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iPhone Air
- SamuelAdams 1y agoI was hoping for more content on AR and the next phase of the Apple Vision Pro. Is the Apple Vision Pro considered a failure at this point?
- kridsdale1 1y agoThey keep trying to hire me, so they haven’t given up. 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.
- insonifi 1y agoI would prefer my phone to be operable by one hand.
- BoorishBears 1y agoThe most annoying thing about handling my 12 Pro Max one-handed is the weight, with thickness being 2nd, and screen size being a distant 3rd. 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.
- hollowturtle 1y agoIt's a UI problem not an hardware one imo. Pretty much when iPhone came out UI research flattened and everything seems so standardized now, I only see gimmick stuff like liquid glass. For example, I don't see why a submit button cannot float near the thumb on the right or left side of the bottom of the device(could predict by checking device orientation)
- insonifi 1y agoI cannot totally agree. From my experience, if the phone is wider than ~68mm, I cannot hold it firmly in my hand and operate it. The UI comes after that, for how far I can reach.
- JustExAWS 1y agoI have an iPhone 16 pro max, I’m five four with I assume smaller than average hands for a male and I have no problem using my iPhone one handed
- Nextgrid 1y agoBut you can't fit as many ads and/or cookie banners on a smaller screen. The tech treadmill requires those things, so here we are.
- geniium 1y agoThats what Steve always wanted
- smeeger 1y agowhen will apple make an iphone for adults? adults who need good battery life and have better things to do than take pictures for social media. a good UI wouldnt hurt either
- glxxyz 1y ago5% more volume than a mini. Lame.
- Narretz 1y agoIt still has 6.5 inch display and the camera sticks out like a sore thumb. Where's a 5 inch display normal thickness phone?
- googlryas 1y agoI'm also curious who the market is for a thinner phone. I imagine pockets on some clothes women commonly wear might work better with a thinner phone, but those pockets are almost always too small in other dimensions to actually hold the phone
- infecto 1y agoPure speculation but the fact that it has a strap accessory. Feels like something for the younger generation. Life is on your phone. You take your phone everywhere but you don’t care about pro features. Reminds me how a lot of younger folks either don’t drive or are uninterested in it.
- spike021 1y agothe strap is probably more for Asian markets. for instance whenever I go to Japan I see a lot of people still use straps (it's been a thing for years now). But here in California it's pretty rare to see slings used like that.
- infecto 1y agoDiffer strokes for different folks. I can see the phone being quite popular in the US including California.
- moepstar 1y ago>I'm also curious who the market is for a thinner phone 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...
- johnbellone 1y agoI have the largest version of the iPhone 16 and it isn't that big. When I first upgraded the size difference was very noticeable, but that faded pretty quickly. It is annoying that it fits into my front pocket when turned diagonally.
- beoberha 1y agoJust do not understand the market for this one. The current size of phones is a solved problem. Nobody is asking for these things to be thinner. Most people use cases and are happy to add some thickness for battery life. Besides, the camera "plateau" makes it all futile.
- pacomerh 1y agoI'm actually curious about this one. Something that feels more seamless in my pocket, however like you mentioned, it would require for me to not use a case, which is something I might do.
- goalieca 1y agoI would love a lighter phone. If I chase after kids at the park, the thing is banging around like a lead weight in my pockets.
- schwarzrules 1y agoSafe to assume those are your kids?
- lifestyleguru 1y agoI already imagined a guy in cargo shorts.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThis phone is not significantly lighter than previous gen. It's 146g vs 170g for the iPhone 16.
- ChuckMcM 1y agoI wonder if this one bends in your pocket[1]. I'd much rather have the 'iphone thicc' which can be 10mm thick if it fits easily in my hand :-) [1] https://qz.com/1288272/bendgate-was-real-apple-knew-the-iphone-6-was-very-bendy https://qz.com/1288272/bendgate-was-real-apple-knew-the-ipho...
- Molitor5901 1y agoI remember Matt Honan's ridiculou8s write-up in Wired magazine when he was Editor, complaining about getting in a taxi with the iPhone 6 in his back pocket and it bending. I'm sure we will see more of that.
- Narretz 1y agoThat was 10 years ago. The stability has improved massively. What was the last phone that bent under normal circumstances?
- duxup 1y agoMaybe this will take off like hotcakes but I'm in the "I don't think this does anything for me / anyone" camp. Granted I loved the 13 mini and that didn't sell so who knows.
- jboggan 1y agoI lament my 13 mini coming to the end of its lifespan. Good design.
- Jonovono 1y agoSame. I have 12 mini and got a 13 mini refurb. Perfect phone.
- scyzoryk_xyz 1y agoI have mine right here. Upgraded away from iOS but not because it came to the "end of it's lifespan"
- kentiko 1y agoI attempted to replace my 13 mini's battery today using the iFixit kit. I broke the OLED panel doing so. Removing the screen take much more force than I though. I did this hopping to keep my iPhone maybe 2 more years. Now I am waiting for ordering the 17 next Friday. I will have to manage having half of my screen being white until then...
- eviks 1y ago> Removing the screen take much more force than I though. 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)
- noncoml 1y ago"It starts at $999 for 256GB", I on the other hand am in the "prices gotten ridicilous" camp
- 1y ago
- netcraft 1y agotake this thinner phone, add more battery to get back to the size of the current one, thats what I want. 3+ day battery life please.
- butlike 1y agoThere's a magsafe attachment you can get to increase the battery life
- clifdweller 1y agoI think that could be the killer feature of this use that space for thin batteries maybe only 2500mah. i can carry 3-4 in my bag and have as much battery life as i care to carry around. and rather than push the charging to 30+ watts that turns my phone into a hotplate can recharge 3 batteries at once at 10w in same time. Bonus to apple on accessories sales
- butlike 1y agoThat's... a really good point! Never thought about it that way.
- Nextgrid 1y agoProblem is that magsafe means wireless charging which is highly unefficient. It's not that big of a deal for stationary applications, but for attaching a spare battery (which is itself limited by its capacity) you are probably wasting 30% of it on the overhead of the wireless power transfer.
- arnoooooo 1y agoI thought wireless charging was inefficient because the coils were never properly aligned, but that magsafe fixed that.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoSuch vision! /s
- butlike 1y agoFWIW, I'm coming from an iPhone 12 and was dazzled by the Air.
- gniv 1y agoInitial reactions are negative, so I predict this will be a hit.
- behnamoh 1y agolike Apple Vision Pro?
- r0fl 1y agoNo Like the iPad which many said is useless and just a bigger iPhone and so far Apple has sold ~500,000,000 iPads
- behnamoh 1y agoiPad still _is_ pretty useless, unless you opt for the "pro" models which let you do some productivity work on them. otherwise it's just suitable for consuming content.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoNot useless for what feels like every child in the US under age 12
- olyjohn 1y agoUseful for shutting them up and feeding them addictive trash media you mean.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoYes
- behnamoh 1y agoChildren in the US under age 12 don't do productivity work on the iPad. Steve Jobs didn't make the iPad as a kids toy.
- mikikian 1y agoWhen they do a folding phone next, the thinness will have functional value.
- JLCarveth 1y agoApple already released a folding phone, the iPhone 6 Plus!
- mrtksn 1y agoThat's the iPhone I was waiting for. I love mu iPhone 14 pro but despise its heft. My previous iPhone was iPhone 6s and when I see it in the drawer and take it in my hand I feel nostalgic for that age when the phone wasn't so in your face with the wight and the tick feel in my pocket.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThe iPhone 17 air is 146 g vs the iPhone 16 at 170 g. I don't think you're going to notice the 25g weight saving in your pocket.
- lawkwok 1y agoMy iPhone 13 mini (5.4" display) is 141g and it's immediately noticeable how much lighter it feels than a pro phone. I can imagine the effect being more exaggerated given the larger but thin profile of the 17.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThe 16 pro max weight is 227g. 227g to 141g is a substantial difference. 170g to 146g is not a substantial difference IMO.
- mrtksn 1y agoWeight is very noticeable at this range, maybe not in the pocket but at hand. You don't always hold the phone in perfectly ergonomic position. 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.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoIf you care about weight, you wouldn't be buying the pro then. The valid comparison is against the non-pro. Apple doesn't care about weight. If they did, they'd use a lot more plastic and a lot less glass, metal and ceramic.
- ACCount37 1y agoThe camera bump looks like it's twice the thickness of the entire phone.
- stefanfisk 1y agoIt probably aligns very well with any sensible case.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 2lup382_ 1y agofor it to align with the case the case would need to be as thick as the camera bump thus negating the entire point of a thin phone while introducing all the problems of a thin phone.
- stefanfisk 1y agoIf the Air is thinner than non-air with the case on it's still a win.
- Molitor5901 1y agoI really don't want the liquid display so I guess this means i can't update my iPhone until they give us a way to permanently disable this.
- punitvthakkar 1y agoI am curious if this will bend.
- sippeangelo 1y agoIt is quite telling when they boast about the battery life of the other models, but the Air is just "All day battery life", and then immediately announce their magsafe power bank 20 seconds later in the broadcast!
- NetMageSCW 1y agoIt has better battery life than the iPhone 16 - was that terrible?
- behnamoh 1y agoCustomers: we need better battery, no camera bump, better displays, more storage, ... Apple: here's the thinnest phone ever
- lifestyleguru 1y agoEvery time I hear "people/customers want it" I answer that I don't want it and immediately hear in response "but you are not a human/customer". I'm confused... I stopped asking.
- canucker2016 1y agoThey did increase the RAM for the iPhone17 by 50% (8GB -> 12GB [sorry, there was no RAM bump, I was looking at the iPhone17 and iPhone17 Pro page and confused the 17Pro RAM for the 17 RAM amount]) and the 128GB storage option is gone, so the 256GB option is the minimum now, for the same price as the initial iPhone16.
- behnamoh 1y ago> They did increase the RAM for the iPhone17 by 50% (8GB -> 12GB) good. they just caught on with Android in 2020.
- NetMageSCW 1y agoFortunately different Operating Systems have different RAM needs and they’ve been making the trade-off between power usage (battery weight) and RAM fairly well.
- amelius 1y agoSomehow the Apple customer base loves to be told what they should want.
- jackothy 1y agoI want a version of this where the camera is flush with the surface of the phone. I understand and accept that this means the camera will be worse.
- mostlysimilar 1y agoThin design rendered moot by the ugly "plateau" (wtf is that marketing term?) Just make the thing a uniform thickness and cram it with battery.
- StephenSmith 1y agoWho actually wants a thinner iPhone?
- browningstreet 1y agoIt's half a folding phone.. they did the R&D, might as well offer it as a halo product.
- jerlam 1y agoThe folding iPhone will just be two iPhone Airs taped together with Apple Sidecar / Handoff enabled.
- JBiserkov 1y agoIt's 1/3 of a folding phone, the Huawei XT / XTs is the benchmark to beat ;-) https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_mate_xt_ultimate-review-2808.php https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_mate_xt_ultimate-review-2808...
