4 ms·

I Have Thoughts on the iPhone Air

50 points by janandonly 3mo ago

da_grift_shift 3mo ago
>thinnest iphone ever >slaps 0.2" thick xteink ereader on back
- timothyduong 3mo ago
  Because it’d be even thicker with a thicker device?
- cromka 3mo ago
  "As a bonus my iPhone Pro can’t fit one of those tiny Xteink readers on the back, but my Air can perfectly!" Seriously, what do you find SO ironic about what they said? This sarcastic, no-effort criticism on HN these days is seriously annoying.
formerly_proven 3mo ago
Not having a second camera is insanity on a smartphone with a four-digit price.
- cromka 3mo ago
  No it isn't, if the price reflects different advancements. "Not having a OLED display and GPS in a 40k Rolex is insanity".
- klausa 3mo ago
  Good thing it has a three digit price then!
  - mrweasel 3mo ago
    It's $1378.35 where I live and yes that is including tax, if I have to pay it at the store, I count is as part of the price of the phone. It's kinda hard to see which use case that would defend that price. It is in the end a consumer device. If you have something like the Pro I can see the point in it being a work device for influencers, photographers and so on and that does help justify the price. Technologically it's amazing, that yes that does to some extend explain the price, but that's just one way of valuing a product. Another is the value you get out of it as a consumer, and at 8999DKK, I'm hard pressed to get how an average consumer would get that much value out of it.
hk__2 3mo ago
For anyone wondering, it’s 5.64 mm thick vs. 8.75 mm for the Pro version.
artisinal 3mo ago
I’d buy it if it had a SIM-card slot and video-out. Shame those had to be sacrificed for thin-ness. I travel plenty and those features are really nice to have. The regular 17 is better suited for me now.
- throwaway270925 3mo ago
  Try the S25 Edge, it has both! Also DEX and a better camera setup too!
kotaKat 3mo ago
The iPhone Air is a weird phone but that's mainly because it's a test device in production. Everything on the Air is something Apple wanted to test ahead of the foldable iPhone. The weird big battery, the single speaker, the mainboard under the bump, and all of the custom silicon they threw at it (from the modem to the WiFi chipsets). Same reason the 16e existed, not to sell a cheap iPhone, but to test the C1 modem in production as a "finally ready to ship in beta" product they didn't slap the beta label on.
NetOpWibby 3mo ago
The iPhone Air is super compelling to me but my Pro iPhone doubles as my camera. The single camera on the Air is too much of a compromise for me. Hopefully Apple can improve the Air.
shelled 3mo ago
I will never stop yearning for iPhone Mini phone/screen sizes. But I've stopped asking for it because that would be pointless at this point.
- frizlab 3mo ago
  Same. I still use the 13 mini, and will probably buy it again refurb when mine dies.
- michielt 3mo ago
  Same! I still using my iphone 13 mini. Only the camera sucks when I look at somebodys else his holiday pictures on their phones.
- jbverschoor 3mo ago
  The air is the new mini. With the same amount of low sales. It's under appreciated because of the "Pro" label of the Pro, and because of battery-hell.
  - mrweasel 3mo ago
    The mini didn't even sell that badly, it just sold incredibly poorly for an iPhone. For almost any other brand it would have been a massive success.
    - abujazar 3mo ago
      Exactly this. And the profit would be huge compared to any Mac. I suspect Apple dropped it just because they're making even more from selling oversized and over-specced phones.
      - mrweasel 3mo ago
        Yeah, they probably lost almost zero customers by cutting the mini from the lineup. The people buying iPhones, in my experience, tend to just pick another iPhone. So they could simplify manufacturing, testing and so on and still sell the same number of phone, just more profitable ones.
vichoiglesias 3mo ago
Got the iPhone Pro Max in beautiful orange... and could't get use to it. It feels heavier that the previous titanium versions, so sold it and got the Air. The lack of telephoto is indeed one of the things i miss the most, but the single speaker is surprisingly good IMO. Really enjoying the design of it, feels like what i remember felt holding one of this really cool iPod nano back in the day, like old Apple magic.
ballooney 3mo ago
> I’ve always been a sucker for something novel, so when something as huge as the iPhone had a quirky new model I was really stoked to check it out. This is just... not a life well-lived.
- tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
  The whole blog is an ode to consumerism. You will have a hard job convincing people that the good life is found elsewhere though.
boredishBoi 3mo ago
In Australia the price difference between an air and a 17 is only $50 which imo makes it great value.
ctippett 3mo ago
> typing is a joy on the increased size Huh. I hate typing on my phone (iPhone 16e). It actually never occurred to me that maybe I'd have a better time with a larger screen. Although I don't remember ever feeling the disdain I have for typing back when I had an iPhone 3GS which had a much smaller screen than the one I have now.
- hdgvhicv 3mo ago
  I have a 12 mini. I did have an XR briefly but had to send it back because it was terrible - far too large. When the 12/13 minis stop receiving updates I guess I’ll stop carrying a phone around. Which will actually be a good thing Nothing (handheld) is as good as typing as my old blackberry curve though. Not even my psion5
- bkaae 3mo ago
  Did you get older over the last few years? That might make a difference.
  - broodbucket 3mo ago
    I'd be especially interested if they didn't.
- swiftcoder 3mo ago
  > Although I don't remember ever feeling the disdain I have for typing back when I had an iPhone 3GS The touch targets on the keyboard are sloppier, and autocorrect has become a lot more opinionated since those days. It may not be the hardware you are noticing
- cheschire 3mo ago
