The iPhone 17 family is rumored to be launching on September 9. Ahead of that, there have been countless rumors telling us that the iPhone 17 Air will replace the iPhone 16 Plus in Apple’s roster, due to the latter’s lackluster sales performance.
But this leaves a mystery regarding which chipset the Air will go with. Will it be a Pro SoC or not? Apple’s Pro iPhones obviously use the Pro chipset, but the Air is not a Pro, so will it have the same chip as the vanilla iPhone 17? A new rumor out of China says no to that, revealing that in fact the Air will use the A19 Pro SoC.
But there’s a small catch. It won’t be exactly the same A19 Pro chip that will feature in the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Instead, the Air’s version will have a lesser GPU, with one less core. That’s the only difference. So while the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max’s A19 Pro will come with six GPU cores, the iPhone 17 Air’s will have just five.
The iPhone 17 Air’s screen will also reportedly not be quite at the level of the iPhone 17 Pro’s, according to the same source. The Air is now rumored to be 5.65mm to 5.7mm thick.
This rumor contradicts a previous one from July, which claimed the iPhone 17 Air would be equipped with the A19 chip just like the iPhone 17. Obviously, we can’t be sure which one is accurate.
Source (in Chinese)