If the M5 generation gets this GPU upgrade, which I don't see why not, then the era of viable local LLM inferencing is upon us.
That's the most exciting thing from this Apple's event in my opinion.
PS. I also like the idea of the ultra thin iPhone Air, the 2x better noise cancellation and live translation of Airpods 3, high blood pressure detection of the new Watch, and the bold sexy orange color of the iPhone 17 Pro. Overall, this is as good as it gets for incremental updates in Apple's ecosystem in a while.
Luckily they added the blood pressure check for when you get too excited about the color orange.
My current (Android) phone is from 2020 and I have bought three cases for it because the previous ones got wear and tear. The phone inside still looks brand new.
But yeah, the trend of ultra-thin phones is silly.
edit: It was only the Pros and up which had titanium bodies. The 17s are all aluminum.
I'm not a chemist, but I looked into this years back when I was wondering why everything titanium is offered in the same couple of colors. Personally, I like the plain gray.
[0] https://wisensemachining.com/titanium-anodizing-guide/
[1] https://www.snowpeak.com/collections/cups/products/ti-single...
> I looked into this years back when I was wondering why everything titanium is offered in the same couple of colors
I wondered the same thing, but never hit that threshold of urgency to actually look into it!
The Sage Air has my eye. Would match my AirPods Max. But that orange pro is also calling.
The materials used is a factor: the last few iPhones were built with aluminum (iPhone 16), titanium (iPhone 16 Pro) and stainless steel (iPhone 13 Pro).
Not all colors work with all materials; my understanding is titanium is particularly bad for bright colors. The colors for the iPhone Pro models have been pretty drab--not this year.
Which is a very powerful feature for anyone who likes security or finding bugs in their code. Or other people's code. Even if you didn't really want to find them.
https://www.apple.com/watch/compare/?modelList=watch-series-...
In the past few weeks the oxymeter feature was enabled by a firmware update on series 10. Measurements are done on the watch, results are only reported on a phone.
As of September 9, 2025, hypertension notifications are currently under FDA review and expected to be cleared this month, with availability on Apple Watch Series 9 and later and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later. The feature is not intended for use by people under 22 years old, those who have been previously diagnosed with hypertension, or pregnant persons.
Sounds a bit ironic but I guess it's for legal reasons.
my guess is this is more like the heart irregularities feature: it’s for the first diagnosis. (a relative of mine actually got diagnosed that way)
The color line up reminds me of the au MEDIA SKIN phones (Japanese carrier) circa 2007. Maybe it's because I had one back in the day, but I can't help but think they took some influence.
Wow, thanks for sharing the name, these are really good! I don't know why I was surprised to realize that great designers have made fantastic products even in the past...
Some sites with images, for anyone curious: 1. https://www.dezeen.com/2007/01/17/tokujin-yoshioka-launches-... 2. https://spoon-tamago.com/best-of-2007-part-iv/
With the addition of NPUs to the GPU, this story gets even more confusing...
But there isn’t a trivial way to specifically target the neural engine.
If you use Metal / GPU compute shaders it's going to run exclusively on GPU. Some inference libraries like TensorFlow/LiteRT with backend = .gpu use this.
Meanwhile, the GPU is powerful enough for LLMs but has been lacking matrix multiplication acceleration. This changes that.
And there's an official port of Stable Diffusion to it: https://github.com/apple/ml-stable-diffusion
So the new engine is accelerator for matmul accelerator ?
This change is strictly adding matmul acceleration into each GPU core where it is being used for LLMs.
I don't blame you. It's confusing.
2. It moves some stuff from the external Neural Engine to the GPU, which substantially increases speeds for those workloads. That itself is a feature.
Will any of this really matter much to the average consumer at this point? Probably not. Not until Apple Intelligence gets off the ground.
Intrigued to explore with a19/m5 and test energy efficiency.
I don't think local LLMs will ever be a thing except for very specific use cases.
Servers will always have way more compute power than edge nodes. As server power increases, people will expect more and more of the LLMs and edge node compute will stay irrelevant since their relative power will stay the same.
Mobile applications are also relevant. An LLM in your car could be used for local intelligence. I'm pretty sure self driving cars use some about of local AI already (although obviously not LLM, and I don't really know how much of their processing is local vs done on a server somewhere).
If models stop advancing at a fast clip, hardware will eventually become fast and cheap enough that running models locally isn't something we think about as being a non-sensical luxury, in the same way that we don't think that rendering graphics locally is a luxury even though remote rendering is possible.
Even over LTE you're looking at under 120ms coast to coast.
This doesn't seem right to me.
You take all the memory and CPU cycles of all the clients connected to a typical online service, compared to the memory and CPU in the datacenter serving it? The vast majority of compute involved in delivering that experience is on the client. And there's probably vast amounts of untapped compute available on that client - most websites only peg the client CPU by accident because they triggered an infinite loop in an ad bidding war; imagine what they could do if they actually used that compute power on purpose.
But even doing fairly trivial stuff, a typical browser tab is using hundreds of megs of memory and an appreciable percentage of the CPU of the machine it's loaded on, for the duration of the time it's being interacted with. Meanwhile, serving that content out to the browser took milliseconds, and was done at the same time as the server was handling thousands of other requests.
Edge compute scales with the amount of users who are using your service: each of them brings along their own hardware. Server compute has to scale at your expense.
Now, LLMs bring their special needs - large models that need to be loaded into vast fast memory... there are reasons to bring the compute to the model. But it's definitely not trivially the case that there's more compute in servers than clients.
A single datacenter machine with state of the art GPUs serving LLM inference can be drawing in the tens of kilowatts, and you borrow a sizable portion for a moment when you run a prompt on the heavier models.
A phone that has to count individual watts, or a laptop that peaks on dual digit sustained draw, isn't remotely comparable, and the gap isn't one or two hardware features.
Even with token consumption increasing as AI abilities increase, there will be a point where AI output is good enough for most people.
Granted, people are very willing to hand over their data and often money to rent a software licence from the big players, but if they're all charging subscription fees where a local LLM costs nothing, that might cause a few sleepless nights for a few execs.
I use Read Aloud across a few browser platforms cause sometimes I don't care to read an article I have some passing interest in.
The landscape is a mess:
it's not really bandwidth efficient to transmit on one count, local frameworks like Piper perform well in alot of cases, there's paid APIs from the big players, at least one player has incorporated api-powered neural tts and packaged it into their browser presumably ad-supported or something, yet another has incorporated into their OS, already (though it defaults to speak and spell for god knows why). I'm not willing to pay $0.20 per page though, after experimenting, especially when the free/private solution is good enough.
> Deepseek-r1 was loaded and ran locally on the Mac Studio
> M3 Ultra chip [...] 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, and the 32-core Neural Engine. [...] 512GB of unified memory, [...] memory bandwidth of 819GB/s.
> Deepseek-r1 was loaded [...] 671-billion-parameter model requiring [...] a bit less than 450 gigabytes of [unified] RAM to function.
> the Mac Studio was able to churn through queries at approximately 17 to 18 tokens per second
> it was observed as requiring 160 to 180 Watts during use
Considering getting this model. Looking into the future, a Mac Studio M5 Ultra should be something special.
[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/03/18/heavily-upgraded-...
Society is already giving pushback to AI being pushed on them everywhere; see the rise of the word "clanker". We're seeing mental health issues pop up. We're all tired of AI slop content and engagement bait. Even the developers like us discussing it at the bleeding edge go round in circles with the same talking points reflexively. I don't see it as a given that there's public demand for even more AI, "if only it were more powerful on a server".
Speaking to your PC gaming analogy, there are render farms for graphics - they're just used for CGI and non-realtime use cases. What there isn't a huge demand for is consumer-grade hardware at datacenter prices. Apple found this out the hard way shipping Xserve prematurely.
Right, and that's despite the datacenter hardware being far more powerful and for most people cheaper to use per hour than the TCO of owning your own gaming rig. People still want to own their computer and want to eliminate network connectivity and latency being a factor even when it's generally a worse value prop. You don't see any potential parallels here with local vs hosted AI?
Local models on consumer grade hardware far inferior to buildings full of GPUs can already competently do tool calling. They can already generate tok/sec far beyond reading speed. The hardware isn't serving 100s of requests in parallel. Again, it just doesn't seem far fetched to think that the public will sway away from paying for more subscription services for something that can basically run on what they already own. Hosted frontier models won't go away, they _are_ better at most things, but can all of these companies sustain themselves as businesses if they can't keep encroaching into new areas to seek rent? For the average ChatGPT user, local Apple Intelligence and Gemma 3n basically already have the skills and smarts required, they just need more VRAM, and access to RAG'd world knowledge and access to the network to keep up.
Correct, though to me it seems that this comes at the price of narrowing the target audience (i.e. devs and very high-demanding analysis + production work).
For almost everything else people just open a bookmarked ChatGPT / Gemini link and let it flow, no matter how erroneous it might be.
The AI area is burning a lot of bridges and has done so for the last 1.5 - 2.0 years; they solidify the public's idea that they only peddle subscription income as hard as they can without providing more value.
Somebody finally had the right idea some months ago: sub-agents. Took them a while, and it was obvious right from the start that just dumping 50 pages on your favorite LLM is never going to produce impressive results. I mean, sometimes it does but people do a really bad job at quickly detecting when it does not, and are slow to correct course and just burn through tokens and their own patience.
Investors are gonna keep investor-ing, they will of course want the paywall and for there to be no open models at all. But happily the market and even general public perception are pushing back.
I am really curious what will come out of all this. One prediction is local LLMs that secretly transmit to the mothership, so the work of the AI startup is partially offloaded to its users. But I am known to be very cynical, so take this with a spoonful of salt.
I disagree.
There's a lot of interest in local LLMs in the LLM community. My internet was down for a few days and did I wish I had a local LLM on my laptop!
There's a big push for privacy; people are using LLMs for personal medical issues for example and don't want that going into the cloud.
Is it necessary to talk to a server just to check out a letter I wrote?
Obviously with Apple's release of iOS 26 and macOS 26 and the rest of their operating systems, tens of millions of devices are getting a local LLM with 3rd party apps that can take advantage of them.
the problem is people expectation, they want the model to be smart
people aren't having problem for if its local or not, but they want the model to be useful
But cloud models will have diminishing returns, local hardware will get drastically faster, and techniques to efficiently inference them will be worked out further. At some point, local LLMs will have its day.
this is the same happening with software and game industry
because free market forces people to raise the bar every year, the requirement of apps and games never met. its only goes up
human would never be satisfied, boundary would be push further
that's why we have 12gb or 16gb ram for smartphone right now only for system + apps
and now we must accommodate for local LLM too??? it would only goes up, people would demand smarter and smarter model
frontier model today would deem unusable(dumb) in 5 years
example: people literally screaming in agony when Antrophic quantized their model
Apple's privacy stance is to do as much as possible on the user's device and as little as possible in cloud. They have iCloud for storage to make inter-device synch easy, but even that is painful for them. They hate cloud. This is the direction they've had for some years now. It always makes me smile that so many commentators just can't understand it and insist that they're "so far behind" on AI.
All the recent academic literature suggests that LLM capability is beginning to plateau, and we don't have ideas on what to do next (and no, we can't ask the LLMs).
As you get more capable SLMs or LLMs, and the hardware gets better and better (who _really_ wants to be long on nVIDIA or Intel right now? Hmm?), people are going to find that they're "good enough" for a range of tasks, and Apple's customer demographic are going to be happy that's all happening on the device in their hand and not on a server [waves hands] "somewhere", in the cloud.
Large issues: tokenizers exist, reasoning models are still next-token-prediction instead of having "internal thoughts", RL post-training destroys model calibration
Small issues: they're all trained to write Python instead of a good language, most of the benchmarks are bad, pretraining doesn't use document metadata (ie they have to learn from each document without being told the URL or that they're written by different people)
Android crowd has been able to run LLMs on-device since LlamaCPP first came out. But the magic is in the integration with OS. As usual there will be hype around Apple, idk, inventing the very concept of LLMs or something. But the truth is neither Apple nor Android did this; only the wee team that wrote the attention is all you need paper + the many open source/hobbyist contributors inventing creative solutions like LoRA and creating natural ecosystems for them.
That's why I find this memo so cool (and will once again repost the link): https://semianalysis.com/2023/05/04/google-we-have-no-moat-a...
Never could figure out what the heck the value proposition was supposed to be though. Pay full price for a game that you can't even pretend you own? I don't think so. And the game conservation implications were also dire, so I'm not sad it went away in the end.
But on technical merits? It worked great.
Is it 'Local'?, 'Large?'...'Language?'
From Apple's point of view a local model would be the cheapest possible to run, as the end-user pays for hardware plus consumption...
I'm running Qwen 30B code on my framework laptop to ask questions about ruby vs. python syntax because I can, and because the internet was flaky.
At some point, more doesn't mean I need it. LLMs will certainly get "good enough" and they'll be lower latency, no subscription, and no internet required.
Or do you have to copy paste into LM studio?
https://opencode.ai and https://github.com/QwenLM/qwen-code both allow you to configure any API as the LLM provider.
That said, running agentic workloads on local LLMs will be a short and losing battle against context size if you don't have hardware specifically bought for this purpose. You can get it running and it will work for several autonomous actions but not nearly as long as a hosted frontier model will work.
It seems to work better for me when I tested it and Cline's supposedly adding it to the Ollama integration. I suspect that type of alternate local configuration will proliferate into the adjacent projects like Roo, Kilo, Continue, etc.
Apple adding hardware to speed it up will be even better, the next time I buy a new computer.
But it's not general purpose. Broken by design.
I'll pass. Not going to support this. We need less of this crap not more.
The whole point of CoreML is that your solution uses whatever hardware is available to you, including enlisting a heterogeneous set of units to conquer a large problem. Software written years ago would use the GPU matmul if deployed to a capable machine.
Though I do wonder, given the logarithmic nature of sound perception, are these numbers deceptive in terms of what the user will perceive?
Based on that, it doesn't sound like it's that much worse. Of course, if you're trying to maximize battery longevity by not exceeding 80% charge, that might make it not very useful for many people.
This new battery however is only compatible with the Air as other phones have a bigger camera bump.
https://freshnrebel.com/magnetic-wireless-powerbank-5000-mah...
It does the MagSafe thing, but will also offer a charge through the USB-C port.
And batteries don't last forever. When you upgrade to a new phone after a few years you'd likely need a new one anyways.
Worst case scenario just sell the old one on eBay if it's still holding a good charge!
Selling a thin phone with half a battery where you have to buy the other half and keep it attached to get a proper battery runtime (turning it into a normal-sized phone) can't be the solution Apple intended. At least I hope so. And that battery doesn't fit other iPhones as the camera bump of those other phones is in the way.
I don't really understand all the complaining since it's merely a variant of the iPhone for people who prioritize thinness over battery.
For over a decade, HNers have complained that they don't want thinness to be forced on them and that there should be a separate SKU for it. Yet when it finally happens, HNers complain about the trade-off.
3rd party versions of course, the official one was much more expensive than that.
https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/1/as-images.apple.co...
The camera bump on other models protrudes more towards the centre of the body. And thus the battery wouldn't fit (flush) and the Qi charging wouldn't engage properly.
I'm sorry if I'm not completely familiar with this product: you are to have this battery attached at all times while you're charging, and it just stays in place? (gawd I sound like I'm from a different planet, I apologize -- wireless charging just never has been interesting to me)
Seems like Apple is way ahead of you.
Other people: how dare you
- mobile mp3 player sales are low unless disk and battery life are greatly improved
- large display touch screen phone market is small unless someone solves the "app problem"
- smart watch market is tiny if exists at all unless someone makes one that is useful and has improved battery life
The breakthru that made touchscreen phones works wasn’t an app ecosystem. That came after people were already crazy about iPhones. It was capacitive touch screens. Basically everything before was resistive touch, which is why they usually had styluses. Getting touch, and really multi-touch, working well was the game changer that redefined cell phones.
In other words, if they made the battery last twice as long it'd still be equally as annoying (since your daily routine would be nearly the same, except now you also need to remember if it's a charge day or non-charge day).