  You can try to go even smaller. Hold the world icon in the lower left of your keyboard. Then at the bottom of the pop up, select a left or right side preference and it will squish the keyboard to that side. Makes one-handed swipe typing much easier, and feels a bit more accurate with swiping too.
petercooper 3mo ago
I bought one as it was on sale at the same price as the normal iPhone. Pretty good: 8/10. I have no interest in photos, don't need long battery life, and the lighter/thinner the better. That said, I'd prefer something smaller but thicker with no protrusions/camera bump at all. I hate the wonkiness of all modern iPhones when sat on a table. I think the last totally flat one was the iPhone 5s!
- Retr0id 3mo ago
  I really want to try taking one and removing the camera/flash, to produce a bumpless (or at least bump-reduced) version. I'll probably wait for the price to come down some more first, though.
heliographe 3mo ago
> The ultrawide lens is not one I used a ton on previous iPhones, so outside of macro mode I don’t really miss it. I’m surprised though that I really miss the telephoto lens. There’s so many options where I want to see something that’s further away, like something when watching sports, or even a cool bird, and cropping in on the main sensor is such a far cry from a 5x telephoto lens. I think this is a situation where the enthusiasts care more about the telephoto (for intentional photographic compositions), but the mainstream user base uses the Ultrawide more (for inside shots, group photos, etc) - so Apple caters to the latter, to the dismay of the former. (the clear wide > tele > ultrawide hierarchy of optical/sensor quality doesn't help either) > Camera quality feels as good as ever, it’s apparently not as good a main sensor as the Pro iPhones but I can’t really tell. It still has that distinctly over-processed look plaguing modern smartphones Same here - photography-minded users hate the over processed look, but the general population must like them, otherwise there's no way that manufacturers would persist doubling down on it year-after-year. For a while now I've been working on a Bayer RAW only pro camera app (https://bayercam.app https://bayercam.app) specifically because I'm a photography nerd and care about full control, but I realize it's a pretty niche thing.
- actionfromafar 3mo ago
  How "unfiltered" raw-ish data can you get on the iPhone in an app?
  - heliographe 3mo ago
    It's Bayer RAW: not yet demosaicked sensor information from a single exposure, without any of the extra steps you get shooting a format like HEIC/JPEG (or even ProRAW [0]), where lots of additional processing is done, including combining multiple frames to get extra dynamic range, detail, reduced noise, etc. There's still some amount of denoising/sharpening/etc happening in the ISP, but essentially shooting Bayer RAW gets you the output of just the small first part of the pipeline, rather than the whole pipeline. [0] Despite the confusingly similar names, Bayer RAW and Apple ProRAW are quite different - I wrote about it on this page because I frequently get emails from confused customers. https://bayercam.com/understanding-bayer-raw https://bayercam.com/understanding-bayer-raw
abujazar 3mo ago
I have thoughts on the Air and all other iPhone models: They're too large. The iPhone 4 was perfectly sized and we have the technology now to build a super powerful phone of that size. I simply don't use my phone for anything that requires a larger screen. Smaller screens also encourages better UI design.
- fatata123 3mo ago
  [dead]
pea 3mo ago
That's a great idea with the e-reader. I would love for someone to design a great case with a built in e-reader on the back. Most of the existing ones seem geared for displaying colour photos; I'd like one built for reading, powered by NFC. It should easily sync up with the phone itself to send over articles, books, etc. Bonus if I can write on it.
- reustle 3mo ago
  https://www.inkcase.com/inkcase-for-iphone/ https://www.inkcase.com/inkcase-for-iphone/ A few options exist in the market
  - janandonly 3mo ago
    Latest supported model ontgaat website is iPhone 8.
ChrisRR 3mo ago
Describing current phones as slabs? No. Modern phone are in no way too thick
petesergeant 3mo ago
> And it’s weird, because with the old wedge-style MacBook Airs this feeling never went away for me, I loved those machines and every time I picked it up I kinda marveled I would love one of those again
Havoc 3mo ago
I moved from max to pro with the 14 -> 17. They’re about the same size ironically so can’t imagine how unwieldy the 17 max is
wokesroy 3mo ago
[flagged]
speak_plainly 3mo ago
I love the iPhone Air. Apple better not discontinue it. My advice to all iPhone users who want better battery life: either turn off background app refresh or be very selective in which apps can refresh. Your battery life will improve but nothing in your experience will change.
xtiansimon 3mo ago
I use an Otter case with my iPhone because I’m team lanyard. My iPhone is like a pet. It never goes out of the house without a leash. Haha. So that adds a little bit of width. I have the iPhone 15 now, and I use my old iPhone SE for music and podcasts around the house. So I handle both phones daily. For comfort in my hand, the SE is the perfect size in an Otter case. If Apple would integrate a lanyard mount, then I’d consider going naked. But never without one.
rifty 3mo ago
This is a super obscure wish but I'd love this phone to death if it boosted the speaker and stayed with the single camera and instead had a caseless lens mounting interface.
gumby 3mo ago
I don’t understand the idea that the Air is a way to test reduced capabilities for a folding phone. If you’ve used any of the Chinese folding phones they have plenty of room for cameras, memory etc. I’m not much of an Android fan but I do love my Xiaomi folding phone (not mentioning model number because I don’t want to sound like a shill). Outside China I stick to iOS and would definitely consider a folding iPhone…but I won’t be an early adopter.

