A Magic Sheet of Glass With Anticipated Tradeoffs

There’s no dispute that the iPhone Air is a marvel of engineering. Almost all display screen and battery, the machine, which begins at $999, feels just like the closest factor to holding a sheet of glass in your hand. And not using a case or battery pack, it’s so skinny and slippery that I didn’t foresee it hovering by means of the air like a frisbee. It’s not the very best worth iPhone in Apple’s new lineup; that’s the iPhone 17, which begins at $799. And it’s not essentially the most feature-packed and highly effective; that’s the iPhone 17 Pro / 17 Pro Max, which begin at $1,099 and $1,199, respectively. The iPhone Air is Apple’s newest stab at a unique class of smartphone—it beforehand tried a Mini and Plus-sized iPhone—however this time with extra of the corporate’s basic design attraction entrance and middle.

After per week of testing the entire household of latest iPhones, I stay drawn to the iPhone Air essentially the most, even with its compromises to the digital camera and battery life. It’s so rattling laborious to withstand. The large query is whether or not or not customers will purchase skinny telephones. The iPhone Mini and iPhone Plus every lasted only some years earlier than being discontinued. Will the iPhone Air endure the identical destiny?

Impossibly skinny, however tremendous robust

You actually have to carry the iPhone Air in your individual arms to consider that it’s an actual, totally purposeful cellphone and never a dummy unit like those you might discover at a retail retailer. Whereas not the lightest iPhone that Apple has ever made, the iPhone Air holds that distinction in comparison with the iPhone 17 and 17 Professionals. With its weight distributed throughout its skinny footprint, the cellphone feels smaller than it truly is. I choose my cellphone within the 6.1 to six.3-inch display screen vary, in order that I can comfortably use it with one hand and match it into my pants pocket with out it coming out. I can nonetheless do each with the iPhone Air and its 6.5-inch show. I get the attraction for the huge 6.9-inch display screen on the iPhone 17 Professional Max, however that’s an excessive amount of of a tank for me.

I already informed you the way scratch and crack-resistant the iPhone Air is because of its Ceramic Defend 2 glass entrance and Ceramic Defend glass again. However what about bendability? The iPhone 6 attracted the fallacious sort of consideration when individuals discovered it might simply bend. You don’t want to fret about bendgate 2.0 as a result of the titanium body is extremely robust. Apple inspired me to attempt to bend it in half with as a lot drive as I might. I might see the iPhone Air bow, however it all the time reverted again to its form. After the unique bendgate over a decade in the past, I’m glad Apple is so assured within the iPhone Air’s rigidity.

Gorgeous display screen

I really like tech specs as a lot as another gearhead, however I couldn’t rattle the show specs for the iPhone Air off the highest of my head with out taking a look at Apple’s product web page. The standard of the screens in premium smartphones peaked years in the past. They’re lots vibrant, high-res, and vibrant sufficient. So far as I can inform, the iPhone Air has the identical show specs because the iPhone 17 and 17 Professionals.

I actually haven’t any complaints concerning the Tremendous Retina XDR show. It’s acquired nice viewing angles, particularly open air when it might probably hit a peak brightness of three,000 nits; colours look wealthy and blacks are inky because of OLED; and the brand new anti-glare coating actually does scale back reflections. And identical to the household of iPhone 17 units, the display screen helps as much as 120Hz refresh charges, or what Apple calls “ProMotion” and has an always-on display screen. The Dynamic Island sits a little bit decrease than on different iPhones, however apart from that, that is pretty much as good as a display screen will get on a cellphone.

17 Professional-level efficiency

You’d suppose that such a thin cellphone would include main compromises to efficiency, proper? That wasn’t the case in my testing. Apple might have simply used a much less highly effective chip, however it determined to stuff an A19 Professional chip inside and let it rip. That’s the identical desktop-level chip contained in the iPhone 17 Professionals with a 6-core CPU. The one distinction between the A19 Professional chips within the iPhone Air versus the 17 Professionals is that there’s one fewer GPU core, 5 as a substitute of six.