To be fair maybe 3/4 days buys you some convenience. But anyways charging once a day is a reasonable place to get to, to get something better would require at minimum a 3x improvement which probably means a ground-up rework instead of continuous refinement.
A battery band might get you there but I suspect it'd be too clunky. At best Apple may redesign their watch to support a battery band and allow 3rd parties to make them for folks that need weeks of battery life.
The other issue is that I don't want to have to bring Yet Another Dongle™ every time I go away for a weekend or short business trip. Most of my trips are ≤ 4 days, so if AWs could reliably go that long (including battery degradation over time) then I'd consider getting one.
Right now, only the AWU even approaches this, and only in low-power mode. If it weren't a thousand dollars, I'd consider it. But between the low-power requirement and the pricing, it's just no contest in my book. I'm getting a new Pebble, which offers a month of battery life at 1/3 of the cost.
I think reverse charging from your smartphone is a quite decent solution to the problem, which is supported by certain Android devices.
Especially considering how useful sleep data is, then I was surprised to see they're only getting sleep scores now.
My dirt cheap Huawei watches have had this for years. It's accurate enough (my own perception based on use). And I get a weeks battery life too (although I don't have the distracting fancy notifications perhaps). It does check blood oxygen levels, heart rate, stress etc.
I truly thought this was a solved problem (looking at headphones battery life, although I might need to check my assumptions here also apply to Airpods).
> I truly thought this was a solved problem.
I charge when showering in the morning. 15 minutes is enough for the day + night, half an hour to charge it fully.
OLED is just the wrong screen tech for these devices, never made any sense to me given how little I care about graphics and how little time I spend reading the display.
Every smartwatch that hasn't met that bar, which is almost all of them ever made, is a joke to me. I'd have ordered a RePebble had I not moved back to analogue dumbwatches instead just before they were announced (and were iOS not actively hostile to competing watch implementations).
the camp that sees the smartwatch as an accessory to their smartphone that does fitness tracking and maybe a few other useful things to avoid pulling their phone out constantly - those people want MUCH longer battery life.
the camp that sees the smartwatch as a REPLACEMENT to their smartphone, they are perfectly fine with the current battery life.
2. Just for general convenience, having to take another special cable for every late night or overnight trip is maddening. I always have a phone anyway for any actual interactions.
I find it hard to believe many people are writing texts on their watches, it's just a nice to have gimmick feature that everyone I know has stopped using.
That has not been my experience though - having used both an Apple Watch and a Pixel Watch for years on end every single day. Absolutely outside my area of expertise, but I would imagine that you can design batteries to have a much longer lifetime (no of recharge cycles) when their capacity is smaller.
But if you want to leave your smartphone at home, but you still want cellular and notifications, I agree the apple watch is the only game in town even if the battery life sucks.
A side effect is that this makes your watch look less new, and therefore less of a theft target.
I agree that Apple Watches don't last long enough between charges, but comparing them to a completely different class of device that's technically the same broad category is pointless.
From Google's official Pixel 9 Pro Fold handling instructions: (https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15090466?hl=en#...)
> Flexible screens are softer than traditional phone screens, so avoid contact with sand, crumbs, *fingernails* and sharp objects.
I'm sure that if Apple invented the exact same thing in the exact same way, it would have been the "greatest thing since sliced bread".
The tech isn't there yet.
For those that are not chronically online, a mobile phone from a decade ago has everything they need. If you only have to phone the family, WhatsApp your neighbours, get the map out, use a search engine and do your online banking, then a flagship phone is a bit over the top. If anything, the old phone is preferable since its loss would not be the end of the world.
I have seen a few elderly neighbours rocking Samsung Galaxy S7s with no need to upgrade. Although the S7 isn't quite a decade old, the apps that are actually used (WhatsApp, online banking) will be working with the S7 for many years to come since there is this demographic of active users.
Now, what if we could get these people to upgrade every three years with a feature that the 'elderly neighbour' would want? Eyesight isn't what it used to be in old age, so how about a nice big screen?
You can't deliberately hobble the phone with poor battery life or programme it to go slow in an update because we know that isn't going to win the customer over, but a screen that gets tatty after three years? Sounds good to me.
I have several apps that no longer work on my otherwise good phone bought in 2018 because I can no longer update the OS that they require.
Edit: This is a honest question.
Whatsapp also no longer works on it, thus the phone is useless.
Which is sad, as it has a great camera, battery life and is very light.
The S7 you mention lasted 4 years, and received the last patch in 2020.
Not convinced that doing online banking on a phone that hasn't had software updates for 5 years is a good idea.
A lot of us the techies can be strong-armed via FOMO and other tropes but good luck convincing the elderly neighbors.
It's small, has dual sim card sockets, and a headphone jack.
I'm not sure how I'd replace it to be honest.
Because there are very cheap, lightweight adaptors to headphone jack from USB-C.
Wireless chargers are pretty good but it’s still a pain to wear out your port.
I can dual-SIM my iphone by using one e-Sim and one physical. The only thing it is not, is small...
Probably trying to find better screen materials, and addressing reliability issues.
I used Palm devices with resistive touch screens. It was good, but when you go glass, there's no turning back.
I would never buy a phone with folding screens protected by plastic. I want a dependable slab. Not a gimmicky gadget which can die any moment. I got my fix for dying flex cables with Casiopeia PDAs. Never again.
Am I representative? Dunno.
Apple cancelled their mini line which was 3% of sales.
It’s not a big enough slice for them to want to chase.
The screen isn't really big enough or the right shape to feel like a real upgrade for movies, and a lot of apps just aren't built with foldables in mind. Most of the time it just feels like a weirdly shaped, less powerful, less durable tablet.
On top of that you're dealing with a visible crease across the screen, higher prices for something that's actually more fragile, and bulkier hardware with smaller or split batteries. The tech is cool in theory, but in practice it's a lot of compromises without a clear killer use case.
That would be the half sized phone I would buy.
It's not really free. It's just built in to the cost of your plan. Your plan would be half the price if you weren't paying for the phone.
Fair enough, then it makes sense to get the phone.
Typical strat for them is not to be first with an innovation, but to wait and work out the kinks enough that they can convince people that the tradeoffs are well worth making. Apple wouldn't be chasing that existing slice, they'd be trying to entice a larger share of their customers to upgrade faster.
There will never be a folding iPhone, simple as.
Also flip phones aren't dorky and have a 2000s vibe - but they don't fit Apple "you can have any color as long as it's black" approach to design.
In some ways I can't even fault them - fragmenting your device shapes/experiences to chase a niche look is not good business. But this is exactly what's pushing me out of Apple ecosystem - it's so locked down that if you don't want to fit into their narrow product lines you have no other options. There are no third party watch makers using apple watch hardware and software. No other phone makers with access to iPhone internals and iOS. Nobody can hack a PC OS onto an iPad or build a 2in1 MacOS device.
I feel like this is the last gen of Apple tech I'm in on - I just find there are so many devices that are compelling to me personally but don't fit into the walled garden. Plus Google seems light-year ahead on delivering a smart assistant.
It's OK but it feels bad because you are kind of trapped with their stuff if you invested in their ecosystem.
Meanwhile my Casio calculator watch: "bonjour"
https://teddybaldassarre.com/blogs/watches/rectangle-watches...
There's nothing wrong with rectangular watches - a fat bezel less screen rectangle around your wrist is not the same thing. The pro comes closest to a proper watch look but even that's "inspector gadget" teritory, not fashion accessory.
I left the ecosystem after Catalina, and my experience with macOS at work has horrified me enough to stay well away. Nowadays I'm happily using NixOS on the desktop, laptop and homeserver. My biggest gripe is that I didn't switch sooner, probably could have saved a decent amount of cash eschewing the Apple tax, SaaS fees and macOS migration hamster-wheel.
Apparently in 2022, 80% of iPhone owners also had the AW.
It’s hard to find a source of how many iPhone owners specifically also own a smartwatch, but in the US it seems like 35% might be a decent estimate of smartwatch ownership, so it’d be more in the realm of ~28% of iPhone owners also having an Apple Watch.
Oh and I remember everyone mocking the airpods pro when they came out. Now everyone is wearing them.
For phones what really matters for most people is... the screen size. And a folding phone is basically the best thing you can get right now for that.
The only problem is pricing at the moment.
Maybe I'm the idiot, but you won't catch me dead paying laptop money for a neuter-computer.
iPads are better for watching shows on a stationary bike, since they fit on the bike
iPads are better for reading manga, since you can hold them vertically
and iPads are clearly better for drawing--you can't draw on a laptop.
There are some hybrid laptops that do these things, but they're bad at them. Especially drawing, I've used enough HP convertibles with "stylus support" over the years to know that.
Form factor. Touch screen. GPS. Cellular. Circular polarization. These are all literal hardware differences between the iPad and MacBook, and every single one of them makes the iPad suitable for my use case (ForeFlight running on an iPad mounted to the yoke) where a MacBook would not be.
My use-case is for travel, where I want to read books, and the very occasional time when I want to do some design work outside the office -- draw a diagram that sort of thing. A third rare use case is where a web site is buggy or limited in functionality for mobile browsers. In all these cases the unfolded screen allows me to do the thing I need to do without carrying a second device (tablet, eReader). Another marginal use-case is to show another person a photograph. The fold out screen is much easier to see and I think has better color rendition too.
For these use-cases I find the folding phone very worthwhile.
But...the benefit that trumps all that is that the phone itself is smaller (narrower) than the typical flagship phones these days. It fits in my pocket and my hand reaches across it. I'd never go back to a non-folding phone for this reason alone, even if I never unfolded it. In fact I almost never do unfold it, except when traveling.
fwiw it wasn't until the Fold6 that the "cover screen" typing experience was ok. I understand that the Fold7 is a bit wider and so probably better, but I can't justify the expense to upgrade so will sit out until the Fold8.
I guess if you're the sort that is not clumsy and you're in a mild climate you might get your money's worth
for reference these were Samsung Z Flip devices
The one I have used felt like using a real phone through a layer of vinyl, definitely not a pleasant experience.
They're buying another year of very-high margin phones I guess...
[1]: Mediocre folded experience doesn't bother them
[2]: Think calendars and whatever else middle managers look at
There's not much left to "fix" on mobile phones, and no real important features to add. Lacking that, they need something to sell the phones with, so they're going for these strange "improvements". It needs to be something that has some wow factor so they can lead with. This seems to somehow work on normal people so they'll keep doing these "improvements".
I expect in the future they'll pull this trick again, moving bits of the phone upwards towards camera, and create a second notch from half way down, where the phone will get even thinner, and they'll sell that.
- novel approach to camera optics that can completely flatten them into the phone - front camera hidden behind the screen removing the island or inset - dramatically better battery tech density leading to like week long usage - way more ram (100gb+) and processing power for powerful local llm and other ai - significant reduction in thickness and weight. like this air with no bump but also under 100 grams - maybe some stuff with projectors
With the introduction of the iPhone Air, it would have been a great opportunity to do this on the normal model.
Those who care about phone thickness could buy the Air, and the rest of us could have our large battery flat phones.
Interestingly Chinese manufacturers seem to be the main adopters of this tech. For example, the article below has Samsung, Xiaomi, ZTE, Oppo, Vivo (actually, this may just be due to there being many more large Chinese phone manufacturers in general.) https://www.smartprix.com/bytes/under-display-camera-phones/
The motivations of Apple to keep things as they are for so long, despite strong criticism from all over is one of business mysteries. A little middle finger to its user one may say, not big enough to stir things too much, just a bit.
The only relevant criticism is their sales figures and revenue numbers. Everything else is just noise.
I love the idea behind the pro phone and going all out on cameras, but practically I want the air more. I wish it had an ultrawide, but it is what it is - I have and frequently carry around an actual camera with me most places I go where I'd want to take photos.
Pictures of my dog are the main reason I upgraded from a 13 mini to a 16 Pro.
The difference was noticeable and I wouldn't go back.
Everyone else takes photos with their phone and yes, everyone wants to take better photos
Though the camera isn't even the most important equipment, that's lenses/lighting (plus stabilizers, studio backdrops, etc.)
For example: https://www.gadgetmatch.com/time-covers-shot-iphones/
- Such an important moment is something you often wanna blow up in a large/hi-res print.
- An ultrawide lens is suboptimal for portraits and usually makes the face look puffy from the perspective.
- Unless you know the exact color & aesthetic for the cover you want to preserve the raw capture for changes in post to match the vibe.
While I can certainly appreciate the casual and intimate vibe she’s going for, as a pro she could have brought any decent camera with a portrait lens and keeping the shoots equally short without compromising quality and adding risk for the poor layout person who has to work with it later.
The thing you are looking for is meta lenses, not the company. They could cover the entire back-face of the phone and provide some pretty incredible capabilities. We are not there yet, but I'd expect to see them in the next 20 years.
- Novel radios that enable true Starlink connection in your pocket for gigabit internet globally
- multi-spectrum imaging for spectroscopy and FLIR-like cameras to get temperature info in images
- Light field camera system for true 3D imaging and synthetic refocusing
- Air quality sensor that can also act as breath analyzer
I was going to come in with a set of reasons why these wouldn't sell, but... I think they could! Air quality fits neatly into Apple's health push, though I could see them making that a Watch feature rather than a phone feature (since your phone lives in your pocket, and quality sensors need time for the readings to stabilize). 3D imaging and synthetic refocusing both have a wow factor that would be easy to get people excited about. The only one I'm unsure of is multi-spectrum imaging; while I suspect pretty much anyone on this forum would jump at that, I don't have a good idea of whether the general population would get excited about temperature data. At the very least, it'd be handy for some kitchen tasks where you need a surface temperature.
We also have a Seek phone attachment camera. It's cool but again, don't use it in daily life that much.
Satellite comms gets very close to face melting tech quite quickly, so I would prefer not to have that in a mobile device....
I would like a light field camera. I've seen some research about using and array of 1mm2 cameras (basically the smallest omnivision module) and one decent module to make a synthetic high res camera. Takes a huge amount of GPU power to get not very interesting results though.
Restricted by ITAR. You can buy lowres attachments for it on Aliexpress though.
Currently trying to get a solid postmarketOS setup so I can switch back to Linux before the SE goes out of support. Apple really doesn't offer an upgrade path from this device.
- Batteries that charge fast. Batteries that can support 2-3 days of use. Lighter batteries.
- Thinner camera.
- Better screens outdoor.
- No overheating.
- Better software, or a lower bar: fix the bugs.
- Satellite connectivity.
just few things on the top of my head and things that will interest me and justify a new purchase.
Features I want: ask siri for the things I look up and it works. "When did the baby fall asleep" instead of opening Nanit. "How many more intervals in this workout" instead of opening TrainerRoad. "What is my next meeting" instead of opening Outlook. This was the promise of the new Siri and it just has yet to really come true.
Other than that I agree. Especially camera bumps are annoying to me, I would prefer a phone thick enough to make the bump disappear, that would then automatically solve the battery life issue as well.
Battery chemistry isn't there yet. Frankly, we are lucky enough phones don't set themselves ablaze every day - it only takes minuscule errors and you get a Galaxy Note.
> Thinner camera.
Hard to beat physics and if you ask me, "AI" slop is already being overused on cameras to hide the fact that good picture quality requires sensor area and distance for the optics.
> Satellite connectivity.
We're already beginning to see that with Starlink LTE.
I'm happy with my iPhone, but it still has a week or so shorter battery life than even a relatively cheap Nokia phone and with all that available space I know something it could be used for.
Oh, there's a LOT that can be improved.
We’ll see what the sales numbers are like.
What matters to me is how comfortable it is to hold and use with one hand. Large and thin phones tend to be bad in that aspect.
Niche, but (true) satellite communication. If i understand correctly what we have in the pixel 9/10 is not nearly as useful as having a garmin, never mind the fact that it works basically in europe and US only
It is nice to know that at least some companies are still trying hard to innovate.
All other cameras have wrist straps as a safety feature. From flimsy ribbons on the smallest (smartphone-sized) to padded leather on the largest. They were common on feature phones too. But smartphone makers want people to drop their phones, so people would have to buy new ones, I suppose.
