Battery problems threaten the iPhone Slim and iPhone Fold
A new rumor claims that both Apple and Samsung are having difficulty making thinner batteries, thereby limiting just how thin phones like the expected iPhone 17 Slim can be.
Renders of what the iPhone 17 Slim could look like
What's currently rumored to be called the iPhone 17 Slim is believed to be an iPhone with a 6.6-inch screen, and to be significantly thinner than regular iPhones. Just how thin has not been known, but a new rumor says battery problems may mean it can be no less than 6mm.
The rumor comes from yeux1122, who has a mixed track record -- most recently claiming the Apple Ring project is still on, and regularly if erroneously claiming that there will be a 2TB version of the Pro iPhone models.
"[The] supply of new internal substrates will not be possible next year," writes yeux1122 in his or her blog (in translation). "It was expected that the new substrate would be thinner and secure more batteries, but due to the unadoption of the new substrate, the slim model in the industry is around 6mm."
If correct, a 6mm iPhone 17 Slim would compare to the current iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max's 8.25mm. The current iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are each 7.8mm thick.
It's likely that a difference of 2.25mm or 1.8mm will be noticeable, but it's not known how much slimmer Apple had been aiming to achieve.
According to yeux1122, Samsung is facing the same difficulty with its plans for a slimmer phone.
The rumors of an iPhone 17 Slim go back to October 2023, and a report by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. At the time, the report claimed that Apple was working to make its future iPhone mainboards using resin coated copper (RCC), which can reduce the thickness of the board.
Kuo's report also said that RCC was fragile and, at the time, unable to pass drop tests.
As well as being intended for an expected iPhone 17 Slim, though, the thinness has been believed to be a step toward Apple finally releasing an iPhone Fold. Such a folding iPhone would benefit from being slimmer, since folding obviously then doubles the width.
Rumor Score: Possible
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https://www.wired.com/review/honor-magic-v3/
https://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Huawei-Mate-XT-Preview-Heres-to-the-crazy-ones_id6594#battery
Folding phones have a reason to be thin. I'm not sure that making a regular phone thinner would achieve much as phones are already thin enough.
Notably, the iPod touch (6th generation) was 6.1mm thin making the battery very small. Apple intentionally underclocked the A8 SoC to decrease power consumption and thus increase battery life for this device. Even then, the battery performance still sucked (I own one of these iPod touches). It was fine as a music player playing local audio files but any task that required more CPU cycles quickly drained the battery (video playback, web browsing, etc.).
There are plenty of other instances of Apple sacrificing battery performance in the interest of slimness. The MacBook Air 2017 was another (I owned one of these for a couple of years).
It's not like they're discovering for the first time that thin batteries mean less device time.
The iPhone Fold isn't an imminent product. They're likely just experimenting with the technology to understand its strengths and weaknesses (there are lot of the latter). Apple does this (prototype concepts) without the intention of quickly taking it to market. Apple Silicon M-series SoCs probably went 10+ years of covert development before it was announced in 2020. Apple admitted that they were developing a tablet before they pivoted efforts to the handset that would become the iPhone.
In short, battery problems have influenced all Apple products powered by batteries, not just the mythical "iPhone Slim" and "iPhone Fold."
Even if you do not have usage case for increased battery performance, most younger users do. How many of them do you see walking around with their smartphones connected to a battery bank? Especially if they are traveling. And it's not like WiFi or cellular radio chipsets run without power. If you're streaming video, you are chewing up a lot of battery even if you are just passively viewing. The world has adopted new use cases for their smartphones that you did not.
I will point out that the mobile gaming category earns way more revenue than consoles and PC gaming. This is not new, this has been the case years before the pandemic. So it's not just a "fad" either.
I love my iPhone 12 mini but I'm certainly not a typical smartphone user (I simply don't use any of phones that much). But I've always favored the smaller sizes going all the way back to the iPhone 4S.
Actually 1.35mm is a very substantial difference. If you put two metal slabs of different thickness side by side on a table, you can easily tell the difference. Same with a sheet of paper. And yes, some people are more sensitive/observant than others. You'd probably lose the bar bet 95% of the time.
And this isn't just specific to personal technology devices.
Anyone who has ever threaded a needle knows that a 1.35mm difference is huge. So yeah, for centuries... Just go to any sewing or crafts shop and look at needles. They are different sizes, in the tenths (maybe hundredths) of millimeters. You may not be accustomed to such tolerances but many people on this planet deal with such things on a daily basis. Printers, seamstresses, pastry cooks, carpenters, et al.
Do you know what a 1.35mm gap on a dovetail joint looks like? It looks like amateur hour, like high school shop class.
And for a boat 1.35mm might be the difference between seaworthiness or an expensive, time consuming land sculpture. Or a puddle of water under your kitchen sink every time you run the faucet.
And go ahead, I dare you to try to make tiny origami cranes out of a standard manila folder. Or a paper airplane from tissue paper.
It's why heavy duty aluminum foil is a distinctly different product from regular consumer-grade aluminum foil.
Thank God there are people on this planet who have higher standards of manufacturing tolerances than you.