Adrian Mühlroth

July 10, 2025, 3:05 pm | Read time: 4 minutes

The iPhone 17 Air is Apple’s attempt to offer customers something novel, aiming to impress with its extraordinary design. “Air” stands for its lightweight and slim casing–features that set the device apart from other smartphones. Leakers are now relatively certain about the new model’s appearance and the design compromises it requires. It mainly brings technical limitations, but for me, one visual detail is particularly problematic.

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 poor battery life. About the ultra-slim casing, making the device–similar to the MacBook Air–the thinnest iPhone ever. We’ve also discussed the camera bar, which is supposed to look like the Google Pixel 9.

Also interesting: Google mocks leaked iPhone 17 in commercial

We’ve 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 eye: Apple might be making a huge mistake with the camera. I really hope the smartphone doesn’t look like this:

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Opinion Thin iPhone, Thick Price! Why the iPhone Air Doesn’t Convince Me

iPhone Cameras Keep 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 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 from it.

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 casing if the camera lens still isn’t flush within it? I understand 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 incorporate 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 has 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.