- breadwinner 1y agoRight, thinness doesn't help with anything. I want smaller width and height (i.e., a iPhone 17 mini) so that the phone will fit better in my jeans pocket.
- bobotowned 1y ago
- lifestyleguru 1y agoslippery like an ice cube and requires a case by design
- tejinderss 1y agoI dont know whats apple obsessions with thinness, instead they should focus on usability and battery life.
- kridsdale1 1y agoThey did that too, in the other products. Longest battery ever.
- gizajob 1y agoI’d really love an inch-thick iPhone Dad which has a battery that lasts for days on end. Even a week.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> I’d really love an inch-thick iPhone Dad which has a battery that lasts for days on end. Even a week. You're describing a case with a battery pack.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- anamexis 1y agoThey make some pretty beefy battery cases.
- nicce 1y agoThey could make it thicker and give longer battery?
- rafaeltorres 1y agoThat would be the iPhone Pro
- deanebarker 1y agoI've been a PC guy my whole live, and was forced onto a MacBook Pro this year for work. 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.
- MostlyStable 1y agoI am constantly reminded how far away I am from the median phone buyer.
- hydrogen7800 1y agoI've yet to notice a substantive difference between my current Moto g 5g, which cost ~150 USD and my previous phone, a Pixel 5a which cost ~450 USD. I balked at the price of the pixel at the time, but figured that's just the price of admission these days. It is now useless since the screen/mobo failed soon after I switched. After it was obsoleted, I just opted for the cheap Moto and will probably never spend more than 200 USD on a phone again.
- defen 1y agoIf you're on here, you probably work in tech, and if you work in tech, you're probably pretty affluent, which means you don't need to signal that you're affluent.
- dwedge 1y agoIt's late but I spent way too long looking at the top image wondering what the weird phone angles were on the left and right until I realised it said AIR
- dkga 1y agoAaaaahh so that’s what it is!
- programmertote 1y agoSame....I was like does this phone have a stand in the back? Stared at that picture for like 1 minute and gave up. :D
- JasonSage 1y agoI didn't get it until I read your comment. I simply gave up.
- mikojan 1y agoI thought it was foldable in a weird way..
- blueprint 1y agolol Yeah they need to fix that. I thought it was some new kind of phone stand.
- PossessedInfant 1y ago[dead]
- teekert 1y agoSame! Though it was some liquid glass distortion of the phone or something. 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.
- dwedge 1y agoI guess Apple finally listened to all the people saying they want a smaller phone, and totally misunderstood what that meant
- abirch 1y agoMy wife has a 13 mini and is sad she'll have to go to a larger phone.
- euroderf 1y agoYes the 13 mini is a decent followup to the SE series. Except that the face recog is broken UI garbage.
- layer8 1y agoThe mini has still around 2-3 years of life left; we may yet get lucky.
- ch4s3 1y agoYeah, it's really the perfect size if you're not trying to use it like a tiny ipad. I'm super frustrated that they won't make another 5.4" screen.
- aurareturn 1y agoThe problem is that these people are very loud on the internet but sales for small phones are abysmal. 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.
- taeric 1y agoIt is a lot like demand for spacious pockets in fashionable clothing. People largely think you can get that with no tradeoff on anything regarding the clothes. And, you just can't. 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.
- o_m 1y agoThis will be the replacement for my iPhone 13 mini. Although I wish they would make another mini instead.
- whichdan 1y agoI wonder if the thinner profile will make it more comfortable in smaller hands (both in terms of reach and center-of-gravity), but I'm skeptical.
- rplnt 1y agoIt's actually not that thinner (1.9mm compared to 12 mini) so I doubt it will. And it definitely can't make for the huge size difference (134mm of extra width).
- apparent 1y agoDitto. This adds 10.5mm of width, but shaves 4mm of depth (2mm on each side, as measured when holding in one hand). So the net increase is only 6mm. I won't be pre-ordering one of these, since I want to feel it in-store prior to purchasing. The weight is also significantly (in percentage terms) greater.
- aurareturn 1y agoIt has A19 Pro. A19 Pro has matmul acceleration in its GPU, the equivalent of Nvidia's Tensor cores. This would make future Macs extremely viable for local LLMs. Currently, Macs have high memory bandwidth and high VRAM capacity but low prompt processing speeds. Give it a large context and it'll take forever before the first token is generated. 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.
- astrange 1y agoA19 supports MTE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186265 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.
- rising-sky 1y agoMIE
- philodeon 1y agoMIE is a combination of enhanced MTE (EMTE) and some highly-overdue software allocator improvements.
- tucnak 1y agoIt certainly took them a while to introduce MTE! Pixel 8 came out in 2023. I wonder how it compares against hardened_malloc with 48-bit address space and 33-bit ASLR in Graphene. Apple's security team has reported that MIE could break all "known" exploit chains, but so does hardened_malloc. Hard to tell right now which one is best (most def MIE) but everything else included in Graphene is probably making the point moot anyway.
- j4102_ 1y agoThousands of words to just tell me that nothing changed
- gizajob 1y ago“It’s our most revolutionary nothing changed in the history of iPhone.”
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- protoster 1y agoClearly there is a disconnect between what commenters want and what actually sells.
- anonymars 1y ago"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
- kridsdale3 1y agoThe marketing shows what sells. People want to be 25, hot, in cool places with cool looking friends, with great lighting.
- ncr100 1y ago$0.25 fentanyl sells good. Doesn't mean it's what people need.
- TillE 1y agoFentanyl is a fascinating market case study because nobody actually wants fentanyl, they want oxycodone or heroin. 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.
- wvenable 1y agoAlso, satisfied people don't have any need to comment.
- karel-3d 1y agoYes; the mini phones never sold very well, yet there are always commenters that ask for it. There are no small phones on the market, even the asus zenphone - which used to be the best compact android - is just a big phone now.
- euLh7SM5HDFY 1y agoI searched the gsmarena and it only lists 3 modern phones: - 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".
- dirkc 1y agoI hope they include instructions on holding it correctly ;p
- qyckudnefDi5 1y agoTop tier comment!
- Gualdrapo 1y agoThis with the glass ui thing feels like now they're doing "innovation" for the sake of "innovation". But as someone said on the other thread about this thing (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45185576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45185576), at this point they could just make a cardboard phone, wrap it with some fancy words and would sell it like crazy.
- intothemild 1y ago"a breakthrough design" They copied pixel.
- hu3 1y agoIt really looks like a Pixel: https://store.google.com/product/pixel_10_pro https://store.google.com/product/pixel_10_pro To be fair, their announcements where close apart. There's a chance Pixel copied iPhone.
- jacobgkau 1y agoDoesn't seem super likely. The Pixel's had a visor for years; the new design at least appears to be a natural progression from that.
- Tankenstein 1y agoThe pixel has had a "visor" style bump for many years, last year's model rounded it off for the current look. This year's model is design-wise very similar to last year's.
- n8cpdx 1y agoEdit: forgot which thread I’m on, yes the air looks much more like Pixel. 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.
- voidfunc 1y agoThin phone that we're all just going to put a case on and forget what it looks like because everyone's phone just looks like an Otterbox or whatever. Apple is cooked.
- supportengineer 1y agoUpvote for Otterbox
- apparent 1y agoEh the new bumpers and clear cases look interesting (but the white MagSafe pattern is just stupid — should just leave it off). I'll probably get an Air and one of these cases, or a thin third party case.
- kasperset 1y agoIphone Air does not have LiDAR Scanner if it matters to anyone.
- hulitu 1y agoDoes it has a screen ?
- zx10rse 1y agoiPhone 6 is where they peeked.
- EvanAnderson 1y agoiPhone SE 1st edition was my peak iPhone. Everything else has been downhill.
- whilenot-dev 1y agoiPhone SE 2nd edition for me, I prefer soft edges.
- ProfessorLayton 1y agoDesign-wise it's iPhone 4 for me. It still feels great to hold. I wish the Pro models went back to this all-flat design, and let the other models worry about thinness.
- al_borland 1y agoiPhone 3GS was peak.
- cyberpunk 1y agoIt was the 4 / 4S for me. Perfect size.
- whytaka 1y agoI want an all-screen iPod gen 2-4 as a phone.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agothis is basically a modern iPhone 6 plus, so I guess they agree with you
- randomname4325 1y agoLong time apple fanboy. I've watched most of these unveilings for the past 20 years. The new phones are impressive. But it was all speeds and feeds. The examples felt so wrong. The women dancing while on the phone. The guy running with while recording. The person needing translation to buy roses? None of those feel grounded in reality. It's like they are building tech for made up in corporate conference room use cases.
- fibers 1y agoLive translation u/i feels like a significant upgrade for that specific product, especially if you are in a dense area with different types of speakers. It feels like a way better MVP than Meta Glasses that are only meant to do troll videos on tiktok or youtube. The examples they trotted out feel ridiculous but that's because they have been approved by their internal systems.
- randomname4325 1y agoAgreed live translation on airpods killed consumer smartglassses killer AI feature.
- everfrustrated 1y agoLook at the age of the people running Apple (management up to the board) vs other tech companies.
- randomname4325 1y agoImpossible to oversee. Everyone presenting was so old. It's like they were imagining what was hip and cool. Lets have a women doing salsa facetiming... who would she even be talking to in that scenario??
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agomaybe they're just quietly marketing to the demographic most anecdotally * known for having money to spend In This Economy. * i don't know if this is backed up statistically!
- fibers 1y agoWhat exactly is their strategy with preventing cannibalizing sales between the Air and the Pro Max? This release makes no sense.
- booleanbetrayal 1y agoAAPL is down 1.3% on the news, while GOOGL is up 2%. Their phone offerings have diverged so dramatically with this last refresh cycle.
- apparent 1y agoDo you think Google stock is up because of this announcement? It's not like they generate most of their revenue from Pixel phones, or Android overall.
- booleanbetrayal 1y agoI think people trade on announcements like this, regardless of the full financial picture.
- blitzar 1y agoYes, a move in the global share of mobile phones a few percentage points from apple ecosystem to google ecosystem is even more important now Ai is the denominator in every valuation.
- booleanbetrayal 1y agoThis in a nutshell. 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 ...
- blitzar 1y agoOne small disagreement - the most obvious entry point is one of the 3.5 billion android devices in the world (against apples 1.5b) 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.
- sevenseacat 1y agoWho on earth is this for???
- piskov 1y agoAt least air is titanium. 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.
- musictubes 1y agoSteel is too heavy. As they pointed out aluminum is much better at dissipating heat than titanium. Shooting video has always heated phones up. A lot of the video features were aimed directly at actual professional video work so I’m not surprised if preventing throttling was a key goal. Game performance will come along for the ride as well. 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.
- piskov 1y agoWell too bad for them making 17 pro as heavy as 13 pro steel. 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.
- ThrowawayTestr 1y agoThat camera bump is ugly as sin
- yiyayo110 1y agocan we just get an iPhone Fat with 20000 mAh battery and a LCD screen (5% of population is sensitive to OLED PWM)
- tonijn 1y agoWell you could just stick a huge fat Magsafe battery on the back of the phone...
