The iPhone Air is thinner than these 17 very thin things

Macworld

We knew it was coming, but it still blew our socks off. At the “Awe Dropping” press event today, Apple announced the iPhone Air, its ultra-slim flagship smartphone, which is just 5.6mm thick. It’s the thinnest iPhone ever (comfortably beating a record held by the iPhone 6 since 2014) but it doesn’t just put Apple’s own products in the shade. Here are 17 things, ranging from tech products to foodstuffs, which look positively obese next to the iPhone Air.

Original iPod (19.8mm)

The first iPod was more than three and a half times the thickness of the iPhone Air. It needed to be thick to hold all those songs!

Apple Newton MessagePad (19mm)

Apple’s original PDA went on sale in 1993. Later models were even bigger.

A standard deck of cards (about 16.5mm)

That’s without the box and jokers. The iPhone Air is about the same thickness as just 18 playing cards.

iPhone 3G (12.3mm)

The thickest ever iPhone, perhaps surprisingly, wasn’t the first model, which was 11.6mm. It was the second (3G) and third (3GS) models, which each measured 12.3mm.

Apple Watch Series 11 (9.7mm)

The newly announced Series 11 is Apple’s thinnest ever smartwatch. (Or joint-thinnest. Last year’s Series 10 was also 9.7mm.) At the other end of the scale, the Apple Watch Ultra 1 and 2 are both 14.4mm thick, and the new Ultra 3 is a comparatively svelte 12mm.




Apple

A ginger nut biscuit (8mm)

Yum.

Extremely thin sliced bread (8mm)

Warburtons Soft Thick White, which I favor, has 14mm slices, but going for a thin option should get you down to roughly 10mm. Something extreme like Pepperidge Farm Very Thin White Bread could push that to around 8mm, but you can’t go much further before it becomes translucent. And now I fancy a sandwich.

iPhone 16e (7.8mm)

The slimmest models from Apple’s last generation were the iPhone 16e, 16, and 16 Plus, all of which measured a comparatively chubby 7.8mm. That means the Air is 28 percent slimmer.




Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Google Pixel 2 (7.8mm)

The thinnest ever Pixel phone came out in 2017.

Original iPad Air (7.5mm)

It seemed so slender when it came out in 2013.

A pencil (7mm)

Although it’s more of a diameter, I suppose.

iPhone 6 (6.9mm)

Weirdly, the thinnest iPhone until the Air came along was the iPhone 6 from way back in 2014. Apple hasn’t shown much interest in the past decade in making a properly thin phone… until now.




Foundry

Sony Xperia Z Ultra (6.5mm)

At the time (2013) this was the world’s thinnest Full HD phone.

Huawei Ascend P6 (6.18mm)

When it was announced, also in 2013, Huawei said this was the world’s thinnest smartphone.

The slimmest paperback I could find (6mm)

Single Spies by Alan Bennett is only 95 pages long, but it looks like War and Peace next to the iPhone Air.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge (5.8mm)

Samsung’s slimmest smartphone measures 5.8mm thick.




Disgustingly thick: Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge.Anyron Copeman / Foundry

Tecno Spark Slim (5.75mm)

Shown off at MWC 2025, the Spark Slim was claimed at the time to be the thinnest smartphone in the world (although that’s debatable–see below). It’s just a concept; the Chinese makers have no plans to bring it to market.

…and 5 that are even thinner

The iPhone Air is thin. Really thin. But believe it or not, it’s not the thinnest smartphone (or Apple device) ever made.

Motorola Moto Z (5.2mm)

Some people have forgotten this exceptionally slender device, possibly because it came out back in 2016.

13-inch M4 iPad Pro (5.1 mm)

And it still doesn’t seem to be affected by Bendgate.

Oppo R5 (4.9 mm)

This came out in 2014, the same year as the iPhone 6.

vivo X5Max (4.8mm)

The thinnest non-folding phone I’ve been able to find, at a frankly ludicrous 4.8mm, also came out in 2014! What a year for thin phones.

Multiple folding phones (as low as 4.2mm)

In the list above I’ve ignored folding phones, which can be thinner (in some cases considerably thinner) when unfolded. The Honor Magic V5 and the Oppo Find N5, for example, are each just 4.2mm thick when “open.” But I don’t think this is a fair comparison because the user’s main experience of them (in terms of portability) is when they’re closed, and twice the thickness.

Read all about Apple’s slim new phone (and the other new handsets) in our iPhone 17 news hub.