As anticipated, the A19 Professional chip is insanely highly effective and smokes the best Android phones powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipsets. Do you want all this energy when you’re solely doing primary cellphone issues like searching the net, sending messages, checking emails, watching movies, and taking images? Under no circumstances. However when you play 3D video games or do something that will make use of the brand new neural accelerators which can be baked into the GPU, then you definitely’ll recognize the headroom. Apple Intelligence nonetheless largely stinks, however that might not be the case beginning subsequent 12 months if Apple will get its AI plans again on monitor, so the efficiency might are available clutch very quickly.

I don’t suppose many iPhone Air customers will push the efficiency too laborious; get a 17 Professional if you need the very best efficiency and, most significantly, sustained efficiency, because of the vapor chamber cooling that retains the 17 Professionals from getting scorching sufficient to fry eggs.

On the subject of cooling, the iPhone Air’s skinny chassis means there’s much less room for warmth dissipation. Apple cleverly moved the A19 Professional and all the core elements into the oval-shaped “plateau” that additionally homes the single-rear digital camera, however that doesn’t utterly alleviate the iPhone Air from getting heat. It by no means acquired scorching, however I seen the realm slightly below the plateau might get toasty once I was enjoying Genshin Impression or doing something extra graphics-intensive, like a protracted FaceTime name with my girlfriend. One thing to be careful for when you decide up an iPhone Air is potential throttling. Each every so often, apps would freeze and turn into unresponsive. I particularly seen this when utilizing GPU-heavy apps or making an attempt to multitask (i.e. watching a video in picture-in-picture mode whereas utilizing one other app like Messages). I attempted troubleshooting the anecdotal latency with Apple—buttons might turn into untappable or scrolling with lag only a sec or two—however ultimately, it’s laborious to know if I acquired a lemon evaluation unit or it’s simply bugginess in iOS 26. It’s attainable it could be the buggy new software program; I’ve been experiencing related random Liquid Glass sluggishness inside apps on my updated iPhone 16 Pro. I wouldn’t say there’s any main throttling to fret about, however I hope responsiveness stabilizes quickly. (Or possibly, I actually did get a lemon evaluation unit.)

One digital camera on the entrance, one digital camera on the again

I’m a giant digital camera man, so it was an adjustment going from the triple-lens digital camera on my iPhone 16 Pro to the single-lens shooter on the iPhone Air. (I’ll get to the brand new Heart Stage selfie digital camera in a second.) The rear digital camera is a 48-megapixel picture sensor that’s the identical one contained in the iPhone 17’s fundamental “large” digital camera. Apple calls it a Fusion digital camera as a result of, by default, it creates 24-megapixel images taken from the knowledge of the 48-megapixel sensor. The Fusion digital camera additionally has a number of digital lenses that present extra focal lengths (26mm, 28mm, 35mm, and 52mm, aka 2x optical-quality zoom) to border pictures. It’s a stable single digital camera with good sharpness and large dynamic vary.

Frankly, the images look nice when you’re simply posting them to social media or sending them in a messaging app, which is what 99% of individuals do. There have been instances once I missed the ultrawide and telephoto lenses on my iPhone 16 Professional, however I discovered the 2x optical-quality zoom greater than enough for many images and movies I take. Nonetheless, it’s laborious to offer Apple a go for a single-lens digital camera when Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge has an extra ultrawide whereas nonetheless being a skinny 5.8mm cellphone.

The true star of the present is the 18-megapixel Heart Stage digital camera on the entrance. This new sq. picture sensor solves one of many greatest issues with utilizing a contemporary (learn: massive) cellphone for taking selfies: doing finger gymnastics to carry an iPhone up after which tapping the shutter button with out dropping it. The Heart Stage digital camera helps you to take horizontal selfies whereas holding the iPhone Air vertically or vertical images whereas holding the cellphone horizontally. The variable orientation not solely means it’s simpler to carry your cellphone whereas taking selfies, however aligns your eyes nearer to the middle of the display screen as a substitute of to the facet in images. All my selfies look so significantly better due to this. The function additionally works for video. All people that I’ve talked to has been very excited for the Heart Stage digital camera over any elevated sharpness to the rear cameras. Moreover, a brand new Twin Seize helps you to report video from each the rear digital camera and the selfie digital camera (in a picture-in-picture format). It’s helpful for response movies the place you need to seize the second, but in addition the way you had been feeling because it occurred. Third-party apps like Filmic Professional have been in a position to do that, however now it’s constructed into the Digicam app. I’ve a sense it’s going to be extremely popular and extra so than recording spatial video or turning on motion or cinematic mode.