- supportengineer 1y agoI prefer the term iPhone Thiccc
- astrange 1y agohttps://mashable.com/article/samsung-galaxy-a21-airplane-fire https://mashable.com/article/samsung-galaxy-a21-airplane-fir... https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/More-than-One-Million-Anker-Power-Banks-Recalled-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards-Manufactured-by-Anker-Innovations https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/More-than-One-Million-Anke...
- HardCodedBias 1y agoI feel like Apple goes back to the crutch of industrial design when they start running out of new use cases. 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.
- nerpderp82 1y agoThe thin phone is engineering prep for Apple Vision Air.
- fudged71 1y agoIt really does feel like there is a long term strategy with miniaturization and functional integration. 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.
- nylonstrung 1y agoWho needs compute in their headset when their phone already has enough to drive it? 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
- throw0101d 1y ago> iPhone Air features an eSIM-only design that saves space internally, helping enable the unbelievably light and thin form factor. 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?
- piskov 1y agoYou can’t swap them easily between phones. 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
- astrange 1y agoYou can swap them between iPhones pretty easily. There are some issues with virtual carriers - I went to Japan recently and the travel eSIM I got didn't work for most of the trip until I realized there was an old busted APN configuration profile installed from the last time I went.
- piskov 1y agoI was talking about swapping esim back and forth: definitely harder than an ordinary sim. Sure you can transfer them while upgrading the phone to a new one.
- fibers 1y agoWhen they first introduced eSIM only on the 13 iirc, not every country had that rolled out especially with old telcos in South America so if you travelled there for work or family you were completely shut out and it means buying a burner. I am not sure how that has progressed in the past 4 years but hopefully more telcos adopt it. The downside is no real portability of cheap plans using regular sim cards.
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
- scblock 1y agoThat is the dumbest side profile I have ever seen. The camera bump and camera together are thicker than the rest of this thing. By its design it now demands a massive case or just won't ever sit even reasonably flat on a table. Ridiculous.
- JBiserkov 1y ago"Just" put an magsafe battery on the back. 1. Create a problem. 2. Sell the solution. 3. Profit.
- ManBeardPc 1y agoBut hey, at least the battery is (partially) replaceable that way.
- dmix 1y agoIf it runs all day like they claim that probably won't be a big seller.
- paxys 1y agoThey very conveniently left out a number from "all day".
- sophiebits 1y agoWebsite says "Up to 27 hours video playback", which is apparently 7–8 hours more than the iPhones 13–15 and 4–5 more than the 13–15 Pro. Also normally their battery estimates are conservative.
- lostmsu 1y agoThese days the question is more about continuous use of Gmaps.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- woah 1y agoIncredible lift-to-weight ratio is going to contribute to epic hang times from this thing while the camera bump provides a center of gravity for it to rotate around for predictable flight paths.
- temp0826 1y agoNicknamed The Tomahawk
- kridsdale3 1y agoTalking about using this thing as a boomerang?
- temp0826 1y agoFor the reference...there was an app (I think it's banned on all the stores now?) that used the phone's sensors to record its hangtime when thrown in the air (pending it survived the landing, I guess). I think there was a scoreboard?
- dabinat 1y agoI feel like this is more of a tech demo than a product. It is impressive engineering, for sure, but you can pay $100 more for the Pro and get significantly more features and battery life.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> you can pay $100 more for the Pro and get significantly more features and battery life 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.
- rsingel 1y agoI just want to know how much it weighs. Still looking for a phone as light as the Pixel 5 at 151 grams
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- spicybbq 1y agoIt says 165g. It's lighter than the base model.
- pavlov 1y agoThis reminds me of Nokia's glory days around the turn of the millennium, when the mobile phone's essential functionality was well established and they excelled at packaging the same thing into ever-smaller cases made of ever-fancier metals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_8850/8890 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_8850/8890 The Motorola Razr of course was part of this trend too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Razr_V3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Razr_V3
- YVoyiatzis 1y agoI actually sold my Nakamichi cassette deck to afford the NOKIA Communicator back then. The OS was problematic and couldn’t deliver the functionality that I expected. I ended up switching to a Palm or Handspring device, can't remember which, and stuck with a Nokia monochrome phone until the iPhone came along and changed everything.
- brundolf 1y agoWhen Samsung came out with its ultra-thin phone earlier this year, reviewers said you can't really tell from pictures but it really does feel different in-hand, and is substantially lighter. This one is slightly thinner than Samsung's 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
- apriljo 1y agoI'd be paranoid all the time about breaking it by accidentally sitting on it. Thinner just means it won't have as much strength to resist being bent into an ass-shaped curve, right?
- bsimpson 1y agoiPhone Cup is coming out next year, pre-curved.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoiPhone Ass, made to fit in your back pocket. iPhone Ass Pro, for those with a larger ass.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoi'm sure most people reacted like you in focus groups. I dont know how many times they said "its our most durable phone" and "its so strong" etc. Got to be a way to directly counter this first impression.
- TremendousJudge 1y agoThat's so weird, they're implying that it's more durable than the thicker iPhone 17
- ricardobeat 1y agoIt’s now the only model in the lineup with a frame made out of Titanium.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoYea, indeed strange. Will be interesting to see people test the durability.
- RajT88 1y agoWell. iPhone 17 Pro they sell cases for 59 dollars. I assume the cases for iPhone Air will be 100 dollars.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mtzaldo 1y agoI here to say... will it bend?
- mrdoornbos 1y agoBut how thin will it be when I put an OtterBox case on it, giving it some chance of surviving for more than 4 months in my day-to-day use?
- yalogin 1y agoAs much as I want this to succeed because Apple makes great products, I don't know who asked for it. People have voted unanimously with their wallets that bigger screens with longer battery life is what they want. The trend to thin down phones stopped around iPhone 8 or so, when the big screen was introduced. Since then we have seen many cycles where the phones got bulkier with larger batteries and screens. No one complained.
- rich_sasha 1y agoI'm always impressed how Apple can name so many products with so few words. Recycling Mac[Book] / Pad / Pod, Air, Pro, and 'i' (hardly even a word) gives you basically their whole product lineup. iPad Pro, MacBook Air, AirPods, iPhone Air, iMac Pro. AirTag must be the only one that has a unique word in it.
- diddid 1y agoiPhones last killer feature was usbc. These are all good and appreciated upgrades for someone with no phone, but my wallet is happy none of it is really that interesting and enough to warrant an upgrade. Right now I don’t know what they could do to get me to want to. Folding? Even more zoom? Even more battery? Return of the headphone jack???? I won’t lie, a headphone jack might…
- mmh0000 1y agohttps://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple https://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple
- minimaxir 1y agoThe bumper is back! I was one of the weirdos who liked it unironically for the iPhone 4 back in the day, antennagate prevention aside. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MH004ZM/A/iphone-air-bumper-black 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.
- apparent 1y agoWon't it still significantly add to the thickness, at least in terms of making one-handed typing harder?
- makeitdouble 1y agoIME it's pretty comfortable to use. 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.
- apparent 1y agoHave you tried it on this phone? Seems like it would vary from phone to phone as to whether it's a plus or minus.
- crooked-v 1y ago...unless it lands on the big protruding camera lens.
- minimaxir 1y agoThat's fair. The corresponding full-body case Apple is releasing for $49 does have a conspicious extra lip higher than the camera bulge (albeit that's typical to mitigate camera flash glare). https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MGH24LL/A/iphone-air-case-with-magsafe-shadow https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MGH24LL/A/iphone-air-case...
- elAhmo 1y agoMy old 13 pro is quite thin and uncomfortable to hold in hand without a case. Why would someone push so hard for a thinner phone? Boosting about extra battery if SIM slot is removed, while doing insane over-engineering to shave a few millimeters is quite a tell. I know Apple is super successful and will have another great set of quarters, but this is quite disappointing.
- sixothree 1y agoI have the 13 pro. I personally find it quite heavy (quite a thwack when you drop it) or just tension when you wear shorts for example. That said, I have zero interest in this phone.
- sevensor 1y agoMy first thought was, “thinner and lighter? Apple has totally run out of ideas.”
- hulitu 1y ago> Why would someone push so hard for a thinner phone? 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.
- kykat 1y agoReminds me of pixel phones, but more rounded, and more protuberant.
- superb-owl 1y agoAll I want is a 4-5 inch phone :( bring back the mini!
- piskov 1y agoPeople get old. Old people cannot see small text. Big text requires bigger screen to fit. 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
- lukev 1y agoI'm 40 and I'm clinging to my 13 mini until they offer something comparable, even though the battery is getting old enough I'd really like an upgrade. I can't be the only one.
- freediver 1y agoSame problem here with my mini - it can barely get through a day now. Do you know if you can walk to an Apple store and ask to just replace battery?
- omnimus 1y agoI have iphone 11 and you can have battery replaced just fine. I did it few months ago and the phone became like new. I am not sure about Apple in US but if they won't do it then some third party will.
- EvanAnderson 1y agoI've had good luck with my local Apple store replacing batteries in older models. I made appointments rather than walk-in.
- okanat 1y agoThings that we called "feature" phones nowadays and iPhone 3 worked alright with all sorts of people. Maybe phone manufacturers shouldn't opt for putting so much bullshit into the screens. Reading news, video calling people, audio calling, recording voice, messaging. They all work alright with small screen estate and good UI design. 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.
- ashdksnndck 1y agoAnyone know if this has a silicon-carbon battery? The spec sheet just says “lithium ion”, which doesn’t answer the question.
- creer 1y ago"Impossibly thin" is right in line with Patrick McGee's "Apple in China" who argues that the main reason for Apple's designs is to keep imitators at bay by introducing manufacturing challenges that only they can meet. Indeed impossible at the time of release. One generation after the other. He estimates this gains them about 6 months of headway. Tough world. (Yes, to be fair, there is more to this new phone than just "impossibly thin".)
- thinkingtoilet 1y agoIs anyone buying an iPhone because it's slightly thinner than other phones? I've never heard anyone say the width of the phone was their reason for picking an iPhone, or any phone for that matter.
- baby 1y agoTrend is towards screen real estate now, with folding phones
- burnt_toast 1y agoMy sample size is small but the usual reason I hear from non-technical individuals is that they want the best camera possible.
- 9rx 1y agoIts unlikely anyone is buying a phone because of how thin it is (within reason), but it is quite likely that they are more likely to learn about a new phone available to buy if it is "impossibly" thin. Advertising is important — even for recognized names like Apple.
- bsimpson 1y agoMy dad had his phone stolen a couple months ago. He bought a used one of Craigslist to replace it. 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.
- 1y ago
- ksec 1y agoWe will have Silicon Carbon battery that has 2x energy density of normal lithium battery shipping on Smartphone later this year. Apple is very slow in new battery technology adoption, but one could imagine in a few years time this iPhone Air will have double the battery life.