50 points by janandonly 3mo ago

da_grift_shift 3mo ago

>thinnest iphone ever >slaps 0.2" thick xteink ereader on back

timothyduong 3mo ago
Because it’d be even thicker with a thicker device?
cromka 3mo ago
"As a bonus my iPhone Pro can’t fit one of those tiny Xteink readers on the back, but my Air can perfectly!" Seriously, what do you find SO ironic about what they said? This sarcastic, no-effort criticism on HN these days is seriously annoying.

formerly_proven 3mo ago

Not having a second camera is insanity on a smartphone with a four-digit price.

cromka 3mo ago
No it isn't, if the price reflects different advancements. "Not having a OLED display and GPS in a 40k Rolex is insanity".
klausa 3mo ago
Good thing it has a three digit price then!
- mrweasel 3mo ago
  It's $1378.35 where I live and yes that is including tax, if I have to pay it at the store, I count is as part of the price of the phone. It's kinda hard to see which use case that would defend that price. It is in the end a consumer device. If you have something like the Pro I can see the point in it being a work device for influencers, photographers and so on and that does help justify the price. Technologically it's amazing, that yes that does to some extend explain the price, but that's just one way of valuing a product. Another is the value you get out of it as a consumer, and at 8999DKK, I'm hard pressed to get how an average consumer would get that much value out of it.

hk__2 3mo ago

For anyone wondering, it’s 5.64 mm thick vs. 8.75 mm for the Pro version.

artisinal 3mo ago

I’d buy it if it had a SIM-card slot and video-out. Shame those had to be sacrificed for thin-ness. I travel plenty and those features are really nice to have. The regular 17 is better suited for me now.

throwaway270925 3mo ago
Try the S25 Edge, it has both! Also DEX and a better camera setup too!

kotaKat 3mo ago

The iPhone Air is a weird phone but that's mainly because it's a test device in production. Everything on the Air is something Apple wanted to test ahead of the foldable iPhone. The weird big battery, the single speaker, the mainboard under the bump, and all of the custom silicon they threw at it (from the modem to the WiFi chipsets). Same reason the 16e existed, not to sell a cheap iPhone, but to test the C1 modem in production as a "finally ready to ship in beta" product they didn't slap the beta label on.