You could get a case with a wrist loop, you say? Not on any of Apple's cases, anyway.
Personally, I think thin is just "omg look at my engineering". blah blah.
I found the (expensive!) bullstrap case to be helpful - thin and slippery enough to slide out of a pocket easily, well engineered to protect the camera.
But really, I think the iphone 13 mini was the most useful/practical application of apple's engineering.
I think a mini-sized 3-camera bulge phone would be great.
I stuck on a MagSafe metal sticker thing on the back and that little bit of greebling makes me feel a bit better holding it.
"Wild" seems like a stretch. I feel like it shouldn't be too hard to believe that some people drop their phones occasionally, and it's a reasonable concern when it's likely to be with you everywhere you go.
> Hearing someone drops their phone on average 50 times more often than i do i find wild
;) wait till you hear someone's completely incomprehensible ADHD story
Edit: sibling comment is correct, sketchy pockets of athletic shorts are a major offender. Actually it bothers me way more when my car keys fall out of those.
I never used a case until I got a Galaxy S9; that phone was like a greased eel. Went from dropping my phone zero times in 8 years to 5 times in one week.
The thickness should be from the front to the back of the camera lens, not to the thinnest point they can find.
I would gladly ditch the case if Apple had a strong mounting system integrated into the phone (MagSafe has nowhere near the resistance to shear forces sufficient to hold a phone over bumps on a bike.)
I suppose I am looking for the phone equivalent of a camera thumbscrew mount. If Apple iterated on MagSafe to include an actual mechanical fixture as part of the attachment, I would buy that phone right away so I can avoid using these crappy pieces of rubber/plastic that degrade so much more quickly in appearance than the phone frame rails.
Cases are dirt cheap, if you're paying over $30 for one you're probably overpaying. The expected value of a screen repair, not only the cost but your time makes it a no-brainer.
My phone case has saved my phone many times.
Heck, my bike helmet has saved my head at least 3 times.
Survivorship bias /s How do you know it wouldn't have survived without case? I drop my phone on nearly daily basis and since 2007 only cracked one iPhone screen.
I did do cosmetic damage to the non-screen parts of some phones while not using a case, though.
> I did do cosmetic damage to the non-screen parts of some phones while not using a case, though.
I don't care about those for various reasons.
The idea of letting my phone drop unprotected (or getting it wet like I see some people do) is horrible.
You did forget one big use case for cases: money laundering. There's no way all the physical stores and kiosks that only sell cases are actually making money...
It's really more "I got extended warranty, and I'm not afraid to use". I live in LA, so I'm never too far from the nearest store I can replace mine. All data important backed up. Dropping a phone for me will result at most in a minor-to-medium annoyance.
I only fear of getting the phone too wet because battery disconnect is practically impossible today.
People need to get a grip. ;)
But a thinner phone still means the end result is thinner in a case.
I didn't understand the appeal of thin phones until I used them in cases.
Average thickness phone + case = bulky phone.
Thin phone + case = normal thickness phone.
That's what makes them great. It's normal thickness with all the protection.
People would still put a case on a bulky phone to protect resale or trade in value.
A super thin phone doesn't require a super bulky case, it requires just as much case as a person would normally use, resulting in a smaller overall profile.
I'd probably still go pro because I care more about the camera than the size.
Just subjectively, I remember having a super scratched iPod and it just felt kind of ratty every time you looked at it. Meanwhile, a phone in a leather case gets kind of a patina that improves with age. It is kind of sad though, I got a really pretty blue iPhone and you wouldn't even know it because it's completely covered by a case.
The Apple cases aren't flat on the back. They have a rim around the camera bump (and they create a rim around the front of the phone, too). The rear rim is slightly taller than the lens bezels (not sure if I used the right word there), so they don't touch the surface the phone rests on. I place my phone+case on the desk face-down because the camera bump and the wobble it creates when resting the phone back down triggers some minor irritation for me. The slight rim around the front of the phone keeps the screen from touching the surface. All of this would be nicer if the phone were flat across the back.
The metal case and toughened glass mean I don't really need the case most the time. I once dropped an older model onto a concrete floor such that it landed on a corner, shattering the screen, so I'm more risk averse with them now.
If you really want protection, the screen is still more fragile than the camera.
I don't have much call for most of the camera system, and my battery life on my Pro is just fine. I have plenty of chargers typically, and for emergencies or times I know I'm going to be out I could potentially get the battery pack.
I basically never use cases on my iPhone, and at most will maybe use an ultra-thin one or some sort of structure adhered to the plateau just to make it flat across so as to not rock on a table.
Now this, good people, is a real use case. If it seems like an edge case to you, I guarantee Apple’s design and product people know of — and optimize for — use cases much more rare.
But its not about optimisation it's about freedom. I don't enjoy having to baby around a lumbering 6 inch phone. I want my phone to optimise around me being able to not worrying about a brick sagging in my shorts.
I wonder if anyone has successfully gone down this path.
I never had this issue with my phone but it was a big reason for moving from an iPad to a Kindle for reading in bed... Dropping an iPad on my face (or even chest) == ouch.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/text-in-bed-drop-phone-on-fac...
Samsung galaxy s2 was a super small super thin phone, 15 years ago almost, which still had user replaceable battery, microsd, 3.5mm, gps, and everything most people would expect smartphone to have.
We then spent a decade making phones 0.2" bigger each generation as if that's an advancement - I.e. As if we couldn't have made them big in the first place (all the while removing physical features).
Then we started making them thin again, as if we couldn't have made them thin before.
It makes me think of cars - VW golf used to be a small car, then it kept growing... So they released Polo... Which kept growing so they made lupo... But each year my entire life they have ads like "6 inches bigger than before" or "10cm more legroom than competition", as if there haven't been small and large cars before.
Grumble Grumble, seen it all before, kids get off my lawn :-)
Although, I'm not a big phone user though, mainly use it when I'm outside of the house. In the house, I'll just use my laptop.
For reference, the 13 mini has a 5.4" screen, and the new-gen iPhones are 6.3", 6.5", and 6.8". Pixel 10 is 6.3" as well.
iPhone 5 was the most perfect size ever and was about 0.3" shorter than the 13 mini, though it had a much smaller screen due to the bezel: https://www.gsmarena.com/size-compare-3d.php3?idPhone1=5685&...
Apple offering is underwhelming to say the least and way too expensive for my use case.
I want to go Android anyway, I'm too disillusioned with Apple currently, I'm tired of dealing with their predatory behavior. But there aren't a lot of decent options there as well but at least you can get it much cheaper, so that's something, I guess.
Previously Apple was the provider of hardware which made the right compromise to allow specific/focused use case, they called it "taste" in a sea of nonsense with bullshit "features". But now it feels like Apple has joined in on the nonsense and is actually leading the pack; which is why the price feels bad. If you are going to make the same crap as everyone else with the same set of bad compromises, I'm not going to overpay for it.
I think this is why Apple "AI" got so much backlash. If they didn't make it or at least market it as heavily as they, did it would have been fine, but it was just the same crap as everyone else, just worse and more expensive. They could have released the exact same phone, just shaving a 100 dollar and have been acclaimed and made more money that way I believe.
Source: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-13-mi...
I’m potentially considering the air because wasted z-axis space the camera bump creates, I’d use with a MagSafe wallet again, so it wouldn’t be wasted for me. I like that the built in battery is likely sufficient for a day of my use, but can be easily extended with the MagSafe battery on days where I know I’ll be using more juice, e.g. when traveling. None of these things are unique to the air; instead the overall thickness which results from my usage is the differentiator, from which I think I might derive value.
It’s light and the thinness is just fun. I’m not putting a case on it. And I really don’t understand why a phone needs to sit flat on a table—if anything, the angle is a plus.
I'm probably not getting one, but I don't see the point of comparing it to physically smaller phones.
Sony Xperia Z2 - 2014 - 172mm x 266mm x 6.4 mm - 439g
Sony made nearly equally thin but lighter devices 11 years ago.
Again, not nearly the same screen size, so weight is irrelevant. But also, 439g? Wow! If that number wasn’t completely wrong, that would be impressive.
6.4mm is nowhere near as thin as 5.6mm, but I’m actually seeing 8.2mm for thickness on reliable websites, not 6.4mm: https://m.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z2-6144.php
Did an LLM hallucinate those specs that you quoted? I honestly don’t know how the thickness and weight you quoted could be that far off if you did the research yourself.
But, even if you were right, which you don’t seem to be, it’s all moot. No one is cross-shopping a 2014 phone to a 2025 phone. But even if they were, the real numbers speak for themselves.
It’s just less. Less means it hits the ground softer when I drop it. Less means I’m less pissed off when I lose my AirPods and have to hold my phone up to my ear. Less means little moments of delight over how this engineered slab of minerals can do these things.
Do you remember the ad for the first MacBook Air? Even if you didn’t connect with it, can you recognise how someone else might?
So can you not appreciate how such cloying fandom (or apparent fandom) can kind of be, in a way, almost nauseating for someone and just move on? And there’s a reason I didn’t directly respond to you for this comment. But anyway that’s moot now.
If anything is off it’s your belligerent anti-fandom. You are coming off as on tilt. Over someone else’s preferences in phones of all things.
No, I really can't.
I'm not into most sports. That doesn't make those games' fans nauseous. They've found something they love. I don't get their particular attachment. But that doesn't make it dumb, must less disgusting--I can empathise with their joy because I, too, have found things which delight me.
I can articulate, respectfully, why I think their games are dumb. But I can also recognise that's a subjective opinion about aesthetics.
Yes, yes! Yes, dear JumpCrisscross I do believe in that. People singing really badly but happily is one of those things, people wearing clothes that looks absolutely horrible in them (as per me) but they are happy and love it and that makes me strangely actually happy. These are just few examples. But someone being Apple is not one of that and I am also respectful about it - I try tone down criticism, I try sarcasm, hell in most cases I try not to directly respond to such people.
> I can articulate, respectfully, why I think their games are dumb.
No, imho, you can't. When you call/consider something "dumb", it is just being called dumb - no matter how syrupy and respectful articulation that has. But that's just me. I won't call a sports dumb, but if you feel like it, you sure can with whatever articulation you prefer. You keep your sense of aesthetics and let me have mine.
What I don't understand is: I did not even respond to you, and I was just criticising the company. I was not being abusive, and I was definitely not being disrespectful to you, but you still jumped into it and just started this argument. Why? Is that just pure ego? And now you can't let go?
You went ahead and confronted me, and I replied back using that "nauseous" phrase because you took umbrage at something which was directed at a damn corporation and not at you in any way—unless criticism of Apple directly hurts you.
Heck, I did not even mention you, and there is a reason for that—because I was not responding to you. I literally directed my disappointment towards the company—literally. Why, then?
Do you still not recognise that you ought to just move on? And if that doesn't do it for you, then downvote, flag (that comment is already flagged), report, and then move on. Why do you have to pick an issue with me about it? Is it even worth it? Or do you want to have the last word? Is that it? Do you have something in mind that you want to hear?
That said, it looks like the clear case for the air has a plastic ridge to protect the lens and keep the phone from wobbling
Right. I am sure flatness would have Revolutionary™ had Apple decided to make it rather flat (of course with the "First Time Again In An iPhone™" tag).
I'd even go with a millimeter or two thicker to have the backplate attached by screws and the battery easily user replacable after a few years.
It stands to reason the iFold/iPaper/iSheet/whatever Apple will call it is drawing closer now that Samsung and several Chinese brands have pretty much solved the design for Apple.
I be been struggling with the 14 pro's weight. So that would mainly be my interest here.
Also almost certainly less likely to get obsoleted by some AI feature given the higher end GPU cores.
They switched the frame from stainless steel to titanium the next year which made the Pro phones noticeably lighter. And now this year the Pros are aluminum like the non-Pros have been for years, which is also pretty light.
The 3 big camera sensors certainly don't help with the weight either, but the good news is they did seem to recognize they were getting to heavy with the 14 Pro.
Most users probably use/need 10% of what a max pro iPhone offers, but they want 100% of the max pro status.
Now they can keep the status without needing to carry a chonker.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...
$999 is a lot of money.
US net worth at the 25th percentile is >$20k, it’s not the case that 32% of people literally don’t have the wealth to afford a $400 expense.
Suppose that you have an emergency expense that costs $400. Based on your current financial situation, how would you pay for this expense?
If you would use more than one method to cover this expense, please select all that apply.
a. Put it on my credit card and pay it off in full at the next statement
b. Put it on my credit card and pay it off over time
c. With the money currently in my checking/savings account or with cash
d. Using money from a bank loan or line of credit
e. By borrowing from a friend or family member
f. Using a payday loan, deposit advance, or overdraft
g. By selling something
h. I wouldn’t be able to pay for the expense right now
Which almost no one pays up front or at all in the US with the carrier deals and trade ins.
I definitely agree about them being just about the most banal stupid toy you could spend the money on, but it's still a lot of money to a lot of people despite the cost of basic necessities making it not the huge amount that it used to be. I cringe at paying over $450, considering that every new model of phone since like 2015 hasn't really done anything worth significantly more money.
I say that because I feel similarly, but my out of college coworkers rib me for not having an iPhone. One even commented he'd probably never text me in real life, to which I of course replied that I'd never want him to text me in real life.
Genuine question - maybe I'm too in my own bubble but it seems like iPhone just completely dominates the market and is viewed as the "default" phone, which to me implies status quo, not luxury.
I grew up with Nokia phones all I want out of my phone is something cheap and rugged with a decent battery life.
It's very particular to your group I think as I am in the same country, similar age, and yet it's the complete opposite for me.
But none of us care because it's not the US and nobody is using some phone exclusive messaging service enough to care about what phone anyone else is using.
Of course a lot of people can not afford it.
I was quite surprised that other than the much better battery, USB-C, and much better camera, and sometimes faster speed, the old one was holding up quite well.
You can get an old iPhone XR for 100 EURish, in decent condition. I really have no idea what model year iPhone's others have.
$7.25/hour = $1,160/month for 8 hours of daily work, monday to friday.
iPhone Air costs $1000 according to https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare
In wealthy circles, no. Anywhere else, yes, it’s a thousand-dollar device.
I'm debating if I just replace the battery and let this run another year... since the iPhone X I haven't seen any major upgrades still that feel like they'll matter in my day-to-day life.
A flip would be different...
I keep looking at new flagship launches and I keep not seeing any new capability, feature or performance that would make a noticeable difference to me. I replaced the battery myself last year and generally keep the OS clean, not letting app cruft accrue. I'm not a luddite nor am I price sensitive. I remain ready and willing to buy a high-end flagship phone the moment it does anything new I actually care about. It still gets regular security updates even though a couple years ago Samsung stopped updating it to their latest customized version of Android. And despite looking, I still haven't seen any new Android OS or Samsung One UI feature that would matter to me. Bottom line: I don't think it's you or me, I think it's that phones are mature tech and unless you have a specific use case or it breaks, there's just not much reason to upgrade.
> chonker
Can't see the specs for the iPhone Air but it looks much larger than my SE 2022. I wish they would bring that form factor back. Obviously not as powerful as bigger iPhones so not useful for posing purposes.
On the other hand, the cameras on plateaus are real issues because they don't lay normally and the cameras are very easy to scratch.
(Edit: Should have refreshed I see. Feel free to ignore.)
The reason for the Max Pro is the larger screen and better battery life
Even the very poor all seem to have new-ish iPhones.
Also not sure what you're on about with "huge bulky phone".
(But if you use it rarely it's better to just rent one, and then you can get a really nice one.)
Recent breakthroughs have produced multilayer metalenses only ~0.5 mm thick that can focus unpolarized broadband light across several discrete wavelengths.
Dual-Pixel Coded Aperture (CADS): End-to-end learned amplitude masks on dual-pixel sensors have shown >1.5 dB PSNR gains in all-in-focus images and 5–6% depth accuracy improvements in DSLR, endoscope, and dermoscope prototypes.
