The iPhone Air Needs to Be Experienced, and Gives Apple Experience for the Future
At Apple’s latest iPhone/Watch/AirPods Pro extravaganza, the only truly new product introduced is the iPhone Air. At $1000 - $1400 with a 6.5” display, the iPhone Air replaces the iPhone Plus in the lineup. Apple sent over an iPhone Air review unit, along with an iPhone 17 Pro, and I have now had it long enough to draw some conclusions. I’ll skip specs and construction details because they have been well covered elsewhere.
The iPhone Air is not a "specs" device; you absolutely need to experience it. Thin/light/dense devices feel great to use, but they generate an emotional response that cannot be conveyed by watching an Apple keynote or a YouTube video. This also applies to Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge and even more to the Galaxy Z Fold7.
Battery life is fine! If iPhone Air buyers are coming from any iPhone from two or more years ago, they will get better battery life on this phone than their current one.
Apple stuffed most of the iPhone Air full of battery, but it noted that you can always slap on a MagSafe battery to get through long or intense use days. There is no contradiction here: my iPhone 16 Pro made it through a normal workday with 25% battery left, but on travel days I always needed to carry an external battery, and that phone was not designed specifically to be extra thin. The no-name MagSafe battery I had in my battery drawer worked with the iPhone Air without incident; consumers will not necessarily need to buy Apple's $100 iPhone Air-specific model.
The iPhone Air's A19 Pro silicon throttles down for heat management. Maybe this will matter in a few years, but for now, there isn't much you're going to do on an iPhone Air where you'd even notice. Performance is not an issue.
The camera is great in all light conditions, and the newly upgraded selfie camera is even better because the improvements over past models are obvious. For my personal use, I don't miss the rear ultra-wide. I do miss the rear telephoto, which I use when covering events.
I'm sure that someone will be able to find a scenario where Qualcomm's modem outperforms Apple's C1x modem, but I didn't notice anything obvious on AT&T's network*.
If you drop the iPhone Air onto a hard surface, at the right angle, without a case, you might crack the display, like any other phone. However, you will not bend or break it unless you put it in a vise, apply 200lbs of pressure, and post it as engagement bait on social media. This is an extremely durable phone.
The single speaker is weak. That may be the biggest tradeoff for the form factor.
Personally, my biggest issue with the iPhone Air is the fact that it is still a tall, wide phone. My hands prefer smaller/narrower phones, even if they are thicker. However, most people prefer larger phones, and unless they need one of the other two cameras or prioritize battery life above all else, they really should go to an Apple Store and at least get hands-on with the iPhone Air before going Pro Max.
Thin (Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge), Thinner (iPhone Air), Thinnest (Moto Z, 2016). All are at least 1mm thicker than an open Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7
Nonetheless, I expect the iPhone Air is going to be a relatively low volume device. Consumers will split between the less expensive iPhone 17 and the much more expensive iPhone 17 Pro Max, which has the full array of cameras and is the first iPhone with a genuinely large physical battery inside. Early adopters I have talked to are all either diehard Pro users or were concerned with unfounded battery life and durability issues. We’ll see if mainstream consumers read the reviews and order the iPhone Air in large numbers, but I don’t expect them to.
Apple anticipated this outcome by not giving the iPhone Air a number as part of its name; that could mean the Air is a one-off, or that it gets updated on a longer refresh cycle like the SE. That doesn't mean the iPhone Air doesn't serve a purpose. First, I expect that people who do buy an iPhone Air will absolutely love it, while the iPhone Plus it replaced was merely a device that filled a price/size hole in Apple's line. However, even if it fails to sell as well as other iPhones, Apple needs to test its newest C1x modem in the real world, and Apple appears to be optimizing its modems for power efficiency, making the iPhone Air an ideal test bed. Apple is also now seeing real competition in China at the high end with foldables, and the iPhone Air is also an opportunity to test super-thin design in the real world ahead of any potential foldables in 2026 or 2027.
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*AT&T Analyst Relations was first to respond to my request with the longest duration on the eSIM. Thanks!