Apple reportedly considered building the iPhone 17 Air without ports

After reporting in January that Apple is adding an “Air” option to its iPhone lineupBloomberg’s Mark Gurman is offering more details about the upcoming slimmer iPhone.

The iPhone 17 Air will launch this fall, Gurman says — and like the MacBook Air, it will be thinner than standard models, while combining high-end and low-end features. It apparently took a “herculean effort” for Apple engineers to create a skinnier phone with thinner batteries without sacrificing battery life.

Gurman also reports that Apple considered making this the first “completely port-free iPhone,” with all charging done wirelessly and all data syncing accomplished via the cloud.

However, Apple decided not to go this route, at least for now, due in part to concerns about how European regulators — who have mandated that smartphone makers support USB-C connectors — might respond.