When pre-event rumors claimed that the iPhone 17 series would have a new horizontal camera bar, I admit that I was concerned. At the time, all we had were renders and supposed CAD designs, with the assumption that the camera bar’s purpose was to bulk up the camera array to make the rest of the phone seem even thinner.
As it turns out, I was completely wrong.
But as Tim Cook reminded everyone at the ‘Awe Dropping’ event on Tuesday, Apple is the company of “design is how it works,” where a good design is one that works seamlessly and enriches your life, not just one that is visually appealing but devoid of functionality. As Apple demonstrated, the iPhone Air’s and 17 Pro’s camera “plateau” isn’t just a camera bar. Rather, it houses extra components used to bolster the phone’s performance, and putting these things inside a plateau means the majority of the phone can stay thin while maintaining solid battery life. It provides much more than an unusual appearance, it actually brings tangible benefits to your device.
Beyond the relief that Apple hasn’t lost its design mind just yet (after a certain Liquid Glass toggle almost pushed me over the edge), it’s hard not to dream about where Apple might take the plateau in the future. Because the developments that have come about thanks to it might have applications beyond the iPhone Air – and we could see them make a splash within the next year or so.
A sign of things to come
While the plateau might be a relatively small part of the latest iPhones, it could have an outsized impact on upcoming Apple products. In fact, it could be the key to some of Apple’s most groundbreaking future devices.
In the iPhone Air, the extra raised space that comprises the plateau is now used to house not only the cameras but also chips and various key modules used by the iPhone. That gives a huge amount of extra space in the main body for a larger battery. That helps it last a full day while slimming down its form factor to an incredible degree, making it the thinnest iPhone that Apple has ever released and one of the thinnest smartphones ever.
Apple has engineered the iPhone Air to fit most of the phone’s important parts in the camera bar.
Apple
Furthermore, the plateau is useful for dissipating high temperatures thanks to its extra surface area, which acts as a heatsink that’s integrated into the iPhone’s body. That also benefits the battery, as heat can gnaw away at your device’s battery life and degrade it over time.
Better battery performance in an ultra-thin device is useful in all sorts of ways, but it’s particularly relevant to what Apple has up its sleeve. On the most basic level, it allows you to use your device for longer, but it will also enable Apple to deploy more powerful chips in the future, taking its devices’ capabilities to impressive new levels.
And there’s one future device where this could really change the game: the folding iPhone.
According to the rumor mill, this phone, like other folding phones, will come with two displays: one on the outside, then a much larger internal one that folds out to the size of a small iPad. All those screens are going to require a significant amount of battery power, but with a plateau, Apple can free up as much interior space as possible for extra battery.
Combined with hyper-efficient Apple silicon chips, that could give the foldable iPhone an edge over the competition, something it will surely need given how long Apple’s rivals have had to perfect their own foldables.
Folding phones like the Pixel Fold have a big lead, but there are signs that Apple’s folding iPhone is coming soon.
Evleaks
Miniature marvels
It’s not just iPhones that could feel the benefits of the plateau: we could even see its influence felt in Apple’s top-secret AR glasses project.
Squeezing a camera, various Apple silicon modules, a speaker and more into the plateau might have been achieved thanks to some high-grade engineering work on Apple’s part. We don’t know for sure what went into the process, but it certainly suggests Apple is shrinking and otherwise squeezing components given how densely packed iPhone internals already are. If that’s the case, Apple could take the lessons it’s learned in the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 series and bring them to its upcoming smart glasses.
Apple’s plateau could one day power its first Vision Pro glasses.
Dall-E/Petter Ahrnstedt
Knowing what we do about Apple, it’s going to want these glasses to be the best in the industry, and that means powerful performance that simultaneously brings long-lasting battery life. In order to achieve that, Apple is going to need tiny, performant components that don’t take up a lot of space, as well as dense, efficient batteries that can go the distance.
Engineering the iPhone Air has given Apple plenty of experience with both. It’s just the latest example of Apple’s long-running engineering expertise, which has seen it fit increasingly dense collections of components into hardware that barely changes shape.
Apple’s AR glasses are some way off in the future, as is the foldable iPhone, so we’ll have to wait to see those innovations in action. But for now, we’re already feeling the benefits of the iPhone’s plateau in its latest range of iPhones. With any luck, those advances will extend into Apple’s other products before too long.
