There won’t be an iPhone 17 Plus and the “ultra-thin” iPhone won’t replace the model that’s due to disappear, nor the other models but it will be an experiment To push iPhone into new areas. Ming Chi Kuo surprised with his latest Medium post in which he attempts to push the outlook beyond the show at the end of 2025, to the “mythical” year 2026 where many things could change.
There are many indicators that 2026 should be a turning point year. The launch of the iPhone 17 will bring with it the maturation of the AI project (which this year looks like an experiment) and new redesigned smartphones. But also, Kuo now tells us, the end of the iPhone “Plus” project.
Born to replace the iPhone mini (the latest iPhone 13 mini model, which many regret), iPhone Plus will sell very little So much so, the analyst says, that it represents only 5-10% of consumer choices. “That means the standard iPhone and two iPhone Pros are enough and make the iPhone Plus redundant.”
In practice, the iPhone Plus, which debuted with the iPhone 14 series, will end up like the iPhone mini, surviving for only one year (assuming there is an iPhone 16 Plus…).
Coinciding with the end of the iPhone Plus, Kuo says,The aforementioned “thin” iPhone will be launched. But according to the analyst, it will not replace the iPhone 17 Pro Max (as was supposed) or the iPhone 17 Plus: “It is an experiment – says Kuo – to try to explore a new design horizon, beyond the current models.”
Kuo then shows some specs of the “slim” iPhone.
- Screen is approximately 6.6 inches.
- 2,740 x 1,260 pixels resolution (iPhone 15 Pro Max goes up to 2,778 x 1,284)
- A19 chip processor (not A19 Pro)
- Aluminum and titanium edge (less titanium than Pro, less aluminum than iPhone 17)
- Apple 5G processor
- A single room
All this leaves us to imagine what if? Coe forecast They will really get a response. It won’t be a revolutionary phone. In hardware specifications But what will focus everything on is the design. Something that wants to attract a new audience that cares more about aspects like design, thickness and weight than performance, whether it’s the processor or the cameras.
It’s hard to say whether Kuo is right, but Apple’s attempt (which also seems intentional, according to another great prophet of Apple’s future, Mark Gurman, to adopt the thin rule) would certainly make sense in a context where the development of the components they pulled off Smartphone sales for years seem to have reached a point of progress that makes it very difficult to use their evolution to sell more devices.
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