- pshirshov 1y ago> in a few years time this iPhone Air will have double the battery life So, we can buy this iPhone Air in a few years!
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoThey'll just use the improved battery density to make it wafer thin (with a big camera bump). Which will mean they remove all buttons and connectors making it annoying as hell. But it'll be cool.
- ulfw 1y agowho is 'we will have'? I've had this in my Oppo Find N5 for the last half year already. Bigger battery than any iPhone on the market including the upcoming ones. And that certainly wasn't the first on the market silicon carbon phone
- sfblah 1y agoWhat I would like is an iphone for like $200 with a stable set of features that I don't have to buy off the used market. I don't care if it's 2 generations behind, because these new phones don't offer anything I care about. 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.
- 65 1y agoThe camera hump removes all the "feeling" of having a super thin phone. Also, my phone not being thin enough was never a problem I had. Laptops being thin? Yes that makes sense. But this is barely lighter than the other iPhones. It's all aesthetic.
- general1465 1y agoI have Samsung S25 Edge which is essentially same thickness (5.8mm) the biggest difference is weight, phone feels really light compared to my old phone. 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.
- seec 1y agoYep, weight matters a lot more. 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.
- ramesh31 1y agoNow make it 4 inches, and we'll be back to something approaching the perfection of iPhone 5.
- r0fl 1y agoSmall phones don't sell well. The numbers prove this. Most people want to doom scroll or consume video content on their phones and it is better to do that when the screen is bigger.
- jdprgm 1y agoCan someone that is actually interested in this explain the appeal? Thin on its own I get but thin with a giant bump 100% defeats the whole point for me. Seems clear at this point there is little hope of them engineering their way into thin cameras.
- nkrisc 1y agoI don’t get it either. They’re more difficult to hold.
- kridsdale3 1y agoOptics is not going to be "solved" by anything but some fascinating kind of metamaterial.
- georgeburdell 1y agoGRIN and micromachined Fresnel lenses are both flat. I wouldn’t be surprised if apple is working at least on the latter
- fudged71 1y agoTaking a peek at the research: “While flat-optics cameras have transitioned from theoretical concepts to high-fidelity laboratory prototypes, significant interdisciplinary R&D—spanning nanofabrication, materials science, computational imaging, and systems integration—is required to realize commercial flat camera modules for next-generation smartphones. 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.”
- swiftcoder 1y ago
- hollowturtle 1y agoI don't get the effort of reaching that thickness and then bumping that monster at the top. It will unbalance the phone for sure. I mean there must be a consumer base that would buy an ultra light smartphone without the back camera so to make it consistently thin? I'd buy it
- NetMageSCW 1y agoThe Plateau also includes all logic boards and most other components for the phone except those that must be physically located on other edges, so getting rid of the camera wouldn’t really help. The main body of the phone is just battery and display.
- thund 1y agoBased on what teardown are you concluding the logic boards take up that much? Based on what phone design history where removing cameras failed to free up meaningful space?
- STELLANOVA 1y agoThis is becoming comical. iPhone Air only supports USB 2 speeds. Seriously? Also iPhone Pro only comes with USB 3 speeds while amplifying ProRes RAW support...
- zhobbs 1y agoI've never transferred data over a wire to or from my iPhone, interesting that this is important for some use cases.
- coolspot 1y agoBacking up your 1TB phone without taking whole house wi-fi bandwidth for 12 hours is one.
- swiftcoder 1y ago... what is wrong with your wifi, that its non-functional with <200 mbps of transfer?
- Nextgrid 1y ago200mbps is still wishful thinking in a typical household with ISP-provided consumer-grade router/AP in a suboptimal location. At the very least it will slow everything else down while it takes ~11 hours at a sustained 200mbps to transfer 1TB.
- swiftcoder 1y agoNot sure that I expect the average hacker news commenters to stick with their ISP-provided router in a suboptimal location - you can pick up a wifi6 router for under $100, that will happily maintain gigabit speeds over a normal-sized house
- gambiting 1y agoI don't think I have ever plugged in my phone, like at all, ever, and it's not even an iPhone. And if I want to get any photos/videos I made with it, they are just in Google photos? 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?
- r0fl 1y agoI see many comments screaming "WE NEED MORE BATTERY LIFE!" 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
- Insanity 1y agoGoing on a hike in the weekend? Or basically anything where you're not going to the office? lol
- viscanti 1y agoYou're watching video podcasts while hiking or what's the weekend hike use case for more than 27 hours of video playback on a single charge?
- Insanity 1y agoYeah my bad, I poorly read the post I was replying to. I'll leave my comment, because maybe someone is hardcore enough to do that. 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 :)
- r0fl 1y agoHow many people hike longer than their battery lasts? 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
- hulitu 1y ago
- dzink 1y agoThis has a couple of up sides. 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.
- foobarian 1y agoSigh. I can't stand the camera bump. I would run not walk to the nearest Apple store with all my savings if they made a phone where the camera bump is made flush by adding thickness elsewhere to match, filled with extra battery. Thing would last for weeks. Ah well back to reality.
- anonymars 1y agoI'll do you one better, how about the camera is not flush but recessed so it is less likely to be the thing that gets smashed?
- ethagknight 1y agoOr smeared with hand grease
- Tade0 1y agoThis. I wish it was flush - typically it's actually protruding. 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.
- hbn 1y ago
- baby 1y agoI just wanted a folding iPhone.
- bravetraveler 1y agoIt may still bend! We'll see how much this Titanium 'exceeds expectations', eyeroll.gif
- boogieknite 1y agotravel
- user3939382 1y ago[flagged]
- ncr100 1y agoSee also the Paperclip movement, and Louis Rossman, championing the antithesis to unkind treatment of you, the user. (Note I didn't say consumer as that's reductionistic)
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoWhat does this have to do with Apple Air?
- colordrops 1y ago"Shitty sociopath corporation releases new product" "Comment about how shitty this corporation is" "Why don't you talk about the product like a good consumer?"
- fckgw 1y ago"Apple releases new product" "I'm done with Google, Adobe, ..." It's just a rant for the sake of rants
- _Algernon_ 1y agoApple was also in the list, so still relevant.
- jajuuka 1y agoNot relevant to the topic at hand. Perhaps I should write my manifesto here about socialist societies and their benefits. It would be relevant since I would mention Apple after all.
- user3939382 1y ago
- jacquesm 1y agoThis is an interesting move. Extend the moat. At the same time I'm considering hard wiring a powerbank to my phone so it will have a month of stand-by time.
- Nition 1y agoIt's more the other two dimensions that I want shrunk. Did anyone think their phone was too thick to fit in their pocket?
- moralestapia 1y ago>Hahahaha LMAO. Here's your upvote my friend. Back to reality, Apple sells close to 200 billion worth of iPhones per year, so yeah, maybe they know what they're doing?
- Nition 1y agoWe'll see. I wonder how well the Air will sell. I do understand the Mini didn't sell well, so I'm obviously not the average consumer.
- moralestapia 1y agoPeople underestimate what you can do with trillions of dollars at your disposal. 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.
- cortesoft 1y agoYou have to sacrifice screen size to shrink the other dimensions, and they already have smaller screen iPhones. It seems most people care more about big screens than size in that dimension
- Nition 1y agoJust give me one good phone with a small screen please, and everyone else can buy one of the other 10,000 options with huge screens.
- dang 1y agoRelated ongoing threads: Compare the New iPhone Models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186294 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186044 - Sept 2025 (42 comments) Apple Debuts iPhone 17 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186023 - Sept 2025 (104 comments)
- greycol 1y agoThe thinness of the letters in the title really accentuate the camera bump. For me it makes it looks like it's called APR and really draws attention to a design feature I dislike, having said that I know that some people find camera bumps a positive feature.
- cubefox 1y agoThe thinnest phone is still the Vivo X5 Max from 10 years ago. It was 4.75 mm (iPhone Air: 5.5 mm) without significant camera bump to speak of. Here are some pictures: https://gsmarena.com/vivo_x5max-pictures-6865.php https://gsmarena.com/vivo_x5max-pictures-6865.php Apparently the "thin phone" trend is coming back.
- shshahshsusus 1y agoAlright, buckle up — here’s a *Curb Your Enthusiasm scene* where Larry takes the iPhone Air press release way too personally at the Apple Store. --- ### 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?
- minimaxir 1y agoDon't post AI-generated comments to Hacker News, especially long comments which scroll the page but add nothing to the discussion.
- pshirshov 1y agoI don't feel like I need a thin phone. I need a smartphone which can last for a week after a single charge. From what I understand, the energy density in modern battery processes is enough to pack 100 Wh battery into a phone, but for some reason we are stuck with 20 Wh for years.
- asadotzler 1y agoYou wouldn't want that weight. Well, 99.5% of smartphone users wouldn't want that weight. Maybe you would.
- pshirshov 1y agoI can withstand +250g.
- amilios 1y agoI believe the counterargument here is that we've gotten used to phones being relatively thin, and people have learned to charge their phones every night anyway. Something about stated vs. true desires, just like with the Minis where people said they wanted smaller phones but then nobody bought them. I believe it might be a similar thing where people say they want thicker phones with big batteries but they won't actually buy them when they realize they will be noticeably thicker and heavier.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoCant wait for Bendgate 2025 edition
- AbraKdabra 1y agoImagine putting the phone on the table and seeing it rocking side to side when you press it, the nightmare. Somebody needs to change this stupid trend urgently, we don't need thinner phones.
- minimaxir 1y agoThe iPhone 17 will rock less than previous iPhones with the bulge since this new bulge goes across the entire phone width.
- RomanPushkin 1y agoPretty excited about this one. The amount of tech went into this is obviously insane. Happy to see the company is still the driver of innovation. I bet we'll see more slim phones coming up next months from other vendors.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoI do like this, but since most people put some big case on their phone anyway, does the thickness of the phone matter that much?
- asadotzler 1y agoWell, a thick phone with a thick case is very thick while a thin phone with a thick case is only somewhat thick and a thin phone with a think case is only barely thick.
- crooked-v 1y agoJust give me a phone without the stupid camera bump.
- maxglute 1y agoOnce you start rocking case accessories, profile of phones can definitely get thinner, i.e. phone loops, those suction cups. I'm fine with going thinner with the trend and I think we're going to get some pretty slick phone cases/accessories that makes actual thinner flusher carrying profile. 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.
- bargainbin 1y agoIf you’ve been following the rumour mill and also understand Tim “zero waste” Cook’s MO of reusing parts in multiple models, this whole thing makes a lot more sense when you realise they’re going to release a folding iPhone next year, and it’ll be the thickness of two Airs.
- Wingman4l7 1y agoReusing parts for them, massive piles of software-bricked e-waste for us.
- ticoombs 1y ago(side note) And the folding phone will be a "Apple First". 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
- christkv 1y agoIt looks so fragile to me like I’ll bend it the first week
- ManBeardPc 1y agoI want an extra thick model instead, let’s call it iPhone Travel (or Ultra?). Just thick enough so the cameras are no longer sticking out. Give me an all-week battery instead of an all-day one. Slim down the power usage and give a power saver mode that actually does make a difference. Let me go on a weekend trip in nature or festival without having to carry extra hardware or having to look for public charging stations.
