Apple will be bringing back a battery-case accessory for its planned iPhone 17 Air to help give the super-slim model all-day battery life.
While the novelty of a super-thin, super-light iPhone is intended to encourage upgrades from older models, the slim design necessitates a smaller battery, and so reduced battery time.
Apple intends to offset this disadvantage by offering an iPhone 17 Air (or iPhone 17 Slim) case that adds its own battery pack, according to a new report from The Information. Adding a thicker battery case would of course undo some of the benefit of a slimmer iPhone, but it’s an option that will restore longer battery life.
Battery cases are not new — Apple itself released one for the iPhone 6 and 6s back in 2015. Apple ceased selling a battery case once it released the MagSafe Battery Pack in 2021.
A criticism of both the battery case and its MagSafe successor was that it added bulk to the iPhone. The reported new battery case for the slim model would inevitably do the same, but reportedly Apple believes it’s necessary.
That’s because Apple’s own internal testing of the new model suggests that only between 60% and 70% of users will still get a full day’s use of the slimmer, lighter iPhone Air.
That does mean a majority of iPhone 17 Air users will not need to recharge during the day. However, with current iPhone models, it’s claimed that this compares poorly to the 80% to even 90% of users who get a full day from a single charge.
There is no information about what thickness the case would add. But speculation and dummy models have suggested that the iPhone 17 Air could be as thin as 5.5 millimeters, or 0.2 inches in thickness.
This compares to the 7.8mm, or 0.3 inches depth of the iPhone 16.
The smaller battery is just one of the compromises that the iPhone 17 Air is expected to feature. It’s expected that there will only be one rear camera lens, for instance, and only a single speaker.
However, the forthcoming iPhone 17 lineup, expected this fall, will also benefit from other new technologies. Apple is said to be improving memory bandwidth for better processing power, and the entire lineup is expected to jump to a standard 12GB of RAM, among other improvements.