Color-Coded Aperture Imaging: Single-lens, single-frame depth sensing via color-coded apertures has been demonstrated on DSLR and preliminary smartphone modules with depth map extraction sufficient for basic AR and portrait modes.”
Marketing will create hype and desire and the feeling of exclusiveness. Those will lead to sales.
Not every big change is an actual innovation. A lot if just engineering sales via these methods, which aren't very different than fashion, jewelry, or luxury cars.
I might get one because I'm always a bit forced to follow the curve and can't afford to look 'backwards' or 'old fashioned' to stakeholders in the workplace, people in my life, etc who's good side I need to stay on who believe in the above dynamic.
Umm, smaller? We don't need thinner, we need smaller.
Proportionally though that was only 3% of their sales.
Ben Thompson (Stratechery) has been documenting for almost a decade that the biggest driver of new phone sales in China is a new form factor.
I’m sure that might be the same in other markets where an iPhone is a status symbol. It’s definitely not one in the US where 60% of phone buyers have iPhones.
It can still be a status symbol to have the newest phone. That’s imo the only reason for changing camera alignments between generations. So people (who know & care) can see that you have the newest model.
But how is it a status symbol in the US is $25 a month between the SE and the iPhone 17 Pro Max?
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/09/iphone-air-esim-china-u...
Eg. ALDI (yes, the German supermarket chain run a MVNO in Australia), have been saying esim support in the future since 2021.
The MVNOs here mostly market older, cheaper iPhones.
Aside from a tiny amount of nerds needing post hoc rationalisation as to why they blew $1500 on a gimmick, absolutely nobody will go looking for a phone and consider grams/mm² as an important measure.
I do hope that the metal they are using is on the grippier side (like the black 16 Pros, as opposed to the 16s)
The size and weight of the phone does look tempting, but its battery life is a deal breaker for me. I'm pretty sure there's no way its built-in speakers could possibly match those in the Pro models, which is also very important to me.
I have this recurring vision of what could have been if we never lost Steve before the industry went whole hog in on the camera bump fad. It goes something like this:
SCENE: Steve Jobs' office on the eve of the iPhone 7 release
"Hey Steve here's the new prototype for iPhone 7, we think you're going to love it!"
Steve picks up the phone, fumbles it around for a moment, flips it over, and runs his index finger over the camera bump
"You're fired. Now, you" points to another engineer "Get rid of the bump."
And just like that, we were saved from this nightmare. Alas, the world is shit now and no one cares about anything anymore. But I can say without question he would have never allowed it.
The main issue is weight distribution, although current designs are slightly top heavy anyway.
A less obvious issue is that people would tend to hold the screen vertically while taking photos, which would distort the visual plane of the lenses at the back.
I'm sure both of those could be solved, and a wedge would create something original, instead of the nth iteration of the same ugly wart aesthetic.
You meant to say "14 years old Android phones", right? chuckles
https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_xt910-pictures-4273.p...
I’m sure some people would buy a 16mm thick, 400g phone but I doubt it’s the majority.
I'll concede the point on the weight, although I bet it'd be more like 350g.
The argument is that you shouldn't need to pick one or the other. They got us used to the bump because it is cheaper and simpler for them to build. The same with literally everything now. No more striving for excellence, it's just "what can we normalize and force people to put up with so we don't have to fix the problem".
It isn’t a problem. That’s why it isn’t “fixed.”
The cameras are getting bigger because a decent segment of the customers want better performing cameras on their phone.
Either the whole phone would have to get thicker and heavier to accommodate, or you end up with a camera bump. And yes, some people would want that brick phone, but Apple seems to think it isn't a large market segment and the money they print from iPhone sales seems to point to them being decent at gauging that market.
Jobs's "design horse-sense" was also strongly against the screen size you take for granted as well.
Maybe its time to put away these weird hagiographies.
The idea that you're hiring talented people and just firing them like this is not only obscenely anti-worker, its anti-social and a wonderful example of how we worship the worst people. This is someone with a pedigree, able to land an apple job, pass the interviews, work with a team, has mortgage/family/whatever, etc but he upset a sultan sitting on his silk pillow and now must be thrown out on the streets?
Oh and Apple's entire existance hinges on "HP and IBM were too full of fire-happy, stodgy, powerful men who wouldnt let youngin's with ideas flourish" then now Jobs becomes the HP/IBM he and Woz have decried all their careers? What a great way to send your talent off to competitors, scare your existing staff to never take chances, depressing hiring, build a toxic workplace, and send all these people to a startup where they might eat your lunch.
> Pedigree...streets
If that pedigree is such a high horse.. I'm sure they'd have no problem joining the company next door.
Rather, it would be about their values and vision not aligning with those of the company. The job shouldn't have happened to begin with.
Not that I like this kind of company mind you, but I do understand and see the appeal. The comparisons with a cult that are often drawn have a logic to them. But this whole scenario is also an exaggeration. Somewhat.
1. Flip one switch in settings to enable sideloading
2. Download and open an APK
3. Flip one more switch (which you get automatically redirected to and it's highlighted at least on Samsung phones) the first time installing from whichever app source (Chrome/FDroid/etc).
4. Click install
Other than step 1, the user is led through the process via prompts, and step 3 only has to be done once per source. i.e. the first time you install from FDroid, after that you just click install without any nags or scare screens.
As far as I remember the "enable sideloading" switch in settings has always been a thing, and the per source setting was added at least 5+ years ago.
It looks really cool
Yeah, it has a bump. Thicker phones have a bump too. It's still less volume in your pocket.
Also, it looks really cool.
The Air and Pro are essentially the same with a different skin. It’s a big deal imo as the phone itself is practically modular. It’s pretty brilliant as they can make the computer part in China and Taiwan and probably ship that unit to various locales for different form factors.
I am personally interested because I have found iPhones to be offensively bulky for... 10+ years, and this has the potential to feel differently.
the argument that the bump defeats the purpose of a thin phone is only true if you're trying to squeeze it through a narrow gap in a rigid object.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/09/all-of-the-iphone-17-model...
I wouldn't be surprised if discomfort from having a bulky phone in your pocket drives this.
I am also guilty of buying a bag (not this kind) for my phone because it's so much more comfortable (and makes my trousers last longer) to not have my phone in my pocket.
https://www.gq.com/story/best-fanny-packs
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/covid-times-h...
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/run/fanny-packs-s...
I'd believe this is an area where even a few millimeters of thickness makes a real difference in how much the phone in pocket stands out despite the overall footprint being larger? Will be curious to read once people get their hands on the things.
iPhone Air is at 165g. I'll get ~72% of the weight and be able to comfortably use the device without getting tired.
Sample size of one and all that apply, of course.
signed, apple CFO
(Also to those who say not enough people wanted a mini phone to be worth producing: I submit the case of Prego chunky pasta sauce. Not many people want a chunky pasta sauce, but you sell a whole lot more pasta sauce in total if you sell both regular and chunky pasta sauce. Malcolm Gladwell has a TED talk about this.)
There are always a bunch of us who wants a smaller phone, but the sales number indicates that we are the minority.
To some extend I also think it explains the increasingly thin phones. With the increases in screen size, they need to make the phones thinner, otherwise it would feel like a brick in your pocket.
You're right that it was good sales figures for a smartphone, but not great for an iPhone.
I presume the problem is that iPhones are a lot more expensive to produce than tomato sauce, and it's a lot more difficult to get rid of the ones that people don't buy.
What’s lagging for you? I haven’t noticed anything even remotely slow on this phone.
Not my experience, but I tend to blame the web rather than my phone when things get laggy. I estimate that my 13 is about in the middle of its life, barring unexpected rapid deceleration events.
https://imgur.com/a/iphone-mini-vs-iphone-5-vs-iphone-6-case...
By expressing disappointment with the absence of a mini on every single new iPhone announcement, you’re basically ignoring the fact that Apple and other phone makers understand that small form factor phones are dead as a mainstream product.
Screenreaders are also dead as a mainstream product.
Phones with a German language setting are dead as a mainstream product.
However, there are various people with severe disabilities like being blind, being german, and having small hands, so we should produce phones that are appropriate for all of those groups, and yet only the former two are serviced (even though there are more people with small hands than there are germans).
Sent from an iPhone mini, which is already about an inch too big for my hands.
No phone company is releasing a flagship SFF phone because there simply is no mainstream consumer demand for one. In fact, demand has been dead for many years now.
Good for you that you have a iPhone mini, but I would wager you won’t be seeing a new mini model anytime soon. Unless of course mainstream consumer demands shift, at which point HN dreams will become reality once more.
What is for certain is that complaining about this on every phone-related HN thread will not help change anything.
Smaller phones as an idea isn't the problem here. Companies just don't want to make equivalent smaller phones. Making a new phone every single year is a stupid trend that causes min-max effects. A good small phone will eat into profits that's harder to make up in a yearly cycle. People will not buy nerfed smaller phones which is a positive feedback cycle.
I want to believe this too but you have to look at iPhone sales numbers
Also last I checked the "mini" phones weren't particularly mini, phones just got bigger.
That's for a used, 4 year old phone...
For a device that's "cheap to pick up", it's holding it's value more than any other iPhone.
And Instagram (or any other "fake universe" which pushes video-quality as a minimal requirement) algos, favor content made with a newer/better/bigger (thus more expensive) phone.
How come there's close-to-0 improvements about audio quality (both recording and listening) with respect to visual technologies?
Make the audio counterpart of Instagram/Tiktok and I'll chime in right away.
But pop-people (and markets) are mostly interested in visuals at the moment.
And for audio-sensitive people like me, it's almost a blessing.
I have an old original SE, that I used to use for low-end testing, but it tops out at iOS15.
Currently, my Mini13 is my low-end test, but I’ll probably need to get a new phone, sooner or later (“later” works for me).
The reason why we have such big smartphones is that the ratio of screensize (2d area) to battery size (3d volume) is better for bigger smart phones.
When it was time for another phone upgrade in the iPhone 15 era (because phones really don't change enough anymore to warrant more frequent upgrades than that), there was no mini option anymore. I wonder if others were like me. The Mini came out at a time where people were hesitant to try a new form factor because they couldn't try it in stores.
Why would you go from 12 mini to 13 mini, or to the concurrently released SEs if your phone still works?
I am also still holding on to my 13 mini. I would not have upgraded to the 14, 15 or 16mini even if they existed. I will upgrade at some point, and that point is when it either dies, or important apps stop working on the last iOS version supported by the hardware.
I for one hate how even the 17 pro is creeping up in size compared to the 15 pro.
A few people say it very loudly and nobody else does.
People do think that being able to use the phone with just one hand is cool, but most people, even small-handed people, like to have a big screen to watch stuff on.
The fact that Apple was absolutely schizophrenic about its non-phablet market, introducing the iPhone mini 13 and iPhone SE 2022 at the same time, is utterly irrelevant to that point.
It's like a LTR (Long term release) iPhone.
I know there are Apple Engineers lurking here, start the whisper campaign!
So I might reluctantly grab one of the new ones.
Might be worth trying to get the battery replaced at Apple.
Extra bonus: while it does cost money in theory, every time I've gotten Apple to replace the battery they end up breaking the screen, so I get a battery and phone replacement for free. 12 mini battery replacements _might_ be de facto free.
The reason why we have such big smartphones is that the ratio of screensize (2d area) to battery size (3d volume) is better for bigger smart phones.
And his main issue with skin undertones is because he picked a photographic style he doesn't like. The camera app both asks you to pick one the first time you use it, and lets you edit it on photos after you've taken them.
I think the color on the Sony camera is a little too cold and makes them all look unrealistically unhealthy.
Well, that's a relief.
Stop. Making. Things. Thinner.
With something like https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HRY02LL/A/anker-maggo-pow..., you get a magsafe battery that doubles the life of an iPhone and can be independently recharged, and is so slim that I can put it in my pocket attached to my iPhone and not notice.
The wireless battery just slows the drain unless my phone is totally idle while charging. I really don't think wireless charging is very effective, at least it hasn't been with my 3yo phone and magnetic battery (even when both were new).
I want a think iPhone with week-long battery life and the battery being easily serviceable, replaceable and ideally some unified standard one that I can buy from any decent vendor. That would be great to have. I hope we’ll come there eventually, since today phones could serve till they physically dead. If you make batteries easily serviceable, plus no software cripple with planned obsolescence.
Granted old button phones booted so fast it wasnt that different from starting. So doing that was overkill.
While a phone with removable battery, like it was normal back in the days, you just buy whatever number of batteries you want, when the battery is dead you replace it, and you instantly have a 100% charged phone in a matter of 10 seconds. It's surely better than a MagSafe, than a powerbank, etc.
I don’t want to deal with losing it. I don’t want to deal with carrying around 2 chargers/cables or charging both at the same time. I want the efficiencies of everything built together and not transmitted through casings
I genuinely don't know what you're complaining about.
You're not going to lose it. It's attached. You don't need 2 chargers or 2 cables. It reverse charges wirelessly via the phone when it's plugged in.
It's an option. People usually want options, but you're complaining you only want things the way you want them, and not let other people have different options...?
It's not going to last you all week though. That's not going to just be thick, it's going to be a cube heavy enough to double up as a weapon.
I found a deal on a Moto Edge 2024 and it’s fantastic. It’s so light and compact vs the Moto G Power, and still can go two full days no problem. The camera is excellent as well, which was my only real gripe with the G phones.
It can plug into my USB-C monitor and act like a Chromebook (more or less). I play Minecraft with my kids this way.
It seems they are often peeling away useful features, which then you have to replace - yielding a worse experience often.
Small screen, thick, durable, good battery. Would pay $
If few people would buy it, Apple won't produce it. I think the Air will flop for this reason.
It’s gonna be the iPhone Voyager.
(Yes, to be fair, there is more to this new phone than just "impossibly thin".)
It's 0.16mm thicker than the Air. I've got to admit it was surprisingly pleasant to hold.
I even did a low key bend test and it did not bend, but I literally had store security walk up to me and ask me not to do that.
So I suppose there already is a phone with an analogous form factor.
It just spurred the rage that we still haven't adopted metric in the US -- even after spending a good chunk of the 1970s learning it in school and being promised metric would be the new measurement standard.
In all seriousness everybody still probably needs to learn it in school, because the scientific literature is entirely in metric. Even papers authored by Americans and published by, e.g., the American Chemical Society, all use µg/mg/g/kg and µm/mm/cm/m for their measurements. If you don't have an intuitive understanding of those measurements, you can run into visualization problems.
(It wasn't even told to me that it was the default for most of the world. It was disappointing to learn later how much resistance to metric there was in the U.S.)
Moving the needle on what units people use conversationally is what's hard.
And then Reagan showed up just in time to save us from that Commie nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Metric_Board
Are you suggesting they did this because they expected it to bend because it was thin? If so, I doubt it. Regardless of thickness, I suspect security would ask someone not to physically damage their devices.
I say this as someone that owns 2 MacBooks Pros, an Apple TV and an iPhone.
But mostly one thing that's difficult for us to evaluate is whether this is "at scale and profitably". On the competitors' side anyway. The Honor seems to be a $2000 phone (higher even than Google's foldable!) - probably before tariffs, not clear. How many will sell? What margin will Honor make on this? Hard to tell although it would be possible to dig the historical numbers.
I'm curious if the new shinies will make him want to upgrade. If it was just iPhone 14, revision 4, I doubt he would care.
I generally like and buy Apple stuff, but yeah, I'm weary as hell. I don't do subscriptions and I don't like the tech bros--agree 100% with the rant on here about how crappy everything has become--"enshitification."
Yes. I have at least two co-workers that have stated (we will see if they follow through) that they are going to move from their current phones (13 Pro and 15 Pro) to the Air because of the thinness.
I'm strapping phone to my arms during runs; for me, shaving off those extra grams count. Bought an Infinix specifically for this reason. I didn't specifically look for the thinnest but it came the the most lightweight.
Their process seems pretty similar to their approach with unibody MacBooks or the original MacBook Air, both of which were introduced long before imitators were their primary competition.
One qualifier would be "at scale and profitably."
But for more detail, yes, the situation has changed over time and probably the reasoning has changed over time.