- grogenaut 1y agoThis is why I mostly stick with the Moto G models which have easily multi-day battery and cost sub $250.
- crossroadsguy 1y agoBut do you get to hear First Time in A Moto G™ when they announce something? See! That is what you are missing. That is what you pay for. That's revolutionary. Take my money Apple!
- duffyjp 1y agoI’ve had a bunch of Moto G phones, I love them. This round I decided to try their upper midrange Edge line. 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.
- ShakataGaNai 1y agoYes. Give me the iPhone 17 Pro Ultra. It's the Pro Max, but even more battery. Heavier duty case. Like I'm put the thing in a case that makes it big and bulky already, if you give me a heavy duty enough setup that I feel safe letting it go naked, people might actually see the status symbol... instead of the dbrand sticker.
- bitcoinmoney 1y agoiPhone Thicc- body positivity!
- racl101 1y agoLateral move. shrugs I'd been more excited if they brought back the 3.5 mm audio jack.
- davidclark 1y ago“Thinnest” should be measured by the thickest slice for a given dimension. 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.
- shuckles 1y agoGenuinely curious: why do you often find yourself typing on the phone resting on a flat surface? I can’t think of a single time where that’s been the best way to handle my device.
- cobbal 1y agoI do this all the time, often when I'm at a desk or table. I had to get a bulky case for my iPhone just so it didn't unstably contact at only 2 points and rock with each tap.
- shuckles 1y agoWhy don't you pick up the phone and type on it? That seems a lot more ergonomic.
- mrheosuper 1y agoThis has similar vibe to "You are holding it wrong"
- shuckles 1y agoWhich is an interesting comparison because most of the people were indeed unrealistically deathgripping their iPhone just to see the antenna bars drop.
- halper 1y agoI find myself using the phone on the desk, placed between my keyboard and monitor. I do this because I find having stuff in pockets less comfortable than not, so I put things on my desk. I sometimes want to communicate with my wife about domestic logistics and prefer typing short replies without lifting the phone every time. My work laptop is not logged into my iCloud account, so cannot reply there. Happens a few times a week.
- oliv__ 1y agoAll I want is a new SE-sized iPhone with a headphone jack. I'll preorder right now if you want to collect my money
- neilv 1y agoTechnologically impressive, how thin they got it. Since it costs $1000-$1400, I'm going to need a nice big thick ruggedized case around it.
- benbayard 1y agoAppleCare+ is really good IMO if you're interested in caseless. I can get my screen or back replaced same day for as little as $29. On my iPhone 17 I've broken the screen twice and gotten repairs done same day.
- hiq 1y agoI don't know, this still feels like hassle to go there, hand in your phone, plan accordingly as you'll spend some hours without, and go get it back later. If that happens once a year fine, but still, I'd rather just get a case (and save the $10/month AppleCare+ seems to cost).
- benbayard 1y agoIt's not a problem for me to be without my phone for a few hours, as I can still text from my Mac (except for RCS + SMS messages). But yes, it's definitely a downside. I prefer the comfort and weight of a caseless phone. For me, the phone has been incredibly resilient and outside of once having a potlid drop from the ceiling on my phone, shattering the front and back of the phone (which was replaced in 3 hours, next day, when I broke the phone at 9pm).
- neilv 1y agoInteresting. I think I want to avoid the downtime of my phone (and preserve resale value), but that insurance price point isn't bad if you want to go caseless and also cover less-predictable oopses.
- meatmanek 1y agoI broke the back glass on my 15 Pro a few months ago, still covered by AppleCare+. I made an appointment at the biggest store in town, and they didn't have the part in stock when I got there. The Genius ordered the part and told me they'd have it in a few days. Nine days later, they finally got it. I made a new appointment, showed up, and they told me they had the part but didn't have a replacement phone in stock in case something went wrong during the repair. They offered to have me go to another store nearby, which had both the part and the replacement device, but I opted to just take the gamble (since back glass replacement seems like a low-risk repair). 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.
- supernikio2 1y agoThe Apple foldable is coming. There's no way they invested so much R&D for a thinner phone if they aren't looking to get into that market.
- urbandw311er 1y agoThis. Absolutely this. Presumably the foldable flips back up and extends to just beneath the camera bump, hence most of the phone is effectively double the thinnest part of the iPhone air.
- amelius 1y agoYes, and everybody will think Apple invented it.
- fooqux 1y agoIt's also (I'm assuming) completely impossible to repair.
- czhu12 1y agoI wish they could just make a phone that has 3 or 4 day battery life. I never understood this obsession with thickness, even the normal iPhone is too thin to properly hold without a case.
- beng-nl 1y agoI completely agree with this; in practice I have to charge my iPhone in the daytime to make it through the day (probably not when it was new). It would be great to have it go multi day for the days I don’t/cant do an overnight charge.
- NetMageSCW 1y agoThat would be how you get a one pound iPhone which no one would buy.
- thund 1y agoBased on what evidence that adding more battery necessarily makes it a pound? Based on what precedent of mainstream phones ever approaching that weight?
- thund 1y agototally agree, chasing ultrathin designs has diminishing returns. There's so many practical ways to extend battery life such as letting users selectively dial down performance, adding a bit of extra thickness/weight, rethinking how power hungry features are scheduled... It's a matter of priorities, and Apple is obsessed with design (with dubious results, ie magic mouse charging port)
- daedrdev 1y agoI don't get why HN is so negative, I would not be surprised if this is one of their best selling phones in years
- hombre_fatal 1y agoI don't think many people read the link where it says the Air has 27 hours of video playback compared to the 33 hours of the iPhone 17 Pro. 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.
- therobots927 1y agoBy purchasing a new iPhone you are directly contributing to the humanitarian crisis in the Congo. A thin phone won’t change your life but it might be responsible for a life being lost.
- astrange 1y agoIt uses 100% recycled cobalt. https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone_17_PER_Sept2025.pdf https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone...
- therobots927 1y agoIt still increases the demand for cobalt. Which is the fundamental problem here.
- prng2021 1y agoThey’re running out of ways to innovate across all of their product lines. Introducing yet another product size is the easiest way for them to make it look like the iPhone is still innovating. I’m sure there will eventually be an Apple Watch Air as well as iPad Pro Max/Ultra too.
- UrineSqueegee 1y agoi was on the fence getting this but I am definitely not after watching this. Probably s26u when it comes out in Jan
- puskavi 1y agoWhy do we need thinner and thinner phones?
- huhtenberg 1y ago> 5.6mm Fiiiinally something thinner than X820 ! https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_x820-1556.php https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_x820-1556.php
- pryelluw 1y agoiPhone (Hot) Air. For the demanding blowhole. Now available in pink.
- minimaxir 1y agoSo there's one feature the Air is missing according to a deep dive of the Compare sheet (https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/): The Air does not support mmWave cellular connectivity, while the other models (and previous models going back awhile) do support it. That is...weird? Why would the Air's design prevent that?
- dmix 1y agoWhat does that mean in practice?
- gsibble 1y agoI talked to ChatGPT about it for a while. It says mmWave means you can get 1-3gbps speeds if you're in a covered area. However, most are stadiums, airports, etc.. Verizon has by far the largest coverage, then AT&T. At least in my daily use, it means nothing. I've also never seen speeds like that when I've tested the phone.
- minimaxir 1y agoThe carriers offer a superfast download speed that is based off of mmWave: Verizon for example offers 5G Ultra Wideband: https://www.verizon.com/support/5g-mobile-faqs/ https://www.verizon.com/support/5g-mobile-faqs/ On my current iPhone 13 Pro I can get about 100 Mbps in San Francisco.
- Nextgrid 1y agoI remember having ~150Mbps with an iPhone 8 on LTE in 2017. Bandwidth itself has basically never been the limiting factor for the last decade or so. The problem is always data caps, and unless 5G/mmWave/etc is somehow magically exempt, it's not really a benefit (you can now burn through your monthly quota in seconds instead of minutes - great!).
- minimaxir 1y agoUnlimited* bandwidth plans are more common nowadays.
- qmr 1y ago[flagged]
- wordofx 1y agoAwww you upset you can’t afford it?
- tomhow 1y ago> Oh fuck off. > 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. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ge96 1y agoThey really know how to get your consumer juices flowing 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
- hu3 1y agoAir lost lidar btw
- timerol 1y ago> iPhone Air features N1, a new Apple-designed wireless networking chip that enables Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread. Congrats to Apple for finally designing out Broadcom and vertically integrating the wireless chip
- IshKebab 1y agoVery interesting that it has Thread too. I wonder if that will be a somewhat viable system in a decade. (Show me where I can buy a cheap Thread border gateway that isn't an Apple or Google voice assistant or whatever.)
- iAMkenough 1y agoWe're now on the third generation of iPhones that include Thread radios. Mines been sitting dormant for two years waiting for software that utilizes it. The Aqara Hub M100 is a nice cheap Thread border router.
- nailer 1y agoI’ve read two articles on thread and still don’t know what it is. Something to do with smart homes?
- bytesandbits 1y agoits a low level protocol like WiFi on top of which Smart Home protocols, like Matter, run. It allows for IoT devices to be managed, registered and configured completely local with a hub (any iPad, HomePod and so on) and requires no servers. It is private by design and more secure in some ways, as no one but your hub can control the device. Currently a lot of IoT devices rely on a server that registers and controls them, and is in the hands of a random company you need to trust. TLDR: privacy, security.
- pbronez 1y agoI’ve been impressed with my Thread setup. It’s fast and reliable. Don’t have to think about it, just works. 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.
- maerF0x0 1y ago> iPhone Air is easy to use outside with 3000 nits peak outdoor brightness This will be a nice upgrade for bi / motor - cyclists who like to mount their phone / google maps on their handlebars!
- mikestew 1y agoDon’t put your iPhone on your motorcycle handlebars if you value the camera: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102175 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102175
- Cort3z 1y agoThey keep shrinking in the wrong dimentions.
- sombragris 1y agoI don't need a thinner phone. I need a phone that can use a physical SIM card, has a physical keyboard (something like the N900), and a 3.5mm headphone jack... I'll just skip on that overpriced piece of junk.
- felixding 1y agoThe first thing I do after opening this page (or any other phone announcement) on Hacker News is press cmd+f and search for "headphone". Turns out not many people care about this anymore.
- sombragris 1y agoI still do, and I surmise there are many who simply do not comment. They do not want the downvotes due to wrongthink.
- grahar64 1y agoThin phone, giant screen. How bout thick phone, tiny screen. Call it iPhone Earth
- bob1029 1y agoI understand the market "has spoken" but I feel like I'm on crazy pills when I put a ruler across my iPhone 13 mini and look at where the 6.5" mark is. No other dimension is relevant to me until we get this one under control.
