Apple’s iPhone 17 Air Chinese Variant Revealed to Support eSIM; Next Generation of Chinese Flagships May Also Bring eSIM Support
The Cupertino-based tech maker – Apple this year in 2025 is revealed to bring out a slim form factor device under its iPhone 17 series, and previous updates have already suggested that it will not be featuring a card tray due to its slim design. A new update from a Chinese tipster has pointed out that a certain network operator in China is testing iPhone eSIM internally, while the next generation of flagship smartphones from Chinese smartphone makers this year are also said to adopt eSIM support on them.
Read more about the update below.
Chinese Operator Testing iPhone eSIM?
Starting with the iPhone XR and iPhone XS models of 2018, Apple has been making its iPhone models with eSIM support. While in the US market currently no iPhones are being made available with physical SIM card support (from iPhone 14 series onward), there are regions were only physical SIM card versions have been made available and mainland China is one such area were eSIM versions of iPhones haven’t been introduced. Well, this will most probably be changing this year with the next iPhone 17 series.
As mentioned above, it was earlier reported that Apple won’t be offering a physical SIM card version for its upcoming iPhone 17 Slim, and Chinese consumers will also be receiving eSIM variants this time. Tipster Digital Chat Station in a new Weibo post has now shared that a certain operator in China has already started testing iPhone eSIM internally, and the Chinese version is also expected to bring commercial eSIM capability in the country.
Additionally the tipster’s Weibo update points to one more key information, Chinese flagships that are expected to hit the market this year are also believed to be testing eSIM capability. Also to add, top 5 smartphone makers in China are mentioned to bring out ultra slim form factor devices too, and eSIM support may be successfully implemented in these upcoming Chinese flagships, as per the tipster.
Possibly we may get to hear more about this in the coming months, once the next Chinese flagships start to appear on certification platforms. About the iPhone 17 Air, it is expected to feature the same length, width, screen size, and bezels as of the iPhone 17 Pro Max model, but with a reduced thickness of only 5.501 mm.
You may check out everything we have covered so far about the iPhone 17 series here.