McGee spends a lot of time on the difficulty for Apple R&D to keep up with Apple design bureau's demands. To the point that Apple execs arrive at decisions that for the sake of internal peace and meeting deadlines, Apple Industrial Design is not to make arbitrary demands (like they used to) and must consider manufacturing realities. Which still leaves Manufacturing struggling at every step to keep up. So - usually - manufacturing is very much pushed to the edge of what's possible by Design. Even though Apple teach China phone manufacturing (again "at scale and profitably"). Design are the ones pushing. Whether Design is really concerned with keeping ahead of competitors... is not explicitely told by Apple people. They do seem to love "impossible". In my recollection, it's more McGee's observations and conclusion.
Apple mainland China companies competition has also been a widely varying quantity. In part due to Chinese fashion trends and in part due to Apple political difficulties in China (which come and go). Underlying should be "at scale and profitably": Apple rightly shouldn't care if a few exotic phones come out. That wouldn't matter to their bottom line. They are described as caring when there is a flood of matching phones coming out - and even then with some latency.
Overall btw, "Apple in China" is fantastic. With massive amounts of local color and "story viewed from the Apple China people's side". Lots of bits that were missed if you mostly followed Apple from the side of what we see in the US.
Congrats to Apple for finally designing out Broadcom and vertically integrating the wireless chip
The Aqara Hub M100 is a nice cheap Thread border router.
TLDR: privacy, security.
I mostly use Eve devices. My AppleTV serves as the hub and I keep it plugged into Ethernet. HomePods scattered about keep the mesh strong.
The standard 17 and Pro seems very much the great product they always are. Incremental refinement. Don't like it? Get one 1-2 generations older. My iPhone 11 still feels very much good enough (which I imagine must be terrible for Apple). Perhaps their idea is that you can't just refine the 15-16-17 every year. You need to try _something_ else, or eventually people will stop paying attention?
Also, as long as we retain an actual Pro version that is willing to be a bit chunkier, I don't see any issue in having an Air line for casual users, maybe that will be the way mainstream devices go with future efficiency gains, similar to the MacBook Air now being "good enough" for most people. Silicon-carbon batteries will likely enable some of that pretty soon, suspect that like with GaN, the supply chain cannot handle Apple level demands yet. Remember, the original three MacBook Airs were beyond compromised too.
Just don't fall into the trap of making the Pro thinner, akin to the 2016 MacBook Pro disaster. Keep the iPhone Pros like the current MacBook Pros chunky for those who actually use these devices and we are golden in my book.
To add to this, it's often said that research can only take you so far, at some point you have to ship something to get the opinions and hands on from a wider audience of users to make further discoveries and improvements.
I think Apple has come to terms with the fact that people are no longer upgrading their phones every 1-2 years. They are probably happy just to keep you in the Apple ecosystem where they can sell you apps, services, accessories, other compatible apple products - and hopefully get your repeat business when you do one day feel the need to upgrade.
Thinness has not been an issue in the last 10-15 years.
A thin phone is also very hard to hold, it kind of flips in your hand.
It's the difference between stated and revealed preference. Phones kept getting larger and larger because larger phones sold better.
Though apparently we have hit the sweet spot a while ago, as phone size is stable now.
There is no year in which the larger size sold better than the mainstream size. Ever.
You are literally just making shit up.
That claim is demonstrably false. Whether attendant facts like adjusting for price point lead to a subtler inference does not change the absolute fact that the proposition is not consistent with reality.
So while I didn’t say “I wish my phone was thinner”, I did say many times “this should weigh about half of what it actually weighs”.
Pixel 1 (143g)
Pixel 3 (148g)
Pixel 5 (151g)
Pixel 8 (187g)
Pixel 9 Pro (198g)
Of course the displays of these models get bigger which presumably contributes to the weight increase. But still, you'd think parts get lighter over time, not heavier.
I'm just guessing, but I would assume that parts get _smaller_ (so, maybe lighter but not in a "less dense" way) but any space gained is taken up by new parts for new functionality or extra battery
It is the best iPhone I owned (3, 6s).
But yeah, spotlight is slow and the phone constantly runs out of storage, so apps need to be deleted before installing updates and least used apps are constantly removed. Additionally the screens are way better now and you do see the difference with photos made on an iPhone 16. I guess I'll upgrade late this year when I am sure the 17 (pro?) is a reliable piece of hardware, like my iPhone XS is.
Just going to keep this one until they make something similar again.
I'll stick to my almost-4-years-old 13 mini as long as I can. Probably will change battery before original batteries are too hard to get hold of
especially if you're signed into an account that manages your phone. As we discovered its perfectly possible (or was) to remote wipe a personal android phone if they are signed in using your company google account.
but less paranoid-ly it means you can put your workphone physically else where so you are not tempted to "check in" or have out of hours fun ruin your time off.
How is this better than just having PagerDuty/Incident.io/whatever and receiving pings there? You are disrupting your time anyway, but having an extra phone for that seems redundant.
You can also tell from the side profile images on the Apple website. Drawing a straight line from the lens to the bottom edge of the phone doesn't cross or touch the edge of the "plateau", by a good bit.
Gotta say it would drive me nuts to have a phone that didn't lay flat and couldn't therefore be put down safely on the edge of the sink etc.
1. Create a problem.
2. Sell the solution.
3. Profit.
I seriously don't understand this (common) complaint that I see. If anything a slight tilt makes the screen a bit more readable.
That would definitely be a problem.
So don't take this at face value, it's just a prelude to a foldable phone next year.
The first Apple Watch Ultra wasn't the Apple Watch Series 8 Ultra. Subsequent Ultras follow their own versioning. The same with the SE, Air Pod Pros, iPad Air, and so on.
But there is no macbook pro 2, macbook air 2, or iphone se 2
Or perhaps a prelude to small, triangle-shaped phone that users stick on a shirt or lapel, and tap to activate.
https://startrekshop.ca/products/star-trek-the-next-generati...
NO BODY cares about the thickness!!! I want something that I can hold like the iPhone 5!!!! Or iPod touch size!! Don't want a big screen to watch netflix!!!
This is freaking phone for god sake, back in the old iphone days there were a balance.
Stuff like this is what turns me back to dump phone. I want a phone, not a freaking computer in my hand!
It's the peril of being a niche customer. I can and have voted with my wallet, but it doesn't nudge the needle anyway.
Even people who do take photos often would probably gladly sacrifice some image quality to loose that massive thing on the back of the phone. The thinness of the phone almost make it look worse as long as that camera sticks out like that; like a huge watch with a thin strap or something...
Sounds similar to the iPhone 4, still my favorite of all the form factors in terms of "hand feel". It was the right thickness for me, just a bit heavy for it's size. If they refreshed it to reduce weight and extended the screen to the borders I think it would be amazing
I was comparing models and probably the “next similar” would be an 16e but I really don’t want the “apple intelligence” - I’ve got my own thanks.
It’s a pity that the SE is going the way of the dodo and dinos - much better phone than a mini-tablet. I still miss my iPhone 3 and the rounded corners and solid aluminium back. Good times.
Other iPhone models are giant walkie-talkies for me. They need one hand to hold them and another to type text or slide the screen.
PS: It was a dirt cheap price as the selling guy needs money for iPhone 16
1. Biggest is that Apple can finally tell if people really want a thinner phone (I don’t). Maybe once they find out the answer, they can finally start using the space more productively.
2. They mentioned local LLM in passing, but this is the biggest possible selling point of the executives actually back real work on making them consumer-level easy. Have a LLM marketplace. Let users sub-train with their own ideas and local data. Enable users to privately and safely port their personal LLMs to their next Apple. Apple has the best most efficient hardware available and they have it in millions of pockets. It’s about time they use that to become the dominant phone and personal device maker. Instead of focusing on anorexic phones.
The iPhone 14 Pro was noticeably heavy, but the switch to titanium the following year made the 15 Pro feel way lighter. The only difference was 206 grams -> 187 grams, but you'd swear it was 25% lighter.
The apple watch ultra is thicker and overall bigger than the regular one in the name of better battery life, and people that don't need that buy the regular one. Win win!
Now I'm curious to do the math.
The iPhone 16 Pro's volume (not counting camera bump, you don't hold that in your hand anyway) is 149.6 x 71.5 * 8.25 = 88,245.3mm^3
Bumping the thickness to 12.55mm you end up with 149.6 x 71.5 * 12.55 = 134,239.82mm^3
A 52% increase in volume.
In the Pro Max you'd go from 104,352.6mm^3 to 158,742.44mm^3
The iPhone Minis sold millions of units and Apple still determined it wasn't enough to justify existing. I'd bet a big brick iPhone would be far more niche. I'd certainly like to see one and hold it in my hands but I think you can see why Apple wouldn't go for that.
My personal favorite would be that style with modern chips and a full glass display. Basically an updated mini without a camera bump.
They'll never make this though because the minis proved the market is tiny.
I also don't care about weight, up to a point. No phone I've owned in the last 25 years has felt too heavy.
It will be much more grippier and easier to hold. The weight part is very subjective of course.
I'm not comfortable with lighter models for example and always have to buy a case simple to feel the phone in my hand.
But yeah, I know you are right and the market has spoken. I accept this however begrudgingly.
I've seen one guy attach an ECG lead to the back so that he could lay the phone down without the camera part touching the surface. As a bonus you could spin the device on it.
> if they made a phone where the camera bump is made flush by adding thickness elsewhere to match, filled with extra battery
Phones should not have fans.
I will most likely upgrade to an 11S around this time next year. The other factors that drew me to it were the huge (6500mAh) battery, a real analog headphone jack (used daily with my Etymotic ER4XR), and no dumbass notch cut out of the screen.
Cant a case do this for you?
I'd be at least INTERESTED in seeing what my iPhone 15 Pro Max would look like without a case and with a built-in battery that made it not have a camera hump.
It's going to be so painful if the answer is yes.
They would need to sell two otherwise equivalent new models att the same time where one is thicker for that.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MH004ZM/A/iphone-air-bump...
It's $39, but if it's indeed rigid as the description implies, then it may be a legit option for drop protection without compromising the thinness.
The sides can be made grippier and the back of the phone left slippery, so the in-out of pocket experience is nice, while the grippier parts fit in the palm when in use.
The added thickness on the border is also a welcome affordance, and as your fingertips are on the thinner back it feels thin still.
To me it's kinda the best of both world.
Which makes the marketing feel a bit incongruent with what we've gotten here. It's not noticeably more lightweight than what is currently offered, it's less featureful than the 17, but more expensive than the 17 (albeit perhaps prettier).
It seems like engineering failed to make a true superlight in its class despite narratively trying to re-evoke what we really did experience with the original MacBook Air. Instead we got an elegant up sized 16e priced like a Pro.
It's just odd to me that despite its price it feels closer to a superthin upscaled e, rather than a superthin upscaled 17 or instead being extralight. Now I imagine they didn't have a lot of weight to lose given how optimized for weight phone components were already. The Air branding just had me hoping they had a bigger engineering statement to make than what they did.
Granted I loved the 13 mini and that didn't sell so who knows.
Apple focusing on thinness is proof to me a foldable phone is next.
Seriously. Take a look at the foldable touchscreen phones that do exist. "Because" is the only answer.
And most people are like me, which you will see in a few years, when foldable sales take off.
And if you’re going to ask why a bigger screen? It’s the same reason your laptop or desktop isn’t 7” wide.
Sorry, how is applying less force more dangerous?
(in general, wish the force meters would be widespread so that iFixit kit just had a monitor with a number and a beeper once you reach the needed force level)
It is almost as good as the (smaller) first gen iPhone SE with the physical button.
- Sony Xperia 10 VI
- Sharp Aquos sense8
- Ulefone Armor Mini
With the last one being the only one that is actually small, the former are just "not that big".
It's the "market data reveals that consumers actually want the cheapest shittiest airplane tickets" of drugs. And you can read that in a couple different ways.
This should not require spending 1000-1500USD on a phone.
Im doing all of the above with a iPhone SE for what i paid like 300-350USD for.
Second hand phones are even cheaper, just change the battery and you are good to go.
You can still do everything you mentioned on a $150 phone, which exists in parts of the world. If anything, one could complain that the $150 phone still takes pictures worse than an iPhone 5
Your comment is like complaining about luxury handbags when cheap ones exist too.
I don't know what you're suggesting. Companies shouldn't make expensive versions of things even when there are consumers who want to buy them?
You should also realize that it's people buying the expensive versions of things that helps subsidize the cheaper ones made by the same company. And it's the quality Apple is providing that even makes a secondhand market viable, because their devices last much more than other brands.
https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare
Also, It's a bummer that they didn't launch something for the mini series. I prefer smaller screens that fit into my pocket, I don't care about thinness. 13-mini will be the last iPhone I can upgrade to in a few years, after that I'll have to look into other phones
Another thing that stuck out, what's the point with having such a thin phone, yet the camera system points out? I would much prefer a complete flat backside
I'll vote with my wallet
Interesting. So apart of camera and battery life, the upgrade from iphone 12 mini to iphone 17 is unimpressive and for someone like me who likes smaller sized phones and don't care about refresh rate (my goal is to decrease my screen time rather then increase), its actually a downgrade.
I’m probably just holding it wrong.
The perfect form factor. Touch ID instead of Face ID. It's the absolute pinnacle of the iPhone models, based on the iPhone 6.
I don't understand why I can't just have this same phone with a slightly better camera. That's all I want.
Just make it configurable yknow
Instead you are stuck with the OS, and security updates, that were out a year before you bought it. And you can't install LineageOS either.
I’ve said this many times when this came up.
The Mini didn’t fail because it was too small. It failed because it wasn’t small enough.
I want a small phone that I can use single-handedly. A smaller screen is a tradeoff. The Mini had the disadvantage of a smaller screen plus the disadvantage of not being usable with a single hand. Because of that, I never bought one - if I’m going to be handicapped anyway, I’d rather have a larger screen.
I've never seen a preference like this, in real life. Usually the thing closest to what you want is the preferred option. You're suggesting there's a hump in the preference curve, pushing people away from their preference, buying a larger phone than the smallest, when they "want" a smaller one.
I have trouble believing this is true. Do you have any other example of this type of preference curve? I suppose the "uncanny valley" may be one, but that seems more understandable.
Small phone vs. larger phone is a very simple tradeoffs calculation.
Large phone: good screen, bad ergonomics Small phone: small (thus worse) screen, best ergonomics
I'm willing to pick the second option above.
Unfortunately the Mini is somewhere in the middle: smaller screen than the larger phone - thus worse in that aspect -, combined with worse ergonomics than an actually small phone. It's the worst of both worlds.
I don't know about other things, but ever since the iPhone 5 I've been wanting another model that I could use with a single hand. The Mini was never that, so why would I sacrifice a good feature (larger screen) for... nothing in return?
It's not like enlarging the screen where you can at least generalize it by scaling everything up and it's still useable.
With shrinking screens, you have to decide on tap target and content size minimums. It's quite an undertaking that needs to pay in the market.
The size is fine. But why they gotta handicap cameras?
All I want is a mini-sized phone with max's camera. Is that so much to ask for?
At this point I'm strongly considering ditching the iPhone and going Watch + Fujifilm Camera. Maybe keep an old phone at home to manage the watch.
Actually, yes. The mini already has limited space to work with, they had already to shrink the MB, the battery. It would take much more effort to put a pro camera into it. Also those camera do heat up.
Personally, i think the camera setup on ip13mini is fine.
Give me 3" iPhone. That would be mini.
This is a very funny typo, considering the topic at hand.
But yeah, I think I stopped being happy with phone sizes when they started going beyond 4" or so. It's hilarious to me that they can make a phone that's ~5.5" and call it "mini".
I'm an Android guy, and had high hopes for https://smallandroidphone.com/, but the guy who was originally driving it is running his resurrected Pebble company now, and there's been basically no useful activity in the Discord for at least a couple years now, so I assume it's dead.
In any case, the Apple Watch has a much smaller screen and absolutely horrendous ergonomics for everything but the simplest use cases.
So, to answer your question: no.