NetOpWibby 3mo ago

The iPhone Air is super compelling to me but my Pro iPhone doubles as my camera. The single camera on the Air is too much of a compromise for me. Hopefully Apple can improve the Air.

shelled 3mo ago

I will never stop yearning for iPhone Mini phone/screen sizes. But I've stopped asking for it because that would be pointless at this point.

frizlab 3mo ago
Same. I still use the 13 mini, and will probably buy it again refurb when mine dies.
michielt 3mo ago
Same! I still using my iphone 13 mini. Only the camera sucks when I look at somebodys else his holiday pictures on their phones.
jbverschoor 3mo ago
The air is the new mini. With the same amount of low sales. It's under appreciated because of the "Pro" label of the Pro, and because of battery-hell.
- mrweasel 3mo ago
  The mini didn't even sell that badly, it just sold incredibly poorly for an iPhone. For almost any other brand it would have been a massive success.
  - abujazar 3mo ago
    Exactly this. And the profit would be huge compared to any Mac. I suspect Apple dropped it just because they're making even more from selling oversized and over-specced phones.
    - mrweasel 3mo ago
      Yeah, they probably lost almost zero customers by cutting the mini from the lineup. The people buying iPhones, in my experience, tend to just pick another iPhone. So they could simplify manufacturing, testing and so on and still sell the same number of phone, just more profitable ones.

vichoiglesias 3mo ago

Got the iPhone Pro Max in beautiful orange... and could't get use to it. It feels heavier that the previous titanium versions, so sold it and got the Air. The lack of telephoto is indeed one of the things i miss the most, but the single speaker is surprisingly good IMO. Really enjoying the design of it, feels like what i remember felt holding one of this really cool iPod nano back in the day, like old Apple magic.

ballooney 3mo ago

> I’ve always been a sucker for something novel, so when something as huge as the iPhone had a quirky new model I was really stoked to check it out. This is just... not a life well-lived.

tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
The whole blog is an ode to consumerism. You will have a hard job convincing people that the good life is found elsewhere though.

boredishBoi 3mo ago

In Australia the price difference between an air and a 17 is only $50 which imo makes it great value.

ctippett 3mo ago

> typing is a joy on the increased size Huh. I hate typing on my phone (iPhone 16e). It actually never occurred to me that maybe I'd have a better time with a larger screen. Although I don't remember ever feeling the disdain I have for typing back when I had an iPhone 3GS which had a much smaller screen than the one I have now.

hdgvhicv 3mo ago
I have a 12 mini. I did have an XR briefly but had to send it back because it was terrible - far too large. When the 12/13 minis stop receiving updates I guess I’ll stop carrying a phone around. Which will actually be a good thing Nothing (handheld) is as good as typing as my old blackberry curve though. Not even my psion5
bkaae 3mo ago
Did you get older over the last few years? That might make a difference.
- broodbucket 3mo ago
  I'd be especially interested if they didn't.
swiftcoder 3mo ago
> Although I don't remember ever feeling the disdain I have for typing back when I had an iPhone 3GS The touch targets on the keyboard are sloppier, and autocorrect has become a lot more opinionated since those days. It may not be the hardware you are noticing
cheschire 3mo ago
You can try to go even smaller. Hold the world icon in the lower left of your keyboard. Then at the bottom of the pop up, select a left or right side preference and it will squish the keyboard to that side. Makes one-handed swipe typing much easier, and feels a bit more accurate with swiping too.

petercooper 3mo ago

I bought one as it was on sale at the same price as the normal iPhone. Pretty good: 8/10. I have no interest in photos, don't need long battery life, and the lighter/thinner the better. That said, I'd prefer something smaller but thicker with no protrusions/camera bump at all. I hate the wonkiness of all modern iPhones when sat on a table. I think the last totally flat one was the iPhone 5s!

