The iPhone plateau

Discover what's in the big bump introduced at Apple's 'Awe Dropping' event

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When Apple unveiled the iPhone Air, it proudly declared it the thinnest handset the company had ever built.

Measuring just 5.64mm, it shaved more than a millimetre off the iPhone 6's slim 6.9mm profile yet look at it from the side and you'll spot an anomaly. At the top of the iPhone Air is a so-called 'plateau' a posh-sounding name for what is essentially a bump. It's the thickest point of the device, boosting its thickness to 11.32mm, almost double that of the rest of the phone.

Although its presence means some may argue Apple hasn't quite achieved the thinnest iPhone, the plateau could actually point to the future of smartphone design. A plateau is also included on the back of the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Max, again making the handsets thicker at the top than at the bottom. But there are some clear advantages to this design approach, combining practical necessity with thoughtful engineering.

At first, it appeared that the plateau was merely added because there was no other way of slimming down the camera components to fit into such a thin space. After all, large image sensors and cutting-edge lenses require physical depth which is why iPhones have long had a camera bump. But the iPhone Air features a single 48MP Fusion camera with 2x optical-quality zoom rather than multiple lenses, so why is the bump so large - ie, a plateau on this particular model?