- drumhead 1y agoIs this a foldable prototype. Will the iPhone foldable be 2 iphone Airs joined together?
- renmillar 1y agoIf you flip one upside down and attach it to another one, you end up with a stable phone that has twice the battery life.
- evolve2k 1y agoReally?! It’s 2025 and this is what they saw as important. We need repairable tech not this peanut butter and jelly nonsense that’ll be in the trash heap literal months from now. Feels like we’re back to the old Performa, Centris and Quadra era of rolling our more and more barely differentiated products u til folks loose track of what to buy. Have you been in an Apple Store recently, it’s starting to feel pretty cluttered. 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.
- evolve2k 1y agoThe Google Ad states; “If it feels like your phone hasn’t change in years, .. maybe it’s time to change your phone.. Google Pixel 10 Pro” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjqHLLHruA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjqHLLHruA
- namuol 1y agoI don’t care about how thin the phone is. Let me replace the battery without risking shattering all the glass on the thing.
- Nextgrid 1y agoThere's a small potential for enthusiasts to potentially make an aftermarket shell that sits flush and uses the space for an additional battery. Won't be cost-effective nor mass market but people have done crazier things (like add USB-C support to Lightning phones) before.
- footlose_3815 1y agoOnce again, stuff I don't care about. We would be 3x as impressed if it was 3x as wide and 3x battery life. 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.
- nakamoto_damacy 1y agoI have an iPhone 13 mini, just replaced the battery. If you want my money, give me an iPhone 17 mini with small width and height, I don't care about it being thinner like the Air. Also, no AI ruining the image quality of the expensive camera. I saw examples of a consumer-grade digital camera vs an iPhone 16 and the latter introduced "hotdog skin" effect and other effects that made the photos look over-processed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jcul 1y agoMy main phone for a year or so has been a unihertz jelly star. Kind of an extreme but it's so nice in your hand / pocket. Definitely not thin though!
- infotainment 1y agoI just wish Unihertz wasn't so questionable! Can't a decent company make a small phone? (And actually update the software on it? And comply with the GPL?)
- caro_kann 1y agoI'm dying to find an answer to this. The last decent company to product sub 6 inch phone was Asus, but they stopped :(
- amilios 1y agoUnfortunately both the 12 Mini and the 13 Mini did terrible numbers sales-wise. People say they want small phones but not enough of them actually buy them when they are available. :(
- rkomorn 1y agoPeople want to buy small phones like they want to pay for Firefox. A few people say it very loudly and nobody else does.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoAd has nothing for me. I want to know more about it's satellite reception, it's physical limits (actual specifications with units too much to ask?), it's hardware security improvements, how many GB of storage, and the final cost.
- minimaxir 1y agohttps://www.apple.com/iphone-air/specs/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-air/specs/
- jayelbe 1y agoCools pics! They should show it behind a pencil for scale.
- mrcwinn 1y agoI'm concerned about HN database storage capacity, so here's a simple way to think about this. If you're interested, consider buying it. If it's not for you, no need to argue a whole lot. Plenty of other topics worthy of discussion. XD
- lawgimenez 1y agoNo need to worry, tech bros got enough cash for storage.
- brcmthrowaway 1y agoDo they use compression?
- hu3 1y agoall the text in this thread is smaller than one of the large iphone announcement photos. Don't worry
- amelius 1y agoAnother phone that does not lie flat on the table.
- randmeerkat 1y agoWow, a phone with a battery that's so bad, they're selling an extra one to strap to the back of it, on launch day... The most innovative thing that Apple has done recently is figuring out how to have their CEO deliver a gift wrapped gold bar to the president. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbEsY-YpF1E&t=133s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbEsY-YpF1E&t=133s
- wayeq 1y agoman that is depressing
- danans 1y ago> man that is depressing Only if you had a misconception about what and whom the big tech CEOs represent. Otherwise these actions are very expected in an oligarchic society.
- titanomachy 1y ago"this box was made in California" WOW. You managed to make a cardboard box without using Chinese factories! Very impressive, Tim Apple!!
- Tagbert 1y agoIf you check the actual specs, the Air’s battery life is the same 27 hours as the 16Pro. That’s pretty good for such a thin device. Obviously 27 hours is an optimistic estimate but to match the 16Pro means that the Air battery isn’t actually bad. 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.
- roelschroeven 1y ago> [...] the same 27 hours as the 16Pro. That’s pretty good for such a thin device. 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.
- tobyhinloopen 1y agoWhy do we measure devices at their thinnest part rather than at their thickest part
- esotericsean 1y agoI just can't imagine anyone wanting this? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but do people really want a thinner phone? I love my 16 Pro and plan to get the 17 Pro. Definitely feel like thicker and longer battery is better. Heavier feels nice.
- esotericsean 1y agoSaw another comment that said this will give Apple the opportunity to learn if people really want a thinner iPhone. I hope they learn that people don't. Curious to find out the answer.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago“A new titanium USB-C port is 3D-printed to be thinner and stronger, fitting into the slim design while using 33 percent less material than a conventional forging process.” Super fun. Titanium printing
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- andy99 1y agoAs 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 was seriously thinking of buying it for a minute till I remembered how much they just exude smugness. I like apple hardware but the company absolutely disgusts me.
- xyst 1y agobReAkThRoUgH dEsIgN What a joke. Recycled design from 6/11 is breakthrough in Apple world
- illwrks 1y agoSome day soon they'll release a phone with no battery and you'll need to BYOB.
- jebronie 1y ago[flagged]
- IAmNotACellist 1y agoLooks as thin as the zfold 7 but without the inner display.
- zakki 1y agoHopefully it doesn't morph to Aang: the Air bend er
- itsjamesmurray 1y agoThis is 100% going to bend, right?
- andrewrn 1y agoI feel like Apple hit the diminishing (stopping?) returns on thinness years and years ago. Who cares?
- callc 1y agoI looked in the tech specs and found no mAh listed. Just video playback time. I find that incredibly sus. Does anyone know it? Was it in announcement video?
- NetMageSCW 1y agoGiven the no one has any idea about how much power the A19 Pro SOC will use for activity, what actual purpose would that serve? 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.
- martin1975 1y agoAm I the only one who has never owned an Apple iPhone? I just got my Pixel 7 upgraded to Pixel 10 Pro XL, couldn't be happier.
- hu3 1y agoYou and more than half the world.
- gonzo41 1y agoTBH, this phone looks crap. I'm sure SJ would have hated the form factor.
- tantalor 1y agoBooo bring back the 4" iPhone SE
- will5421 1y agoTitanium? I thought they’d learned that lesson with the Powerbook G4.
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoMy experience is "air" in an Apple product's name means battery life is measured in tens of minutes and the fan makes a horrible racket because the CPU is underpowered and intended for only short suprts of activity. That's fine for a laptop because you can keep it plugged in and use your other computer to do tasks that require CPU, but not appropriate for a mobile phone that you may want to operate untethered for hours at a time. 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."]
- wfme 1y agoDid you uhhhh read any of the announcement, or just jump straight to writing this comment? The 17 Air reports 27 hours of video playback - the same as the 16 Pro.
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoDid you read my comment? I did not say the iPhone Air has 2 hours of battery life. I said previous apple products that had the "Air" name were "less capable." I was wondering aloud why a company would apply this sobriquet to a new product, regardless of it's capabilities.
- wfme 1y agoAh, fair enough! I read this as saying almost exactly that, but yeah, I get what you mean. > 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.
- roody15 1y agoA19 uses the 3nm process and its benchmarks look similiar to the A18. My two cents I would hold off to next version of the air/pro with the 2nm process and the A20 series chips.
- phoenixhaber 1y ago[dead]
- RobLach 1y agoBigger, less featured, and more expensive than the iPhone 17… I don’t get it
- Humphrey 1y agoHot take: iPhone Air isn't about making phones lighter, but to justify making their other models heavier. 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.
- reaperducer 1y agoHot take "Hot takes" are for Reddit. People on HN are expected to think before they respond.
- abbycurtis33 1y agoIt's been at least 6 phones since anybody wanted it thinner.
- kazinator 1y ago> fantastic all-day battery life LOL; fantastic would be several days. all-day is better than gone by late afternoon.
- w0ts0n 1y agoI want a smaller phone, not a thinner phone.
- VoidWhisperer 1y agoAnyone else unable to load the page in firefox mobile? It starts loading and then either crashes the tab or force-closes itself
- sapphire42 1y agoYep, me too https://archive.is/1MQJf https://archive.is/1MQJf
- Liftyee 1y agoI half-expected them to have removed the charging port with how thin it was, but looking at the specs it's (thankfully) still there. 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.
- altairprime 1y agoWhat do you use USB for? Most likely your use cases are now classified “pro/expert”, and the Air isn’t focused on that segment.
- reaperducer 1y agoI use it to sync music and ringtones. I have found wifi sync is not reliable. It locks up frequently, and corrupts playlists.
- nothrowaways 1y agoThey should have offered a no-camera version.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- p1necone 1y agoCan I get regular thickness but twice the battery life instead? "All day battery life" is the bare minimum dressed up as a feature - I get at least two out of my cheap android.
- giarc 1y agoUnless you can deliver multi-day battery, it's useless to provide anything more than all day battery. If the battery can only last 1.5 days for example, then the user is stuck trying to find a charge in the middle of the day. All day battery means they just need to charge overnight (which most users already do).
- re 1y ago> Unless you can deliver multi-day battery, it's useless to provide anything more than all day battery 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.
- giarc 1y agoBut a phone with a 36 hour battery that still requires charging at night leaves the user/owner thinking "This is disappointing, I thought I could get 36 hours". As opposed to a user who has "all day charge" and charges at night thinks "This is what I bought and expect".
- re 1y agoA user whose phone has "all day charge" that has to plug their phone in at 3pm because they used it too much in the morning would be, IMO, more disappointed. 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.
- crossroadsguy 1y agoAt this point I am like “fuck (perception of) privacy!”. I will just buy the 9a, or Pixel 10a if one releases by the time I switch from my (already large) iPhone 14. At least I won’t have to deal with the never ending shenanigans, the crazy prices, and the very real possibility that if there’s a damage it might be cheaper to buy a new one (in warranty).
- rifty 1y agoThe 16e is 167 grams, where the Air is 165 grams. It feels like the Air is to the 16e what the Pro is to the standard titled iPhone — the expensive version. 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.
- bapak 1y agoYou fail to mention that the 17 and 16e don't only differ by weight. Miniaturization is costly.
- akutlay 1y agoYes but the name “Air” claims lightweight, not thin
- liamwire 1y agoAir, as a product line, quite famously started with Jobs emphasising the thinness of the MacBook Air by pulling it from a paper folder. Taking what are ultimately marketing terms as literal face-value descriptors isn't particularly useful.
- johanyc 1y agoIt's also a bit weird that iPhone Air being an Air is more expensive. MacBook Air and iPad Air are the cheaper options in contrast
- jainil 1y agoNo it isn't. The cheapest option is the iPad, then iPad Air and then Pro. It'll be the same with macs once the rumored A-chip based mac launches.
