The iPhone Air managed to beat the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge to become the slimmest smartphone on the market, though we noted at the time that it’s not the slimmest smartphone we’ve ever seen.
The latest contender on the Android front is the shiny new Motorola Edge 70, which is very slightly thicker than the iPhone Air, but has a much thinner camera bump and compares well in several other ways …
The ultrathin iPhone Air
The iPhone Air is the thinnest iPhone ever produced, a record previously held by the iPhone 6 from way back in 2014. At 5.6mm, it’s also slimmer than any of the Android competition on the market – with one proviso – beating the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge’s 5.8mm.
The proviso is that we’re not counting folding phones which are thinner when unfolded. I think that makes sense because what really matters is the thickness of the phone in your pocket. If you do want to count these, however, then the iPhone Air is beaten by no fewer than seven Android folding phones, the slimmest of them at just 4.2mm.
We also noted that three historical smartphones from 2014 and 2016 were slimmer than the Air.
The new Motorola Edge 70
The latest entrant in the ultra-thin smartphone game is the Motorola Edge 70, shown above.
At 5.99mm thick, it doesn’t quite compete with the iPhone Air. However, the camera bump is less prominent, being much more similar to earlier generations of the iPhone Pro models.
The company also hasn’t compromised on camera capabilities to deliver this thin model, retaining three separate cameras at the rear. Additionally, there’s both Face Unlock and an embedded fingerprint reader in the display with just a punch-hole front camera.
Motorola has also somehow managed to squeeze in a 4800mAh battery, which it claims delivers up to 50 hours of use. That’s around double the claimed battery life of the iPhone Air.
Finally, it comes with the company’s own AI chatbot onboard. Motorola claims that this can understand what’s on your screen, but as Engadget notes, we’ll have to see how well it works in real life.
Obviously, nobody embedded into the Apple ecosystem is going to consider this as an alternative to the iPhone Air, but it is interesting to see what can be done, and will hopefully spur Apple on to even greater things should the form factor survive.
Highlighted accessories
- Official Apple Store on Amazon
- Apple 40W Dynamic Power Adapter for iPhone 17
- Official Apple iPhone Air cases and bumpers
- iPhone Air MagSafe Battery
- Official iPhone Air case
- Official iPhone 17 cases
- Official iPhone 17 Pro cases and Pro Max cases
Image: 9to5Mac/Motorola
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