The correlation I saw a while back during one of the debates about the trend towards phablets was it depended a lot on your usage patterns.
Are you someone who tends to use your phone while sitting down? Larger form factor
Are you someone who tends to use your phone standing up, especially while walking? Smaller form factor.
You have absolutely no idea how many people are curious which iPhone I have
Yeah, I've noticed this. Many women also wear clothing where they either have no pockets at all, or the pockets are more decorative than functional, small enough that a truly small phone would have trouble fitting (certainly not the 5.5" iPhone "mini", which is hardly mini at all).
[edit] I'll answer my own question. Nobody is going to replace an iPhone because it drops from 21 days battery to 14 days battery, but they probably will replace an iPhone that drops from 21 hours battery to 14 hours.
Air could’ve been the perfect mini replacement. Same width, but higher.
But no.. why get the air when the pro has so much more of everything, and is only 100 more
The GSM Arena review is mostly about the confusion of whether it should still be considered a phone at this size. Ultimately they decide it's just too damn big for a phone.[1].
It had a 5" screen.
Screen diameter is in general a bit misleading figure for phones from different generations as "full screen" phones tend to have a taller aspect ratio and hence larger diameter even with same body dimensions.
Not small enough to be worth the tradeoffs though.
I'm sorry, but the market has spoken. And there's Android phones in that form factor if you really want it.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula...
I'm genuinely interested. Which ones?
Back to reality, Apple sells close to 200 billion worth of iPhones per year, so yeah, maybe they know what they're doing?
They could build a small town with all things you can imagine, cars, cinemas, hospitals, schools, whatever then get people to live there for months and use whatever new device prototypes they plan to launch a year later, and have an army of analysts even looking at their damn micro-expressions each time they pick up their phones in different ways and all of that might come down to like 50 million a year, which is like 0.05% of their revenue.
Apple is not anymore a startup where two/three guys make major decisions out of intuition (they ousted Ive because of that), again, this is a 2 trillion dollar company, they're not just vibing, lmao.
I wonder if they still still have a stupid camera notch on the device. They is no point (to me) have a thin phone even you end up having a 5mm notch the size of your phone
I have an iPhone 11 which also has a camera bump and the experience of typing while the phone is on a flat surface is laughably annoying. For a company that prides itself on design aesthetics, it is honestly an embarrassing miss.
Basically, whenever I sit down at my desk, I always have my phone sitting there, too. That's how I keep tabs on my personal life during work. But it works much better in Android:
* The Always On display came to Pixels a long time ago, so it was very useful to have your lock screen showing the date, time, and what sort of notifications you have.
* The notification management is just light years better in Android, so you don't have to even unlock your phone all the time to see what's going on.
* The Swiping keyboard was introduced a long time ago in Android, and is far superior in my experience, to the iPhone one, so it's pretty tolerable to type up quick things with the phone lying flat on the surface.
I'm actually kind of surprised that you don't interact with your phone on a desk or table. Do you just leave it in your pocket all day? Do you leave it on your desk, too, but just find it too cumbersome to deal with there and are constantly picking it up?
Now the Air has a bump that is so big no case can hide it without also being unreasonably thicc, breaking the trend. I wonder what a case mfg could stuff into the awkward space on the peninsula where the camera is missing so the case provides a uniform surface when laying flat, even if that means a bigger bump on the top when cased. The phone would have a natural angle towards the user, that's kinda nice. Maybe a little bluetooth speaker setup so owners of the Air can more efficiently irritate their fellow passengers.
I've been hoping for Apple to return to "thin" and it's nice that they're trying. I don't know whether I would buy this, but my current iPhone 14 Pro feels like a brick — thick stainless steel
When I go for a run, it's uncomfortable to have in a pocket depending on what running clothes I am wearing. The heaviness makes it feel far more likely to break all the times I have dropped it (and I have dropped it many times, without a case)
What do you need battery life for?
Aren’t you in your house or office or car near a charger most of the day?
Do you spend 90% of your waking day in the middle of an open field far from any sort of charging capabilities?
Why would I add more weight to a phone so I don’t have to put it on the charging MagSafe puck that is inches away from me at all times
Battery life isn't just about runtime it's also about the number of cyles you will be able to do before you have to deal with the bullshit that is iPhone battery replacement.
There is objectively no good reason to prefer that compromise appart from the "feeling" factor, which is not a reason by definition.
If get the battery compromise in the mini iPhones (even thought they could have just made them a bit thicker without changing much of the feel/functionality) because that's part of the deal with the form factor but going with a very large display only to make the phone thinner is beyond stupid.
And it's more expensive when most of the specs sheet is equal or worse.
I don't think the average person sits at home for 90% of the day doing nothing but using their phone and resting it on a magsafe.
But I could be wrong!
Either way, I'm pretty sure that's not the lifestyle Apple wants to market their phone to.
But I could be wrong there, too!
but yeah, everywhere around all day there is charging options easily even in many public transports here around europe, battery life is simply not a convern anymore for most people at all. the only time i even thin kis when I forgot recharging over night for some reason, but then in the office theres plenty of options to recharge too
Those who commute to and from work by car can charge in the car
Those who work in an office can charge at the office
Those who are at school can charge at school
A charger is like $50
Why would I carry around a brick in my pocket instead to save a few chargers
How does that make any sense
Also my iPhone 14 Pro lasts a full day 90% of my days on 1 charge
I use my iPad or MacBook most of the day for work or am driving
The vast majority of western society is in one of those settings most of the day
Planes also have charging ports
Trains have charging ports
If you are at the gym you can have a MagSafe portable charger in your gym bag that charges your phone when you hit the showers
Give me a few examples of who actually isn’t near a charger for 8 hours at a time
A full time skier or surfer?
I can’t think of the groups of people who need such long battery life
As someone who's been all around the world and goes places every week, I'd take a battery that lasts all day and charges when I sleep over needing to stop and try to get another 5% of charge wherever I can and constantly being on the lookout for chargers.
Also, people go into nature. We take hikes and walks in the park. It's nice to have a map there. It's also not easy to charge in the middle of the forest. And there are lots of people outside and needing good batteries. Nobody is staying home 90% of the time.
It does not seem Apple cares about customers being too stubborn to not want to use any of the many options to juice up a phone mid day
I guess those users can get the iPhone max and not have to charge all day. So you’ll be fine
Seriously?
Where are people consuming so much content that they need more than 10 hours of screen time per charge
Just doom scrolling in the middle of a field for 600 straight minutes until their phones die?
It's when you need the phone the most that battery life matters and it's usually when you are very far from your common routine/habits.
When you are in holydays in a foreign city, constantly taking pictures, looking up stuff, using GPS to find places, this is when battery life is the most needed and relevant. Inconveniently, it's exactly the times where it will be hard to find a convenient power sources, exactly when you don't have time to wait in a single spot to let your phone charge and precisely when it's a pain in the ass to have to deal with external batteries and other half-assed inconvenient "solutions".
It makes a huge difference.
But Apple doesn't sell useful technology anymore, they are in the business of selling high end luxury fashion, that sometimes cosplay as technology, so whatever I guess...
When travelling how? By car you have a cable charger or wireless charger in 99% of cars I’ve been in
Planes have plugs Trains have plugs Ubers have plugs
It seems like that is a once in a while occurrence for you
In which case you’d be better off with a thin phone the vast majority of other days and pack a thin MagSafe charger for those once in a blue moon travel days and it would just be slightly thicker than a thick phone while the vast other days you’d have a thin phone
No, thanks, I have up to 5 days of the runtime, I don't need a paperthin phone which I need to babysit.
For the people who are at home 90% of the time, they're probably not using a phone the whole time. They'd be better served by a desktop.
the small battery won't affect me much. web browsing is the most demanding workload on my phone, which is not a problem on this a19 soc unlike the 13 mini whose soc struggles to keep up. i also charge my phone every night before i go to sleep and these phones do a great job at not draining overnight.
Somebody (many somebodies?) is rolling over in his grave.
"lying flat on a table" is a critical feature for a device that on a daily basis lays on the table.
If it clanks and thuds every time you press it (and pressing it is the only way to use it) while lying on the table, then it is bad design that should be addressed.
But I came up using Nexus/Pixels, which had an "always on" display very early, a great UI around "glanceability" putting all kinds of useful and interesting things front and center, a much better Swipe keyboard, and a much more functional notifications experience, so maybe that trained this behavior.
Do you not? Do you just... leave your phone in your pocket all day?
They likely offer the battery pack to make people feel more comfortable who don’t ready the specs but just make an assumption based on looks.
Maybe pretty good for a thin device that they made so thin for no good reason at all. Making it so thin is not something to be proud of, and we certainly shouldn't let it slide as an excuse for bad battery life.
I mean, when did "remarkable all‑day battery life" become something to be proud of? I consider a phone that doesn't last a full day defective. All-day battery life is the bare minimum, not something to be proud of.
WOW. You managed to make a cardboard box without using Chinese factories! Very impressive, Tim Apple!!
When companies try smaller phones, like the iPhone 13 mini, they don't seem to sell very well. So the companies stop making them.
Hm, i'd consider it (if i was upgrading yet again).
Why? My 15 Pro (not-Max) gets way too hot way too fast doing basically nothing and it p*sses me off - so, i'd rather not (yet?) take a bet if the new 17 Pro (Max) does better with an entire new thermal design - considering _something_ is _always_ off with new Apple hardware designs, starting with the iPhone 4...
For now my 13 Mini works perfectly fine so I'm in no rush, but when the time comes, I'm going going to buy a massive device that I can't comfortable use with a single hand.
What I don't like about iPhones in terms of practicality is that the corner camera makes it impossible to lay them on a table without wobbling. Google does a better job with its Pixel phones.
The unfortunate part is that you can make anything better in a single parameter, but Apple has effectively no competitors. People who buy Apple will continue to buy Apple.
For people to switch, the competition has to come out with something that is visibly and unbeatably better than what Apple has.
I know many people in developing countries who'd rather have a 5 year old iPhone than a new android.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_8850/8890
The Motorola Razr of course was part of this trend too:
That is...weird? Why would the Air's design prevent that?
When Camera Control was introduced on iPhone 16, Apple moved the 5G mmWave antenna to pass through the back glass of the iPhone, that way it was no longer something you needed to see.
Now though, with iPhone 17 Pro – that can’t work. The iPhone is now largely made of aluminum, requiring Apple to revert to an old design technique: a glass cutout for 5G mmWave passthrough
On my current iPhone 13 Pro I can get about 100 Mbps in San Francisco.
I have seen 2+ Gbps over mmWave.
"Regular" 5G can do hundreds of Mbps, maybe even 1 Gbps under ideal conditions.
At least in my daily use, it means nothing. I've also never seen speeds like that when I've tested the phone.
I assume the cases for iPhone Air will be 100 dollars.
iPhone Ass Pro, for those with a larger ass.
Like the iPad which many said is useless and just a bigger iPhone and so far Apple has sold ~500,000,000 iPads
I view my phone primarily as something I'm obligated to carry on myself at all times to function in modern society. The easier it is to carry the better. When I need to upgrade my phone, I'll always choose the smallest iPhone by weight.
I was quite surprised to see this entire thread full of HN users who apparently want some brick phone to doom scroll lying flat on a table all day until the battery dies.
I'm considering it. I'm not particularly married to the thinness. But I like the lightness.
I'm not an avid photographer. And I don't put a case on my phones. The only real tradeoffs I need to look into is processing and battery life.
https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_mate_xt_ultimate-review-2808...
HN is mostly male. We need the opinion of the women that put a lot of effort into their appearance. Not wishing to over-generalise, but they need a thin phone that takes awesome selfies and shows that they are higher status than those with old fashioned bulky phones. Apple have ticked the boxes and they have probably booked out all the prime advertising spots to reach this demographic.
I went from someone who had to have the latest phone on pre-order to someone who doesn't bother: this is the first time I'm considering a new phone release in years. I suspect many other people are in the same boat.
I'm just not sure if I'll miss 3 cameras too much.
Not enough for me to upgrade, but I would consider this one if I were buying this year
The rumors are also strong for a folding iPhone next year, in which case this may just be them using the same thinness work they already had to do for that. A foldable would prompt me to upgrade
I think we are on the same path here, thinner is not what I want. I want a powerhouse that can run AI for at least 48 hours on the worst conditions, a week at least in an ideal scenario.
* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_pf_768-108.php
* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_t10s-115.php
* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_gf_788e-110.php
And Motorola had the smallest/lightest phones at the premium end of the market, with the StarTAC line.
* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_gf_788e-110.php
* https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_startac_85-74.php
In the end I realised that size was not the most important factor for me so instead I got a Motorola 8700 [1] which I didn't enjoy using, then sold it shortly after to get a Nokia 5110 [2] which I liked very much.
[1] https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co80944...
https://www.businessinsider.com/drug-dealers-are-buying-noki...
https://photogallery.indiatimes.com/gadgets/phones/most-icon...
Yes I forgot about Ericsson, same era.
Funny how these are now classified dumb phones, while they have some odd niche market yet :-)
Somehow I don't think you're the demographic Apple is interested in.
Based on what history of any other battery powered device where that has happened?
It's the protruding camera lenses being off-center. I don't mind the "protruding" part but, every time I interact with my phone lying onto a table or countertop or whatever, I have to bear with that silly tick-tack because the damn phone is not level.
Apple: here's the thinnest phone ever
good. they just caught on with Android in 2020.
And then I stared at the line about "remarkable all‑day battery life" and wondered what is so remarkable about that. Anyway... "The new iPhone Air MagSafe Battery has a thin and light design that magnetically attaches to the back of iPhone Air to extend battery life during busier days." So you can always turn it into a normal thickness phone with normal battery life it seems.
https://www.reuters.com/business/google-cloud-anticipates-le...
> Google Cloud revealed Tuesday it has lined up about $58 billion in new revenue over the next two years as it vies to become a more central component of the tech giant's future.
> The company said during its July earnings that the cloud division had surpassed a $50 billion annual revenue run rate. Google Cloud's backlog of non-recognized sales contracts is growing even faster than its revenue, unit chief Thomas Kurian told investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference.
I think the long and the short of it (place your bets) is that it could be perceived that Apple has lost its foothold on this ever-important (tm) share of the AI marketplace, whereas Google is happily integrating Gemini into all of its services, in a way that is actually functional / useful, with the most obvious entry point being its own Pixel hardware. They just dodged a regulatory bullet, partly due to AI competitiveness, but maybe they're not going to be on the whipping end of that sea change, after all ...
The relatively small changes in share price (~ -2% vs +2%) is likely just some optionality coming out of the respective company valuations for the small probability apple announced something big like Ai that works or a $400 phone for the mythical people who don't live in silicon valley and make 7 fig salaries.
One could argue that a lot of 50-ish people have pro max with iphone 5-ish screen estate.
Small screens ain’t gonna happen
I can't be the only one.
I comfortably use pro max with one hand: phone rests on the pinky at the point where usb-c hole is.
Reachibility (gester of swiping down on home indicator) brings UI half screen down to reach upper regions.
Some use pop sockets.
Mainly for reading web sites and my calendar, but it works one handed for that just fine.
That means you still get to see fairly good at short distances.
People with ordinary presbyopia can’t see shit at arms length and closer.
The only thing I see a possible issue is dealing with camera features. But, you know, tech companies should actually innovate stuff... I know radical.
Because above all, the iPhone is a vending machine owned by Apple and paid for by you.
The iPhone Air and iPhone 17 with MIE (Memory integrity enforcement) promise to be the first devices capable of resisting even nation-state-level attacks, through hardware+software integration of memory tagging to stem use-after-free and buffer overflow attacks, and hardware defenses against speculative execution attacks.
Third-party software developers can opt in to MIE now; users should insist on it from their application vendors.
https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...
The battery time estimates are based on certain usage patterns, not 100% utilization of power-hungry apps. A battery that can last "36 hours" can offer more real-world usage per day than one that only lasts for 24.
Edit: Looks like the only estimates Apple provides any more are video playback hours, which is much more power-efficient than general app usage and internet browsing.