- MiguelBBeats 1y agois it me or does it look like the pixel 9/10
- steele 1y agoAPR?
- sbinnee 1y agoThey introduced N1 network chip. I noticed "thread" technology along with wifi and bluetooth. Tbh, it's first time I heard of this tech. Could anyone enlighten me what this "thread" wireless technology is and its impact?
- navigate8310 1y agoWhat is Thread? https://www.theverge.com/23165855/thread-smart-home-protocol-matter-apple-google-interview https://www.theverge.com/23165855/thread-smart-home-protocol... What is Matter over Thread? https://www.theverge.com/22832127/matter-smart-home-products-thread-wifi-explaine 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-smart-home-how-to https://www.theverge.com/23823041/matter-thread-device-setup...
- rr808 1y agoPrice isn't too bad, esp now that the Pixel 10 is expensive, the base iphone is the same price for more storage which is kinda unexpected for Apple!
- jordansmithnz 1y agoI think the Air makes a lot more sense through the lens of a foldable iPhone. 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.
- thund 1y agoAround 2000-2005 there was a race for the smallest phone with ludicrously small displays. I believe Nokia was kind of leading and “winning” the race. Then blackberry and iPhone reversed trajectory and suddenly bigger was better, and Nokia died out. 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.
- nexus7556 1y agoWell both of the Pro models increased their battery life. Apple isn't going just one way.
- thund 1y agoAgree, but by how much on the Pro models? Shouldn’t we expect twice the battery duration every 24 months at least?
- NetMageSCW 1y agoBased on what understanding of battery chemistry and technology? Based on what history of any other battery powered device where that has happened?
- mastazi 1y agoMy memory is from around 1998-1999 when I did some research to buy my first phone. From memory, I think that at that point Ericsson was winning that race in the more affordable end of the market, with models that I remember being smaller than Nokia models from the same time, such as: * https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_pf_768-108.php https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_pf_768-108.php * https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_t10s-115.php https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_t10s-115.php * https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_gf_788e-110.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/ericsson_gf_788e-110.php * https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_startac_85-74.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/co8094431/motorola-international-8700-mobile-telephone-1996-mobile-telephone https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co80944... [2] https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5110-7.php https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5110-7.php
- twilo 1y agoThis chassis would be perfect for the 2nm chips next year
- bytesandbits 1y agothere is only one target audience for this model and is users that already carry the iPhone without case.
- dbg31415 1y agoI'm genuinely bummed that Apple killed the Plus iPhone. 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.
- AbuAssar 1y agowhy the air is not 17? what about next year will we get air 2 or air 2026 like the iPads?
- mlx0x 1y agoCan anyone answer the important question? Can I take a big square photo with the whole of that big square front sensor?
- penguin_booze 1y agoNot an iPhone nor Apple user, but I feel like we're regressing on battery life. My old Moto G used to last a full week with single charge (yes, I'm a very light user: no social media, games etc.). My newer Google Pixel's battery, with its larger capacity, with the same usage pattern, lasts for 2 days if I'm lucky. That is to say, the normalized idling time for newer phones have grown significantly shorter. 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.
- lolive 1y agoToo expensive.
- TrueSlacker0 1y ago"iPhone Air will be available in four gorgeous finishes" Didn't the hype train around the word "gorgeous" for software run its course? To me its an immediate turn.
- cute_boi 1y agoIdk why they keep putting camera bumps. Can't they make it flat ...
- polyomino 1y agocan they just make it flat? seriously
- zkmon 1y agoDon't see much improvements that really matter to a common phone user. Battery, maybe? 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?
- hacker_homie 1y agoI want the iPhone square, where the phone is as thick as the camera bulge so I can put it down on a table.
- apparent 1y agoYou joke, but this is basically what a foldable iPhone will be (though there will undoubtedly still be a camera bump...).
- osigurdson 1y ago>> impossibly thin and light design Thin, except for the top part.
- apparent 1y agoI mean, who doesn't like big on top and thin everywhere else?
- powersnail 1y agoI sincerely hope that apple will consider making a phone with a worse camera that is flatter. As someone who rarely takes photos, and never photos of importance, the bump is just a dead weight to me. My dream phone has a body like iPhone 12 mini (which I currently use) without the protruding camera. As long as it runs all the common communication apps reliably, I'm happy. I'll pay $100 more than the standard body version even. But it doesn't seem like apple (or any notable phone brand) thinks this is worth doing. It's the peril of being a niche customer. I can and have voted with my wallet, but it doesn't nudge the needle anyway.
- conductr 1y ago> My dream phone has a body like iPhone 12 mini (which I currently use) without the protruding camera. Sounds similar to the iPhone 4, still my favorite of all the form factors in terms of "hand feel". It was the right thickness for me, just a bit heavy for it's size. If they refreshed it to reduce weight and extended the screen to the borders I think it would be amazing
- nxpnsv 1y agoAgree, the 4 was great (except the home button which broke).
- aziaziazi 1y agoHave you tried the iPhone SE 1st gen ? Lighter, better processor and screen but almost same design. It’s only 9.5yo and still works perfectly, you can find plenty second hand for 100€.
- knubie 1y agoI still have my SE 1st gen that I pull out from time to time because I use it as the 2FA for my other Apple account, and I am always struck by by how much better it feels to use than even the 12 mini. It is such an ergonomic size for single hand use, and it surprisingly still runs very smoothly.
- mumber_typhoon 1y agoThis might be an unpopular opinion but does anyone else think that phones are now targeted towards teenagers and young adults and not the general crowd anymore ? I feel Apple has completely made their phones a social tool and not a technology innovation product. Camera, colors and the ability to distinguish your phone from others in selfies (another social feature) and in public is what it seems to be about. Gaming on the phone is another aspect. The phones look different each year (on purpose) and they are increasingly targeted towards young adults who can spend 1000$ of their savings all year towards just looking cool on social media with better pictures and a social profile. I noticed this transition around iPhone X era where design language lost meaning as long as they could compete in the social media world. I feel Instagram and TikTok should thank apple for becoming more social. 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.
- michaelhoney 1y agoNow take all of that manufacturing brilliance and, keeping the volume the same, turn it into a small thick phone which will fit in my pocket and hand. Won't need a camera bump
- sailorganymede 1y agoThis is cool but what I really want is another iPhone Mini. I got tiny hands, phones are way too big for me.
- mazone 1y agoRecently got a iphone 16 pro to my mom. First thing i reacted on when opening the package was. Damm that is a thick phone. Compared to my S25 and older android phones i have the iphone 16 feel old and clunky, like from another era.
- phplovesong 1y agoWhen a phone costs north of 1000USD something is terribly wrong. 99% of "modern" phone use is basically (doom) scrolling, browsing the web, using core apps (like maps) for directions, taking pictures and finally communicating with whatsapp and making the odd/rare old school phone call. 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.
- smeeger 1y agoim on an SE too and i have no idea what ill buy when this phone dies… i would rather buy an android than get a 16e
- bigyabai 1y agoRecession indicator handset
- aprilnya 1y agoOkay, if your use case doesn’t require it, then don’t buy it…? You aren’t the only person in the world and some people might actually make use of this phone’s features(?)
- gehsty 1y agoPeople pay for how they look (which is fine) not what they do.
- bapak 1y agoYou can hate Apple for it, but the phone costs $1000+ because people will buy it. Apple has been proven right year after year since 2017 (iPhone X) 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
- crazygringo 1y agoAs you point out, it doesn't require it. 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.
- aurelien 1y agoI wish for the day Apple create a true slick Iphone Air … without a protuberance
- smeeger 1y agoi have been waiting for an updated iphone SE and with this event i am officially giving up. there is no phone that is simple, functional, reliable and not overpriced. apple is the company that is supposed to make it but i guess they have moved on to other strategies. instead they focus on making hideous bulges and UI that would make steve jobs’ head explode. im fed up with it
- southernplaces7 1y ago[dead]
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y agoTheir obsession with camera bumps has left them blind to good design, this thing is a grotesque, ugly monster Since the iPhone 5, no phone sits steady on a flat surface anymore, wich is sad
- DecentShoes 1y agoI wasn't asking for my phone to be thinner. I was asking for my phone to be SMALLER. In the other two dimensions...
- awoimbee 1y agoTHANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION ON THIS MATTER 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.
- pipeline_peak 1y agoAre we in 2012, who’s asking for thinner phones? 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.
- rkomorn 1y agoI feel like "are we in 2012, who's asking to replace their phone battery?" would equally reflect the real world. I'd say the vast majority of people don't actually care about either.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- reliableturing 1y agoHere’s an actual hot take compared to the sentiment in this discussion: this will be the best selling iPhone ever. 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.
- rkomorn 1y agoI would be surprised, but not very surprised. 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.
- bigyabai 1y agoI remember this take when the iPhone X came out, which incidentally also felt like the first year (here in the US) where Apple was truly detested, publicly. Instagram and Twitter were chock-full of memes like "999x Kinder Chocolate or 1x iPhone X?" and the notch/design overhaul met a pretty lukewarm reception. The agony of yearly upgrades really set in, then. 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.
- rob74 1y ago5.6 mm? Pah! The Moto Z beat them by .4 mm almost 10 years ago: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/05/the-moto-z-was-so-ahead-of-its-time-apple-and-samsung-are-still-catching-up.html https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/05/the-moto-z-was-so-a... And, more importantly, the Moto Z had a reason for being so thin: the ability to add "mods" that attached to the back of the phone magnetically. 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.
- bapak 1y ago> The Moto Z beat them 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.
- AndrewSwift 1y agoIt's wild to see the HN crowd, bleeding-edge technologists, regularly bring up "lying flat on a table" as a critical feature for a supercomputer inside a camera that fits in your pocket. Somebody (many somebodies?) is rolling over in his grave.
- guardian5x 1y agoMaybe a supercomputer from a 1980s perspective.
- liamwire 1y agoWhat an absurd take. If we use FLOPS as a crude measure, the Air would be comparable to the leading supercomputers of ~1999/2000. There's many reasons why that's a very poor comparison but ignoring the absolute insanity of the raw compute available in a pocketable, thin, battery-powered handheld that you can buy literally this week, is ridiculous. Modern smartphones are nothing short of sci-fi when compared to even recent living memory. We're simply used to them due to their sheer ubiquity.
- lern_too_spel 1y agoThe A19 GPU doesn't even have hardware support for FP64, which is the precision used for TOP500. No, it is not comparable to leading supercomputers of 1999/2000.
- paintbox 1y ago"a supercomputer inside a camera that fits in your pocket" stopped being a novelty 15 years ago. We call it just "phone" now! "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.
- ulfw 1y agoI legit don't think I have even once used my phone lying on a table. Ergonomically that makes no sense. But then again I neither use my iPad nor Macbook lying flat on a table either, so what do I know...
