Apple’s new iPhone Air certainly looks impressively thin, and I do kinda like its styling. But it’s also left me baffled.
One could be cynical and dismiss the iPhone Air as a response to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, with Apple playing at beating Samsung, its main Android phone rival. But Apple has legions of iPhone fans, and while I and other technology journalists love to pit products from the Cupertino crew against South Korea’s finest, I don’t think Apple really needs to compete with Samsung.
Rather, what has me scratching my head is the combination of price and specs for the iPhone Air.
Starting at $999 / £999 / A$1,799 for the 256GB version, the iPhone Air is priced to replace the iPhone 16 Plus. That’s fine, but then it only sports a single rear camera versus the iPhone 17 and 16 Plus’ dual-camera array. Granted, that’s the new 48MP ‘Fusion’ camera, which promises to do a lot with just one lens thanks to advanced image processing and cropping, but the iPhone Air still has one lens fewer than generations of base mainline iPhones.
And as Phones Writer Jamie Richards pointed out, Apple has been somewhat cagey on the battery life of the iPhone Air. Sure, it says ‘all day’ battery and touts 27 hours of video playback, but there’s no indication of the circumstances of such playback. Was the screen dimmed? Was the video being streamed and so on?
What’s more puzzling is the fact that the iPhone 16 offered 22 hours of video playback according to Apple, yet it’s a notably thicker phone. An extra 5 hours of promised video playback from a device that’s 2.2mm thinner defies logic, unless Apple has pulled off some impressive technical wizardry with the Air. Add in the MagSafe battery pack Apple presented at this week’s ‘Awe Dropping’ showcase, and I can’t help but wonder if the Air’s battery pack is worryingly small.
Maybe the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone Air is super efficient and works with the ProMotion display and the new C1X modem chip to better manage power consumption, but I do have my concerns.
Speaking of the chipset, I don’t get why Apple gave the Air its Pro slice of silicon. I’m all for lots of power, especially as iOS now has access to console-grade games like Sniper Elite 4 and Hitman World of Assassination, but I’m not sure a super-slim phone would naturally lend itself to gaming, as there’s less of a chassis to rest your fingers on.
Or I could be totally wrong, and a lighter phone is more comfortable for longer gaming sessions; unlike TechRadar’s US Managing Editor of News, Jacob Krol, I’ve not got hands-on with the iPhone Air yet.
I guess what I’m struggling to get my head around is: who is the iPhone Air for?
Airing it out
I will concede that the Air does look impressive, and it has some appealing specs for the same price as an iPhone 16 Plus at launch. Equally, it’s only $100 less than an iPhone 17 Pro, with its triple-rear camera system and new aluminum frame.
While I miss the days of simple, single-camera phones, I know regular humans have friends and do appreciate an ultra-wide camera to snap group photos. So, that lack of one on the iPhone Air could blunt its appeal – or Apple is banking on more people using the new selfie camera with Center Stage to better capture group selfies.
Senior Staff Writer Hamish Hector reported that the iPhone Air was getting roasted on social media, but noted that people are missing the point of the slim phone. Said point is that slimmer phones may appeal more to women, whose clothes tend to lack the deeper pockets of male clothing, or who like to carry phones in small handbags/purses; our senior social media editor Viktoria Shilets commented: “It feels like it’s designed for women.”
On the rare occasions I’ve needed to wear a suit, a slim phone would have been appreciated to avoid any unsightly bulges. But I’m not sure how much a few millimetres makes a difference when it comes to smartphone thickness, especially if there are compromises.
And while I think Shilets has a point, I’m reminded of the couple of generations of mini iPhones, which seemed aimed at women and people with smaller hands, but never really sold that well compared to the larger iPhones. Equally, maybe slimness is the key here, not overall size… time will tell.
So, I’m hoping for a chance to give the iPhone Air a spin myself, as there’s nothing quite like seeing a device in the glass and metal before casting any solid conclusions.
All that being said, my gut instinct tells me that Apple’s shiny new toy is almost a bit of a tech demonstration by the company; a form of blending specs and systems in one device to show how thin phones can get and what needs to be left out in order to be super svelte.
The iPhone Air could, then, be an indication of things to come and a platform on which Apple iterates in order to bring more into the phone but keep the chassis slim. I’ve seen this happen in the mechanical watch world, so with advancements in chips and efficient processing, there’s certainly scope for preceding generations of Air to do more.
However, the fact that Apple hasn’t numbered the Air means it could just be a testbed device, and advancements from it will then bleed into next-generation mainline iPhones, meaning we get slimmer Pro phones.
Either way, the iPhone Air has me raising an eyebrow and simultaneously getting a low-key feeling that smartphones could get more interesting again, rather than overly iterative.