Ultimately "all day"/"36 hours" are marketing labels that are at best rough approximations of reality. Your original argument sounds like "if Apple says that the iPhone Air's 3,149 mAh lasts all day, then a 4,500 mAh battery is useless", but as any heavy phone user can attest, with high usage even a new iPhone battery will need to be charged midday, regardless of what Apple says, and an extra 50% battery capacity can be the difference between regularly needing to charge midday and not.
Do you really think they couldn't?
The magsafe battery thing is actually pretty neat, but not using it to instead have a thinner phone feels pointless because you still have the giant bulge from the camera.
Truly boring. But you can't pretend more from a boat manned by a boring captain, focused exclusively on money/market/stocks.
Since it costs $1000-$1400, I'm going to need a nice big thick ruggedized case around it.
The whole experience left me very disappointed with AppleCare+ and the Genius Bar in general.
Why the heck didn't they have the part in stock given that I made an appointment several days in advance? (You go through a little menu saying exactly which part is broken, rather than a free-form text field, so their systems _should_ have known that they'd need a replacement back glass in my color.) Why didn't they tell me before I hauled myself in for my appointment that they wouldn't have the part in stock? Why does it take 9 days to get replacements? Why didn't the first Genius tell me that other stores in town had the part in stock? Why didn't they have the backup device in stock or warn me in advance of my second appointment?
I worry that Apple has gotten complacent with service because they can get away with it.
Segmentation. More features aren't material if you don't use them. And plenty of people (not me) habitually charge their phones to the extent that carrying around extra battery just in case is sort of like having a 400-mile EV for grocery runs.
Now, this Apple ad appears to be boasting as if battery that lasts single day is a generous offering. Perhaps it's adjusted for a heavy user. Still, I don't get the impression that we aren't getting actual improvements on battery life.
They copied pixel.
https://store.google.com/product/pixel_10_pro
To be fair, their announcements where close apart. There's a chance Pixel copied iPhone.
Copying pixel would have been great. They copied AND made it worse.
I wouldn’t in a million years buy a pixel, but their team deserves credit for making really beautiful hardware. IMO better than iPhone 16 Pro and MUCH better than iPhone 17 Pro.
So it's like: year 1: super thin, super light (shit battery life, no headphone port etc), then year 2 it will be: awesome battery life, headphone jack (but thick, heavy).
Basically they have to be careful they don't ever make the perfect phone. They do have planned obsolescence as another trick up their sleeve, though. So you'll never see an Apple phone with upgradable storage etc (the Android ones go more for having the software becoming obsolete).
https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-air-vs-samsung-s25-edge...
It's irrational, but it's like an uncanny valley via text for me.
Good looking phone though.
What can ya do? :/
Does anyone know it? Was it in announcement video?
They actually have both offline and streaming video playback time, which had been pretty standard for iPhone for a long time as their battery life measurements.
[1] https://qz.com/1288272/bendgate-was-real-apple-knew-the-ipho...
For years, it was the perfect sweet spot -- bigger screen and bigger battery without the Pro price tag. It was especially great for elderly users: easier to read, easier to hold, and they didn't have to pay $1,000+ just to get a phone they could actually see and use.
The jump from the base model to the Plus was usually just $100, but you got a noticeably larger display and often better battery life -- the kind of practical upgrade most people actually cared about.
Now, if you want a larger screen without breaking the bank... well, you can't. Apple's lineup basically forces you into the Pro models, which feels like a loss for accessibility and for people who just want "big and simple."
I wish they'd kept the Plus around. It wasn't flashy, but it served a real audience.
I notice the release claims "our most durable iphone ever" - curious if this is actually true and whether there's any design to stop the risk of bending.
The weight is also significantly (in percentage terms) greater.
Which will mean they remove all buttons and connectors making it annoying as hell.
But it'll be cool.
The Oppo Find N5 only has about 55% ( IIRC ) battery density increase. We expect to have 100% increase by the end of this year.
So, we can buy this iPhone Air in a few years!
Definitely feel like thicker and longer battery is better. Heavier feels nice.
Compare the New iPhone Models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186294 - Sept 2025 (95 comments)
iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186044 - Sept 2025 (42 comments)
Apple Debuts iPhone 17 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186023 - Sept 2025 (104 comments)
Super fun. Titanium printing
Like wearables, glasses, etc. The fact that they're mass producing this is key
I've only ever had phones with at least one (regular/physical) eSIM, and a 'slot' for an eSIM for travel.
What are the pros/cons of only eSIMs?
Edit: I'm not questioning eSIMs, which I know can be handy: my iPhone SE3 is physical+eSIM. I'm curious about no physical SIM. If you can support 1-eSIM+physical is it a big deal to go to >1-eSIM+physical?
Pros:
- Super easy to get esims while traveling. e.g. in Mexico i downloaded an app while still in the airport and paid $5 with apple pay and instantly activated a 1 month esim.
- You can have multiple esimss. With physical sims you are limited to the physical number of sim slots on your phone, usually 1 or at most 2. With esim there is no such restriction.
- More secure. esims can't be cloned (e.g. sim swapping attack) or simply removed from a stolen phone like physical sims.
Cons:
- If you get a new phone, you cant just pop your physical sim in. You need to go through your provider to transfer, which requires calling them and verifying your identity.
I actually dont see this as a con really, I see this as a security benefit. Since I only get a new phone every 3-4 years, the 20 min on the phone it takes to transfer is not a significant burden.
Which, at least with my provider, you cannot do while roaming. So if I break my phone while travelling, I cannot access my online banking until I get back home.
This can be done with physical+esim, which my iPhone SE3 has.
Is there a distinct advantage to eSIM-only, with no physical slot, for travel?
> - You can have multiple esimss. With physical sims you are limited to the physical number of sim slots on your phone, usually 1 or at most 2. With esim there is no such restriction.
If you already have 1-eSIM capability, would it be hard to go to >1-eSIM+physical?
IDK about only but it’s easier to get an eSIM setup ahead of time. It’s also easier to keep a bunch of esims handy vs physical sims. Guess it depends on your needs.
This is incorrect. eSIMs are no different from physical SIMs once provisioned. The only difference is that instead of you having a physical smartcard, there is now a JavaCard-compatible card (embedded on the logic board or emulated by the modem) that gets provisioned remotely.
SIM swap attacks have nothing to do with your physical (or emulated) SIM, they were always about a social engineering attack onto the carrier's staff to replace the (e?)SIM associated with your account. eSIMs actually do make this easier because instead of the attacker having to show up in person at a store to pick up a physical SIM they can skip that step and do the whole process online.
> simply removed from a stolen phone like physical sims
If this is an attack vector you care about, you can enable a SIM PIN. In fact, this also works with eSIM if you really want to. But beware, doing so means once a phone reboots it will not have a data connection so things like Find My iPhone/etc won't work.
I don't think this is true for all providers. I've never had to do this for T-Mobile for instance, it just activated without intervention.
I am sure there are downsides to eSIM but particularly for the average consumer who gets a SIM in their new phone and never changes it... there is probably zero difference.
I asked my provider to issue a new e-sim that I could use in another phone, but it asked me to verify my id by sending me a text message I couldn't receive because I didn't have a phone.
I couldn't buy a new phone without a new sim, because I had forgotten the pin of the card I needed to use, and the pin was visible on a website that was protected with 2FA.
So I bought a physical sim card from my provider shop (using my last physical 10 euros), then went to a used iphone reseller, who let me setup the phone before paying, so that I could use the phone to actually pay for it.
It was not fun
If you break your phone, you may lose access to the number until you return to your home country.
Other than that, it’s the same.
For most people esim is better
Sure you can transfer them while upgrading the phone to a new one.
The QR code you get when you purchase an eSIM is merely an access token to initiate the provisioning process. Some carriers may make these single-use, or attach extra restrictions such as fees if you want to get a new one, or restrictions they themselves don't know about like that you must be on an IP from your carrier's home country to reach the provisioning server (good luck debugging that if you're not already aware of it - and no, on-device VPNs won't save you as the OS will not use your VPN for this traffic).
Even the mechanism that allows you to move an eSIM from one iPhone to another requires carrier involvement, which they have to support (internally I don't believe it moves anything, instead merely requesting a new SM-DP code in the background and sending that to the new phone). It doesn't work for all carriers.
Oh and you already need to have some existing IP connection to provision the eSIM in the first place, so first-time provisioning is tricky. I'm sure there is a workaround for it, but again carrier support varies.
TLDR: it allows the carrier to interfere when provisioning or moving the eSIM which carriers can and do take advantage to make the process more costly/painful and discourage easily using alternative carriers.
The most annoying thing on the phone is wobbling when it is on flat surface thanks to lenses sticking out.
Battery life is alright. I can get 2-3 days of life from it with light use. If I am using it a little bit more, then it is barely one day of battery life.
And compared to iPhone Air it has real SIM slot.
For this they could engineer a good plastic but it wouldn't sell because it wouldn't feel "premium" enough. So instead, we get nonsense like that. And it suits them well because the thing is that much more likely to break so they get more chances to have the customer pay for repair or phone change.
Win-Win for them, lose-lose for the customer, basically everything Apple is about currently.
A cellular Macbook would convince me to upgrade!
USB 2.0 speed only is a little disappointing but it's not the only high-end device not to have faster speeds.
I'm not an Apple user but from an engineering perspective it's hard not to be impressed by the levels of miniaturization involved.
Pro returning back to aluminum is very-very bad for durability.
Aluminium is very soft: it just deforms to a splash on every drop.
I really hope they go back to steel.
They also said that this was the first unibody iPhone. Can titanium be made the same way? The unibody MacBooks are really nice though I’m not sure if the same rigidity issues are at play in such small devices.
Too hot? Well bu-hoo, throttle it. Or, I dunno, don’t run glass shaders.
I drop my iphone more often than I need it to compute pi.
Aluminium deforms on drop too easily. Thanks, Ive had enough of iPhones 6 and alike to willingly come back.
> at actual professional video
On a phone? You must be kidding. Arri, red, blackmagic, sony.
https://gsmarena.com/vivo_x5max-pictures-6865.php
Apparently the "thin phone" trend is coming back.
I think people are assuming it lasts 6 hours just because they sell a magsafe battery pack.
It's barely much a trade-off at all for a phone that has the norm of daily charging.
The main body of the phone is just battery and display.
Aside from Macs for development I've never been an iPhone person but I'm seeing this like ooh. But no I'm good with my $160 motorolla android phone, no shade against this phone, good enough for my needs.
I do wish Android phones had lidar
Reminds me of Windows versions that came after Windows 7. Why don't people just stop doing new versions after the product has reached its saturation point?
What is Matter over Thread? https://www.theverge.com/22832127/matter-smart-home-products...
How to set up Matter over Thread? https://www.theverge.com/23823041/matter-thread-device-setup...
I was hoping for an Apple TV that can do AV1 decoding.
Let me know when I can replace the battery. Of course that’ll ruin the current business model because it’ll be even more apparent how rarely we’ll need to upgrade these things.
I'd say the vast majority of people don't actually care about either.
This announcement contains so many fake marketing words I can't help but read it in DJT's voice... Add Tim Apple's present and yeah, cool tech, not interested.
Oh goody.
BTW iPhone Air is 165g. It's 22g more than my iPhone 6s but since its much taller and wider I expect it to feel lighter.
It's 51g lighter than 14pro, which is very significant.
Apple doesn't care about weight. If they did, they'd use a lot more plastic and a lot less glass, metal and ceramic.
But admittedly the differences are smaller than they’ve ever been.
Or maybe I have it backwards and they always lead with industrial design and fall into use cases.
All I know is that I want new use cases from my devices.
Since the iPhone 5, no phone sits steady on a flat surface anymore, wich is sad
Didn't the hype train around the word "gorgeous" for software run its course? To me its an immediate turn.
Even for Apple, there are a significant amount of challenges in building a best-in-class foldable. Supply chain, manufacturing, hardware design, software. Apple is well known for planning ahead; breaking down problems by tackling some in an Air model first seems in line with how they operate.
The price difference really drives this home. It’s only $100 difference between a Pro and an Air. By the time you buy the perhaps-essential battery pack it’s the same price.
I don’t expect this model to continue more than a year or two, it’s a niche option only there to set the stage for a foldable that will take its place.
This will be a nice upgrade for bi / motor - cyclists who like to mount their phone / google maps on their handlebars!
This is the worst of both worlds.
I would have gladly taken uniform thickness and a bigger battery or better transceivers any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Call me a Philistine, but all I really want out of my phone is its ability as a communications device (voice, video, email, SMS, etc) and a GPS. I spend so much time in front of a computer, that by the end of the day I want to unplug myself and touch grass.
Either way, big respect to some former undergrad classmates of mine at Apple who may have played a role in this. This new generation of Apple devices is bringing back color and personality, and I'm all for it. Same for ever-improving FaceTime cameras. The camera on the front is more important to me than the one on the back.
The power of a MacBook Pro in the bump of a phone, the rest is just battery, screen, antennas and heat dissipation. What other form factors are they working towards?
Software is eating hardware. I mean, who needs a phone or a laptop if they can be virtualized from a headset? Maybe the phone in the pocket becomes just a folding keyboard + battery combo.
One of my long term personal projects is a "post-laptop" portable computer combining a keyboard with an ARM computer module. The assumption being you could do without a screen and just use headset display like the xreal
Ok, to not be totally glib, I think my reaction to this is coming from a place where, if I made a big list of every single thing I want in a phone, "thinner" would be at the bottom.
I want more freedom to do what I want with my phone, primarily to stop it from spying on my activity to give information to advertisers. I would get a phone twice as thick as my current phone if I could just use it to tell advertisers and information brokers and monopolies to f-OFF with it. I do not care about this and I hate that thousands of man hours and millions of dollars are going into this shit.
I was totally going to get the Air (I do want a thinner phone), but the screen is way too big. I’m so tired of giant phones.
After more than a decade it's still an odd experience to observe how the market is self-adjusting to match Apple's portfolio...
Would be interesting to see if the iPhone Air isn't already a Polymer OLED panel, as a supply-chain ramp-up for a foldable design...
Am I just an old man screaming at cloud here or is it unnecessary for a phone to be focused on GPU intensive tasks ? Impressive as it is and all.
> iPhone Air features an eSIM-only design that saves space internally, helping enable the unbelievably light and thin form factor.
Also this is frustrating..
I really like the 15 camera I have and feels really good for a casual photo person. I feel that the 16e is more than enough for 99% of those not into social media. Like the phone without social media is just keeping in touch with close friends and family and occasionally taking pictures and making payments. And once in a while a few apps that help you track something like maps or health apps.
The 16e feels like a really enough phone if you don't want to get into the rat race.
LOL; fantastic would be several days.
all-day is better than gone by late afternoon.
I know Apple is super successful and will have another great set of quarters, but this is quite disappointing.
They have to "inovate" somewhere. The suckers won't pay hundreds of dollars for the same crap over and over again. They tried to "inovate" the GUI, it was a disaster. Now they turned to HW.
iPhone Air is 165g.
The new iPhone Pro 17 is 204g but the 15 Pro was only 187g. iPhone 17 is 7g more than the iPhone 16 which was 170g (only 5g heavier than the new Air).
Their pricing ladding places the Air above the regular 17 and below the 17 Pro.
If Apple didn't make the Air, then the 17 family would have been Apples "Heaviest range of iPhones they have every made".
That said, I am very happy about how Apple are adding more battery to all their phones - which might be were the extra weight is coming from.
"Hot takes" are for Reddit.
People on HN are expected to think before they respond.
I'd been more excited if they brought back the 3.5 mm audio jack.
What a joke. Recycled design from 6/11 is breakthrough in Apple world
At the end of the day, I want future phones to be a A4 piece of paper that I can fold up like ... a piece of paper. If it means dumping stupid billions to shave sub millimeters of generations... then I guess that's the price to pay.
Specs wise sure, I’d also love a bigger battery than it being thin*. But the iPhone has been an unbelievable fashion statement, and this insanely sexy iPhone will be the strongest yet.