- lvncelot 1y agoEvery time I read an apple press release, I immediately bounce off because of the purposeful omission of the definite article when referring to their products; like "iPhone Air features ..." instead of "The iPhone Air features ...". It's irrational, but it's like an uncanny valley via text for me. Good looking phone though.
- krolley 1y agoYeah, I noticed this too when watching the keynote. It's interesting and must be deliberate, I wonder why they do this.
- TwoFerMaggie 1y ago"Drop the _the_, it's cleaner." https://youtu.be/k5fJmkv02is&t=177 https://youtu.be/k5fJmkv02is&t=177
- hyperdimension 1y agoThat bothers me way more than it ought to too. When I hear people saying it IRL I keep thinking that trillion dollar companies are engineering our speech. What can ya do? :/
- rickdeckard 1y agoFunny how everyone agrees here after the event that it's suddenly GOOD that Apple didn't present a folding phone. 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...
- brtkwr 1y agoCan't be just me who feels underwhelmed by the announcements yesterday? I can't imagine why they prioritise making thinner iPhones at the expense of longer battery life.
- NetMageSCW 1y agoBecause longer battery life comes at the expense of heavier phones and lots of people think the current phones are too heavy already.
- feelamee 1y agoWhy does no one make flat back in phones today? everyone just accepted ugly design...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- PrivateButts 1y agoWelcome back Droid X
- marhee 1y agoIf this thinnest iphone air has 27 hours of video playback, why does the regular iphone 17, which looks twice as thick only has 30 hours? At this point, I just want long battery life. Like an "all-week" battery life would be a nice start.
- leakyfilter 1y agothey are mostly likely using a higher density battery in the air, at least that's what the rumors suggest
- eemil 1y agoIf you're going to do a phone-width camera bump, at least make it flat so I can put my phone down without it wobbling. Apple's bump on a bump is the worst of both worlds.
- jl6 1y agoI get the thinness. My current iPhone is perfectly thin enough on its own, but when you add a case… yeah, the whole package could stand to be thinner. Not sure if that is achieved given the bump.
- sneak 1y agoOne of these that has no camera would be cool. Alternately, a thicker phone with more battery and no camera bump. Either would be fine. This is the worst of both worlds.
- rldjbpin 1y agohear me out: they make a slim phone, just to develop the supply chain around a foldable display to finally release a folding phone that is a sandwich of the air! /s
- jFriedensreich 1y agoLooks uncanny at that screen size, my only hope for a mini replacement is probably a reality where glasses make screen size irrelevant.
- maelito 1y agoMini phones please. Thickness is not a problem, solved 10 years ago.
- bilekas 1y ago> "This is MacBook Pro levels of compute in an iPhone, perfect for GPU-intensive AI workloads." 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..
- tomashubelbauer 1y agoPhones are the main computing device for young people and hosted LLMs are eating the world right now. Not everyone will find a problem with this, but I am hoping for practical local LLMs sooner than later, and for maximum impact, they should also be able to run on phones. This amount of computing power in a phone is what could help make that happen.
- bilekas 1y agoFair point, a local offline llm with siri does actually sounds quite nice.
- jbverschoor 1y agoQuite frankly ,I don't trust Apple with their battery claims. Esp. when they sell magsafe packs for this one. 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.
- invalidusernam3 1y agoI don't really see the point of making phones so thin when the camera sticks out as much as much as the phone is thick. I would rather have a flat phone that is thicker
- veunes 1y agoSo basically: thinner, shinier, faster. Itэs impressive from an engineering standpoint but at what point does thinness stop being a feature and start being a liability? I feel like we’ve been here before with bendgate.
- benrutter 1y agoI thought this. I've had a previous phine with bending issues and I'd personally stay well clear of anything this thin. 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.
- simianparrot 1y agoI just want them to release a new iteration of 13 Mini at some point. I don't want a larger phone, I don't care about how thin it is with a massive extruding camera bump; give me an actual handheld phone. 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.
- lwansbrough 1y agoWe’re a dying breed. I wish they’d just turn the SE line into minis.
- alkonaut 1y agoI'm going to add +1 to the crowd that thinks that almost no one ever said "Nice, but I wish it was thinner". Who would that be really? Surely apple made their market research before spending the R&D money creating this product. So presumably there is a market segment for it. But who is it? 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?
- KronisLV 1y agoI’d very much prefer a phone that’s shaped like a slab (smooth back), no weird camera plateaus and no sad excuse for a battery, but something that can last days.
- flakeoil 1y agoThe issue with size I have with phones is that they are too high, so I cannot have it in my jeans front pocket and then sit down. 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.
- FinnKuhn 1y agoThe format the Samsung flips use I feel like solves your issue.
- ta1243 1y agoNobody cares about how hard it is to hold, otherwise we'd have 4-5" screens rather than the phablets that are the norm and basically the only option.
- cubefox 1y agoExactly. Remember when people, for years, complained that phones, for years, kept getting larger and larger? 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.
- roversx 1y agoSince all components are near camera, how is the heat dissipation
- Alifatisk 1y agoWhenever Apple releases a new phone, I like to visit this page to actually compare it to previous models https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare 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
- mrheosuper 1y agoThanks to this site, i've just realized that the ip17 has bigger screen than ip16.
- matesz 1y agohttps://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-17,iphone-12-mini,iphone-se-2nd-gen https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-17,ip... 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.
- irusensei 1y agoI've bought an iPhone 16 this year so it will be at least 4 years before I start thinking about a new one. Hopefully we'll have some sci-fi tech until then. I was hoping for an Apple TV that can do AV1 decoding.
- youssefarizk 1y agoIt's not about the thickness — this is surely Apple just flexing some of the engineering work that has gone into building a future foldable phone (which inevitably requires thinner hardware to fit two screens in the thickness of one). So don't take this at face value, it's just a prelude to a foldable phone next year.
- heresie-dabord 1y ago> prelude to a foldable phone next year 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-generation-chirping-communicator-badge-tng-combadge-non-bluetooth https://startrekshop.ca/products/star-trek-the-next-generati...
- aurareturn 1y agoProbably right because it’s called iPhone Air and not iPhone 17 Air. Seems like this is a one off phone.
- llm_nerd 1y agoThey often discard with the version number for the first release of a product bifurcating, and from then on it follows its own version path. 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.
- djfdat 1y agoYeah, the next one wouldn't be the iPhone 18 Air, it would be the iPhone Air 2.
- aurareturn 1y agoYea, that'd make no sense in my opinion. Calling it iPhone Air 2 and then iPhone 18 Pro Max. Just confuses people.
- shlip 1y ago> and fantastic all-day battery life lol, welcome to the future
- nathan_compton 1y agoIF ONLY MY PHONE WERE THINNER, I SCREAM INTO THE VOID. 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.
- tiltowait 1y agoFor the people who don’t care about a thin phone, they can still get the Pro with its better battery life. This is just an option. 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.
- gregoriol 1y agoIt's annoying me that Apple has called it "iPhone Air" and not "iPhone 17 Air", this is Apple creating (again) confusion for every tech person in the future
- NetMageSCW 1y agoLike the iPad, in the future it will be called the iPhone Air 2025 (which runs iOS 2026).
- re_chief 1y agoAs a feat of engineering, I find this very impressive, but as a product it doesn't seem to me to be very compelling.
- cultofmetatron 1y agoPor the love of god. I'm already scared of dropping my current phone because its so small in my hand unless I put a beefy case on it. Just leave it thick and use the innovations to put a bigger battery in there. I don't give a shit about saving 2mm but and extra 10 hours of battery life would def perk my ears.
- kvn8888 1y agoThey're just flexing their engineering skills. Mass producing such a thin phone, where most of the non battery internals are housed in the camera bump can translate to meaningful products Like wearables, glasses, etc. The fact that they're mass producing this is key
- snow_mac 1y agoWhat's so great about this? A phone with a weird shape due to the camera? Yahoo, yay so light /sarcasm. Who cares? $1000 for another shiny object thats thin, that has "ALL DAY" battery? Like every other iPhone or phone on the market? It's not innovative -- innovative would be an "ALL WEEK" solution. This is worth looking at: https://youtu.be/WEmZpHXwu5k https://youtu.be/WEmZpHXwu5k
- scrumper 1y ago> Dual Capture is a new feature that combines the front and rear cameras, so users can record themselves while at a concert or get their reaction to a game’s big play. Oh goody.
- johncoltrane 1y agoYou know what has been grind my gears for a while? 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.
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- balozi 1y agoObviously, the next move is to build and sell the new iPhone Air 2 which has a two-day battery and improved camera system.
- melenaboija 1y agoJust give me my mini. Please.
- alessandru 1y agohn endorsements? waow. better go line up for this one!
- globular-toast 1y agoI feel like phones are currently in the "Osprey backpack" stage of product development. There's nothing new happening and no new problems to solve, short of a miracle like making your backpack half the weight or something. So what they do instead is add features one year but take others away so they can add them back later. 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).
- w10-1 1y agoThe transformation here is not size or performance or intelligence but security. 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/ https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...
- daft_pink 1y agoI’m hoping we see that C1X chip in Macbooks soon. I have a cellular 5g iPad and it’s incredibly stable with my work VPN and doesn’t have the constant drops and reconnect issues that I have with hotspoting through my iPhone. A cellular Macbook would convince me to upgrade!
- reubenswartz 1y agoI have nothing intelligent to add to this (other than wanting a phone that lays flat), but it's interesting that this thread has almost 1800 comments, far more than the iPhone thread (currently at 256) and the iPhone Pro thread (currently at 89). Maybe people are just excited to talk about a slightly different form factor?
- mgh2 1y ago5.64mm, 165g. Compare with Samsung Edge: 5.8mm, 163g, 200MP camera https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-edge/ https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-edge/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-air-vs-samsung-s25-edge-i-compared-both-thin-phones-and-theres-a-clear-winner/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-air-vs-samsung-s25-edge...
- fair_enough 1y agoI love the new colors, especially Sky Blue but why do I need my phone to be wafer thin? It's an engineering marvel, and I'm definitely not complaining, but it just seems odd to make every part of the phone except the top part where the camera resides as thin as possible. 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.
- mrankin 1y agoGreat, another cool iphone that I won’t be able to pick up off the table.
- justin_justin62 1y agoRegardless of the technical analysis: when does the fucking bean-counter retire? He's depressing and depressant. Somebody should sue him for contributing to making the world a worse place.
- justin_justin62 1y agoSumming up, a company that has no more ideas about how to innovate and resorting to tactics like "we improved last year's model by x (with x not so big or relevant to you, user), and if x is not good enough, we have also made it thinner". Truly boring. But you can't pretend more from a boat manned by a boring captain, focused exclusively on money/market/stocks.
- alun 1y agoThe thinness is impressive, but I'd trade some of that for a small screen size. Smart phones are massive these days and it's a pity how Apple discontinued the iPhone Mini series.
- anonymous344 1y agoI don't want a thinner phone. I want a smaller screen and longer battery life with good enough camera. Like for example samsung (cheaper older phones with small screen) LOL "All day battery life" duh, my phone's battery lasts 2 to 3 days