Forget the iPhone Air: Slim Chinese flagships to come with giant batteries and telephoto cameras

The iPhone Air, launched by Apple last week, was just the latest highlight in a development that began months ago with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. Thin smartphones are intended to appeal to new groups of buyers and, at least for Apple, form the basis for entirely new models in the coming years. However, at least with the first iPhone Air, a relatively large number of compromises have to be made. Apple promises battery life similar to that of the iPhone 16 Plus, but the first iPhone Air is unlikely to last several days on single charge, and with a single camera, it is also significantly less equipped than the iPhone 17 Pro. 

Samsung officially offers one more camera and a larger 3,900 mAh battery, but here too the thin case comes at the expense of raw battery capacity and a telephoto camera - limitations that are not expected from the upcoming Chinese smartphones. According to Chinese leaker Digital Chat Station via Weibo, the top five Chinese smartphone manufacturers are working on ultra-thin and lightweight flagship models that, like their Apple and Samsung counterparts, will be between 5 and 6 mm thin but will still have a 6,000 mAh battery on board.

The flagship cameras equipped with next-gen chipsets such as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 or the Mediatek Dimensity 9500 are also all set to hit the market with telephoto cameras, apparently in the first half of 2026. The top five in China are currently Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Honor. Whether their smartphones will officially launch globally in 2026 will likely depend heavily on the demand for the iPhone Air, which, according to media reports, is currently blocked in China due to its purely eSIM nature.