Statista), the current design seems almost laughable to me.