Retr0id 3mo ago
I really want to try taking one and removing the camera/flash, to produce a bumpless (or at least bump-reduced) version. I'll probably wait for the price to come down some more first, though.

heliographe 3mo ago

> The ultrawide lens is not one I used a ton on previous iPhones, so outside of macro mode I don’t really miss it. I’m surprised though that I really miss the telephoto lens. There’s so many options where I want to see something that’s further away, like something when watching sports, or even a cool bird, and cropping in on the main sensor is such a far cry from a 5x telephoto lens. I think this is a situation where the enthusiasts care more about the telephoto (for intentional photographic compositions), but the mainstream user base uses the Ultrawide more (for inside shots, group photos, etc) - so Apple caters to the latter, to the dismay of the former. (the clear wide > tele > ultrawide hierarchy of optical/sensor quality doesn't help either) > Camera quality feels as good as ever, it’s apparently not as good a main sensor as the Pro iPhones but I can’t really tell. It still has that distinctly over-processed look plaguing modern smartphones Same here - photography-minded users hate the over processed look, but the general population must like them, otherwise there's no way that manufacturers would persist doubling down on it year-after-year. For a while now I've been working on a Bayer RAW only pro camera app (https://bayercam.app https://bayercam.app) specifically because I'm a photography nerd and care about full control, but I realize it's a pretty niche thing.

actionfromafar 3mo ago
How "unfiltered" raw-ish data can you get on the iPhone in an app?
- heliographe 3mo ago
  It's Bayer RAW: not yet demosaicked sensor information from a single exposure, without any of the extra steps you get shooting a format like HEIC/JPEG (or even ProRAW [0]), where lots of additional processing is done, including combining multiple frames to get extra dynamic range, detail, reduced noise, etc. There's still some amount of denoising/sharpening/etc happening in the ISP, but essentially shooting Bayer RAW gets you the output of just the small first part of the pipeline, rather than the whole pipeline. [0] Despite the confusingly similar names, Bayer RAW and Apple ProRAW are quite different - I wrote about it on this page because I frequently get emails from confused customers. https://bayercam.com/understanding-bayer-raw https://bayercam.com/understanding-bayer-raw

abujazar 3mo ago

I have thoughts on the Air and all other iPhone models: They're too large. The iPhone 4 was perfectly sized and we have the technology now to build a super powerful phone of that size. I simply don't use my phone for anything that requires a larger screen. Smaller screens also encourages better UI design.

fatata123 3mo ago
[dead]

pea 3mo ago

That's a great idea with the e-reader. I would love for someone to design a great case with a built in e-reader on the back. Most of the existing ones seem geared for displaying colour photos; I'd like one built for reading, powered by NFC. It should easily sync up with the phone itself to send over articles, books, etc. Bonus if I can write on it.

reustle 3mo ago
https://www.inkcase.com/inkcase-for-iphone/ https://www.inkcase.com/inkcase-for-iphone/ A few options exist in the market
- janandonly 3mo ago
  Latest supported model ontgaat website is iPhone 8.

ChrisRR 3mo ago

Describing current phones as slabs? No. Modern phone are in no way too thick

petesergeant 3mo ago

> And it’s weird, because with the old wedge-style MacBook Airs this feeling never went away for me, I loved those machines and every time I picked it up I kinda marveled I would love one of those again

Havoc 3mo ago

I moved from max to pro with the 14 -> 17. They’re about the same size ironically so can’t imagine how unwieldy the 17 max is

wokesroy 3mo ago

[flagged]

speak_plainly 3mo ago

I love the iPhone Air. Apple better not discontinue it. My advice to all iPhone users who want better battery life: either turn off background app refresh or be very selective in which apps can refresh. Your battery life will improve but nothing in your experience will change.

xtiansimon 3mo ago

I use an Otter case with my iPhone because I’m team lanyard. My iPhone is like a pet. It never goes out of the house without a leash. Haha. So that adds a little bit of width. I have the iPhone 15 now, and I use my old iPhone SE for music and podcasts around the house. So I handle both phones daily. For comfort in my hand, the SE is the perfect size in an Otter case. If Apple would integrate a lanyard mount, then I’d consider going naked. But never without one.

rifty 3mo ago

This is a super obscure wish but I'd love this phone to death if it boosted the speaker and stayed with the single camera and instead had a caseless lens mounting interface.

gumby 3mo ago

I don’t understand the idea that the Air is a way to test reduced capabilities for a folding phone. If you’ve used any of the Chinese folding phones they have plenty of room for cameras, memory etc. I’m not much of an Android fan but I do love my Xiaomi folding phone (not mentioning model number because I don’t want to sound like a shill). Outside China I stick to iOS and would definitely consider a folding iPhone…but I won’t be an early adopter.