In summary
- Apple’s skinny phone to have Pro power
- Not quite as capable
- Galaxy S25 Edge didn’t compromise on performance
The iPhone 17 Air may fail to learn an important lesson from the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge smartphone when it comes to performance.
That lesson being: just because your shiny new phone is unusually skinny, doesn’t mean you can compromise on performance – especially if you’re asking people to pay a premium price.
This relates to fresh claims concerning the performance of Apple’s forthcoming super-slim flagship phone, the iPhone 17 Air.
Leaker Fixed Focus Digital has taken to Weibo with some interesting spec details.
iPhone 17 Air rumours
According to the leaker, Apple’s iPhone 17 Air will run on the same A19 Pro chip as the iPhone 17 Pro. However, it will run with one fewer GPU core. Perhaps the lack of the Pro’s rumoured vapour chamber has something to do with that.
It’s also claimed that the screen and battery won’t be as good as the Pro model, but that’s to be expected.
That processor claim could be viewed as broadly positive. Prior to this report, we had heard that Apple would be fitting the Air with the same plain A19 chip as the regular iPhone 17.
This wouldn’t have been a great look given the high price we’re expecting Apple to charge for its new model.
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
iPhone 17 Air vs Galaxy S25 Edge
However, this still falls short of Samsung’s enviable approach with the Galaxy S25 Edge. We had plenty of problems with Samsung’s slim debut, but performance wasn’t one of them.
The South Korean company fitted the Galaxy S25 Edge out with exactly the same overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite chip as the flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra. There was no compromise here whatsoever, which is an approach we wholeheartedly approve of.
Of course, if Apple can give us a skinny phone that doesn’t have us nervously looking around for a wall socket at the end of a busy day, all will be forgiven.
There’s also the small matter that no one is likely to be able to tell the difference between the performance of the Pro and Air unless they run a benchmark test. This thing is going to be seriously fast, if previous iPhones are anything to go by.
