The Apple iPhone Air promises the firm's advanced screen and audio tech in a thinner body

Apple has announced the launch of its thinnest smartphone yet – the iPhone Air.

Measuring in at 5.6mm wide with a 6.5-inch OLED display, the Air is being marketed as Apple's thinnest to date. Despite this it has some very cutting edge specifications, including the same 3000 nits of brightness as the new iPhone 17 it was unveiled alongside.

That's a 1000 nit increase on the older iPhone 16's peak brightness that should make it much better for outdoor movie viewing and potentially boost HDR performance.

Apple claims the Air's "exceptionally light" design is achievable thanks to the addition of titanium frame, which has previously only been used in the Pro range. Apple also note that it is using 80 per cent recycled titanium which is the highest percentage for the brand so far.

New Ceramic Shield 2 is also in play which provides improved antireflection, scratch resistance, and significantly better crack resistance for the rear glass than the previous Ceramic Shield according to Apple.

Under the hood of the iPhone Air is the A19 Pro chip which Apple says is the "fastest CPU in any smartphone." The company says this provides three times the computing power of the previous A18 Pro chip, featuring a 6-core CPU for improved bandwidth.

AI is, of course, getting a bigger push with this thin model. Apple has built neural accelerators into each GPU core which the company says provides "MacBook Pro levels of compute in an iPhone."

On top of that, the N1 Apple-designed chip brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 connectivity to the phone. There's also a new modem design in the form of the C1X, which Apple says is up to two times faster than the previous iteration. So streaming hi-res music shouldn't be beyond it, even if Apple's not given any detail on specific audio improvements to the phone.

It comes in four colour options: Space Black, Cloud White, Light Gold and Sky Blue.

But what about the camera? Well, the iPhone Air features a 48MP fusion camera system including a 2x Telephoto system. Apple says this is to adds to the sensor's ability to capture ultra-sharp images and improve low-light performance.

It is capable of capturing 4K Dolby Vision video, complete with a 18MP front Centre Stage camera so you don't need to rotate your camera to snap a landscape selfie.

There's also a Dual Capture feature which uses the front and back cameras at once, creating an overall image that looks reminiscent of the social media app BeReal.

It's worth noting that this new iPhone model does not feature a SIM port, and is moving over completely to eSIM.

The battery life has an "all-day" battery life according to Apple, with up to 40 hours of video playback.

That all sounds exciting, but there is the all-important question of how much this new iPhone will set you back. Apple announced it will be available for $999, but has yet to confirm how much this would be in the UK or Australia. If we were to convert that directly, however, it would come to about £740 / AU$1518.

You can pre-order it from this Friday with availability from 19 September.

We're yet to get the iPhone Air in our test room to see how it performs, especially when it comes to video playback and listening to music, but stay tuned for our full review coming soon.

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