Battery life is nice, however not stellar

The elephant within the iPhone Air room is none apart from battery life. Tremendous-thin telephones merely have much less bodily house to suit the sorts of massive lithium-ion battery cells to get extraordinary battery life. If you would like the longest battery life, you actually gotta go along with the iPhone 17 Professionals. Apple advertises as much as 33 hours of video playback on the 17 Professional and as much as 39 hours on the 17 Professional Max. The iPhone 17 is available in third with as much as 30 hours of video playback.

Compared, the iPhone Air is marketed with as much as 27 hours of video playback. Though I didn’t do any battery rundown assessments with a video enjoying constantly to substantiate that quantity, I do personal an iPhone 16 Professional, which will get the identical 27 hours of video playback. Equally, the iPhone 16 Plus is marketed with the identical video playback hours. With the equivalent hours for video playback, I anticipated the iPhone Air to final about the identical. In my completely unscientific each day testing, I might say the iPhone Air has good battery life, however my iPhone 16 Professional nonetheless had extra juice by the tip of the day. Is it deal-breaking, poor battery life like many individuals have been fearing? Completely not. On one mild day, I made it by means of 13 hours on a single cost and nonetheless had 15% left. I popped on the $99 iPhone Air MagSafe Battery pack, and any shred of battery anxiousness disappeared after it recharged previous 20%, which is what iPhones think about low energy.

In fact, I want the iPhone Air had longer battery life, and naturally, I want that Apple had made the cellphone one other millimeter or two thicker to suit a much bigger battery. Or hell, nix the Digicam Management to suit extra battery. However for a first-gen mannequin on this new Air class, the battery is okay. Most individuals are completely superb topping off their telephones noon at house or at work. And most of the people are okay with carrying a transportable battery for charging up their cellphone or wi-fi earbuds. Apple has optimized laborious for “all-day” battery life, from the customized and power-efficient A19 Professional chip to the C1X modem to the N1 chip (for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Threads connectivity) to supporting solely eSIM. It’s very clear that Apple engineered the iPhone Air with battery life high of thoughts. However physics is physics, and whereas the MagSafe Battery pack is a serviceable strategy to prolong the iPhone Air’s battery life, persons are all the time gonna demand extra. The unique MacBook Air had horrible battery life, after which it turned best-in-class inside just a few generations. I can’t see battery life for the iPhone Air going anyplace however up in future fashions.

Apple’s massive, new check

Whether or not it’s the precise iPhone for you or not, I consider the iPhone Air is right here to remain. Bulbous “plateau” apart, it feels just like the smartphone that Apple has been making an attempt to make since Steve Jobs modified the whole lot with the unique iPhone—a pane of glass that you simply manipulate with contact. It’s, dare I say, in Apple parlance “magical” even once I know the iPhone 17 will get you extra bang in your buck and the iPhone 17 Professionals haven’t any compromises on the expense of thicker and heavier designs with larger worth tags. Very like the MacBook Air, I can’t assist however love that the iPhone Air weighs and seems like virtually nothing. I’ve been an iPhone Professional consumer because the 11 Professional, and I haven’t needed to resolve between a Professional-level iPhone and another mannequin. However I’m severely leaning towards the iPhone Air, particularly in Area Black, which makes the profile seem even thinner. (No offense to Sky Blue followers, however the colour simply doesn’t do something for me.) It’s the brand new aspirational iPhone, not the individuals’s selection or skilled machine.

If nothing else, and the iPhone Air doesn’t join with customers and finally ends up going the best way of the dodo just like the iPhone Mini and Plus, the compact design may very well be a glimpse of the long-rumored, book-style foldable iPhone that will come out subsequent 12 months, in response to the most recent stories. If I put two iPhone Airs facet by facet and squint, I might see a foldable just like the wonderful Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, however operating iOS and with all of the Apple options that you may’t get on Android or elsewhere. Or possibly the iPhone Air is a testbed for miniaturizing components into a wise glasses kind issue.