I’m pretty sure when it comes out, people will actually hold it in their hands and the sentiment will turn. Not talking to you tech nerds, but for the other 99% of the world.
It's not impossible for this to take off, but I won't hold my breath. It's a small gamble that could go either way.
I think the price point above the 17 and close to the 17 Pro gives it less appeal, but I guess it does make it more "premium" too.
I definitely don't think you're out of left field.
Somebody should sue him for contributing to making the world a worse place.
* i don't know if this is backed up statistically!
Totally felt the same during the live-translation demo, when these two casual business folks were talking about "the client will love the new strategy". Dystopian corporate gibberish.
https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone...
It's not innovative -- innovative would be an "ALL WEEK" solution. This is worth looking at: https://youtu.be/WEmZpHXwu5k
Another data point, Googles own phone ad right now is literally along the lines of ‘feel like your existing phone never changes’, clearly a dig at Apple’s product atrophy.
The laptop class (myself included) just don't understand. A huge portion of the world only has 1 computer and it's their phone. They rely on it for work, entertainment, and connectivity. They don't have a laptop where they can do all these things on whenever they want. Their phone is it. They want a big screen phone. It's no surprise that every time Apple made the screen bigger, it sold better.
I loved my 13 Mini but I understand why Apple has given up on it. It was a very good effort. They tried. Didn't sell. Maybe a foldable can solve this problem for both sides.
[0] https://www.ricsantos.net/2021/01/21/ios-device-resolution-g...
If those people wish to use phones for something they're not suited for, that's their business. But companies can, and should, have more than one product for different use cases. Nobody says "well only 5% of the market wears this size clothes so you better get used to going naked", instead manufacturers make all different sizes so as to capture more profits. I don't even particularly care if the smaller phone costs more because it's not as much in demand (so, less economy of scale). The problem is that nobody makes one at all, so I can't get what I want at any price whatsoever.
> A huge portion of the world only has 1 computer and it's their phone.
This is something that really surprised me to realise a couple of years ago - that unless they work in tech, most households (I don't know if most isn't an exaggeration, but a large proportion) don't have a laptop or desktop between them now.
I think there is: https://smallandroidphone.com/ This was started up by the people behind Pebble (including its re-launch this year). I actually emailed them a while back asking for a status update. They told me there are literally no high quality screens of an appropriate size available to OEMs. They would have to design & spin up their own display hardware, which is where things change from "expensive" to "infeasible." If there was an existing, high quality 4.5~5" screen, I think it'd be an easy slam dunk. But there apparently is not...
Too bad. I just hold out hope Apple will try the Mini again before my 13 dies.
They have been told since 10 years that phones are "computers" [1]. Some even believe this.
[1] from this point of view, a washing machine or a fridge are also "computers".
This is noticeable when you interact with consumer software where the mobile app is clearly the preferred or only way to perform some action.
This is something that really surprised me to realise a couple of years ago - that unless they work in tech, most households (I don't know if most isn't an exaggeration, but a large proportion) don't have a laptop or desktop between them now.
Also, I've been in poorer countries where the vast majority of the population rely on their phones to work. My real estate agent only used her phone for work including marketing herself, talking to clients on chat apps, and even doing the lease contract. Their phone is literally how they make a living.
iPhone SEs sold like hotcakes and they were smaller than the minis.
So, for phones, people say they want a small one to fit in your pocket. With, fair. But that generally means a smaller screen when you are using it. Which people don't really want.
Foldables help a ton with this. And I think that will ultimately pan out. People are understandably worried about being early on that train, though.
So I really don't understand people who would choose a larger phone, over a smaller one and then save the money they would have spent replacing it (plus the money they would have paid extra because larger is more expensive) to buy a cheap laptop or something
As it is, I hold my S21 with left hand, type with index finger of right - it's abysmal in terms of performance, but it's all I got.. landscape with both thumbs is usually worse because of such little lookahead / lookbehind - I can barely read the line I'm typing on - and fat thumbs. My kids do it all the time, but, well, their little girlish fingers (they are female) seem to manage it and they're quite quick at it.
My favorite phone (at least in terms of idea, execution wasn't perfect) was the Motorola Photon Q - full-size with slide-out keyboard. At least I could somewhat type quickly even if the keyboard wasn't great. Alas, 2012..
With a newish phone? I can probably type 10-20x as fast on my MS Natural keyboard (only one I can use for more than 30-40 minutes without RSI getting bad).. No wonder I don't "live on my phone" - I use it when necessary, and prefer my 40"+ 4K screen + real keyboard.
> save the money they would have spent replacing it (plus the money they would have paid extra because larger is more expensive) to buy a cheap laptop or something
The kind of people who want an iPhone are not going to settle for a Cheap Laptop. A MacBook Air can only really be had new for around $800 nowadays and those big iPhones are only like $599 right now (if iPhone 16e).
I have big hands, and can use my 16 Pro Max one handed no problem with minimal shifting of the device in my hands. I've never dropped it during one handed use on the go either.
Smaller devices are almost impossible for me to type on/be precise with touches because of this.
IMHO most people in the real world increasingly use their smartphone as their primary computer and want a big screen.
so that I may relive my Palm Treo glory days.
This is the first iPhone is 5+ years that is will be hard to ignore for the massive base of users who'd given up on yearly upgrades.
I came here expecting to see that reflected (and see how others feel about the camera trade-off) but it's mostly repetitive comments asking who wants a thinner phone (ignoring it's almost 40% lighter than the most of the Pro Max devices out there)
Air: 6.5in, 165gm Pro 17: 6.9in, 233gm My current Pro Max 15: 6.7in, 221gm
Coming from the PM15, I give up 0.2in, but it weighs 56gm less. I do 95%+ of my reading on my phone - articles, books, everything. But I find the PM15 screen juuuuust slightly too large to be comfortable in the hand, and the normal Pro screen much too small for lots of reading. And I’ve been noticing early signs of RSI.
These dimensions are the goldilocks combination I’ve been waiting for.
The 40% lighter is nice though.
If "all the people" wanted these phones, they would still exist.
Seriously, Apple has not attempted a narrow high-end phone since the iPhone 5. The 12 and 13 minis were not positioned as premium phones and they did not have great cameras or battery life. If Apple had tried for a 13 Pro Mini and it didn’t sell, then maybe I’d believe that their market statistics were worth something.
what about next year will we get air 2 or air 2026 like the iPads?
TouchID is also still sorely missed, and I will die on that hill. I'm on a 2022 SE hoping they change their mind one day. FaceID is a repellent experience.
Like I get there are some people who maybe use the thing as an actual camera and they suddenly need to download tens if not hundreds of gigabytes of media off the phone but like.....I guess it's just not the phone for them? And like you said the Pro supports USB3 speeds so what's the issue? 5gbps is really not fast enough?
Out of curiosity, are there any phones from any manufacturer that support USB4 and can actually transfer data at more than 5gbps?
Just make the thing a uniform thickness and cram it with battery.
The battery life is insane. The idea of charging my laptop has become this weird ritual now, only known of in lore and legend, that I partake of only when there is a blood moon.
At least I have something to look forward to when I upgrade.
I think the problem is that Safari allows tabs to ask to be periodically woken while the laptop is asleep, and there is no obvious way to turn this off. And it will keep doing this until the battery is so low that the laptop needs to hibernate.
TL;DR: Make sure Power Nap is turned ON. It allows macOS to consolidate wakeup requests into a bulk queue. So the thing isn't turning on all the time.
> powernap - enable/disable Power Nap on supported machines (value = 0/1)
Thanks, Apple.
You're describing a case with a battery pack.
It forces them to the forefront of miniaturisation and efficiency. It's also something they're unusually good at, which creates differentiation.
The iphone air costs more than a thousand dollars but it's thinner.
I have no idea why people pay for this shit.
Sorry, but no air. Yes it would be a cool second phone in case you go to events, but in that case, I'd prefer a mini with a better camera.
It’s limited by TSMC. M2 is where v1 is. I expect they want at least double the efficiency, and maybe this new pro liquid cooling, to try for a v2.
/s
"Comment about how shitty this corporation is"
"Why don't you talk about the product like a good consumer?"
"I'm done with Google, Adobe, ..."
It's just a rant for the sake of rants
(Note I didn't say consumer as that's reductionistic)
Hence why they are considering building their own phone
I think I remember them saying the current target is 2026-2027 which is promising.
---
### Scene: Apple Store, Santa Monica
*Larry* walks in, holding his old iPhone with a cracked screen. He approaches a blue-shirted *Apple Genius*.
*Larry:* So I hear you got this new iPhone Air. Thinnest phone ever, huh? Five-point-six millimeters. What is this, a phone or a Wheat Thin?
*Genius:* It’s our most advanced design yet. Stronger, lighter—
*Larry:* Stronger? If it’s so strong, why is it thinner than a Ritz cracker? You ever eaten a Ritz cracker? Crumbles right in your hand! That’s what I’m gonna be holding here. Crumbs! Phone crumbs in my pocket!
*Genius:* Actually, it’s titanium. Aerospace grade.
*Larry:* Oh! Aerospace. Yeah, good. Because when I’m playing Sudoku on the toilet, I really want NASA technology under my thumbs. Very important. “Houston, I got a number two problem.”
*Genius:* The new 48-megapixel Fusion camera—
*Larry:* Fusion? What am I, splitting atoms now? I just want to take a picture of a sandwich. I don’t need the Manhattan Project in my pocket. And the front camera’s square? Square! Cameras are round, wheels are round, even faces are round. You make it square, now I look like SpongeBob in every selfie.
*Genius:* Well, the square sensor lets you take landscape photos while holding your phone vertically.
*Larry:* Vertically? Vertically?! Oh, thank you, Apple, you’ve saved me from rotating my wrist. What a terrible burden it’s been. Centuries of humanity struggling, and finally Apple says, “Don’t move your wrist, Larry, we’ll do it for you.” Unbelievable.
*Genius:* It also has all-day battery life.
*Larry:* All-day? What’s “all day”? My day? Your day? A raccoon’s day? Be specific! At 11:58 p.m. the phone dies and you go, “Oh, sorry Larry, guess your day’s over!” I still got two episodes of Columbo left, pal!
*Genius:* It’s also eSIM only.
*Larry:* Oh, fantastic. No physical SIM. So if I lose signal, I can’t even take it out, blow on it, do the old Nintendo trick. I just stare at my \$1,000 “air” sandwich and pray. That’s the feature? Praying?
*Genius:* It starts at \$999—
*Larry:* Nine-ninety-nine! For a phone that could slip between two couch cushions and vanish forever. You should sell it with a metal detector. “Find your iPhone Air before it suffocates under the ottoman!”
(Larry storms out, muttering.)
*Larry:* Thin phone, thick price. What a world.
---
Want me to *write another one where Larry’s actually at the launch keynote*, interrupting Tim Cook from the audience like a heckler?
As part of our efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2030, iPhone Air does not include a power adapter or EarPods. Included in the box is a USB‑C Charge Cable that supports fast charging and is compatible with USB‑C power adapters and computer ports.
I'm sure Apple's official word on this is battery life is sufficient for more than a couple of hours of untethered stand-by. I'm just questioning the wisdom of the naming convention. They trained their user community to understand that "air" means low-CPU power / low battery life / thinner package. Are there enough potential customers who will prioritize thin form factor over usability?
Nevermind. I just answered my own question.
[Edit: I understand the Apple fanbois will want to down-vote this, but look at the second sentence of the second paragraph. I am not saying the iPhone Air will be bad. I am saying that the "Air" name has, in the past, been applied to some pretty sub-standard products. I am asking if it's wise to apply a name that has been used for lower-end products to new products that aren't "lower end."]
The 17 Air reports 27 hours of video playback - the same as the 16 Pro.
> but not appropriate for a mobile phone that you may want to operate untethered for hours at a time.
I do think this shifted a little when the first M1 Air came out. Anecdotally, many now associate it with being more than capable unless you’re an actual professional.
Apple is cooked.
As far as I can tell from the announcement, they're focusing on content creators. Since I don't stream and am not an Instagrammer, it's irrelevant to me. Selling me one of these cameras is just a waste. I don't even know how to make the phone use the second (or third) camera.
> Amazing marketing wank.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer.
I'm curious who needs more battery life than the iPhone air will provide? Every single person I know of commutes to and from work daily either in a car where they can charge their phone or to a desk that has a charger (wired or wireless).
The iPhone Air is rated for 27 hours of videoplayback. Let's say it works for a QUARTER of that, its still 7 hours of playback.
What kind of people are away from a charger for more than 7 hours who also only consume content for those 7 hours on a regular basis?
What kind of individuals are these? Please explain
I usually spend my days outside, roaming the city, sitting in parks and cafes. I have a 13mini and started to carry a lightweight power bank in my backpack because it tends to run empty before I get back home, which is a problem with electronic ticket for public transport.
A lot of people will also simply prefer the convenience of not having to plug their phone in more often than necessary. They have it in their backpack or purse, which makes it extra inconvenient to think of taking it out just to charge plus needing a cable and charger in multiple places, compared to the evenings when you may remove multiple items from it.
I have a 16 Pro and every so often something runs in the background that destroys my battery in half a day. I still don’t know what it is. The settings don’t make it clear.
I haven’t complained about the battery life on the Air, but I’d rather have a bigger battery to the point of eliminating the camera bump, than having a marginally thinner phone that shoves everything in a bigger relative bump.
Upgrading to a bigger battery won’t solve whatever is draining your battery
On days with normal battery usage, how is having more battery life ever a negative? Long travel days, which may also have heavy map usage, leave users outside of normal patterns and often with unpredictable access to charging. Having a long battery life would ease stress around those days and be preferable to carrying a battery bank.
Isn’t the phone not being used when hiking?
Are they live streaming the hike that they need such insane battery life?
I hike and bike ride with my kids very often. Other than the odd picture and video I have my phone in my pocket during those hikes. The battery barely drains
If I have a long train ride, like 2 hours, and I read on it, it'll usually use about 50% of the battery in that duration.
If I go somewhere new, and use google maps a lot to navigate around, it'll last about 3 hours total.
If I go somewhere with bad cellular signal, it constantly fights to connect and drains incredibly quickly, often in a matter of 2 hours.
The Air looks like it's supposed to have a battery that's about 30% larger than the mini's, and the mini is wildly insufficient for regular use.
We'll use my phone to take photos and videos on the hike. Never ran into battery issues. And it's Canada, so hikes are in cold-ish temperatures.
Congrats on somehow having a better battery life; all the mini users I know can't manage an 8 hour day with theirs without plugging in somewhere.
TheDong, can you test if putting it on air plane mode makes any difference? Maybe you're on the edge of multiple cell towers and your phone is trying to connect/disconnect too aggresively?
It lasts longer if I turn it off too.
At this point I just accept that I have to bring a battery brick with me everywhere, it's fine.
A battery pack does make it pointless though
Hiking often also occurs in areas with bad or no coverage causing higher battery consumption with the phone trying to connect. If you don't mitigate this (with eg. turning off or enabling airplane mode) this will burn through battery much faster than the usual city dwelling.
ROTFL. All of them. If your phone stops in a middle of a forest, what do you do ? Just sit there until (magically) starts again ?
https://www.backpacker.com/news-and-events/news/a-hiker-star...
Was discussed here some time ago
I do want to see how the advertised battery life stacks up against the real-world observation. It might be enough, it might not be, let's see :)
You aren't curious at all. You have formed an opinion. :)
Apple recognizes the deficiency, hence they created the battery accessory which they would love to up-self.
Step 1: Reduce battery life
Step 2: Sell battery accessory, profit.
Also, with android you have more options to optimise for battery life (eg low refresh rate and resolution) that are great if this is what you want to optimise (and did this for some time), but apple would never sell an iphone like that, and also ime these are becoming rarer in the android market too. If the sole alternative is just bigger batteries, I would rather not have this bigger battery attached to the phone all the time even if this is suboptimal for some other reasons.
I can have an opinion that phones have sufficient battery life AND be curious what kind of person needs more than the provided battery life
The example of someone hiking so far does not make sense since a phone is idle when hiking and will last the entire time easily