iPhone (17?) Air, One Month Later

I have a confession. After digesting the reviews on iPhone Air, I initially decided to buy iPhone 17 Pro Max instead. This was a luxury upgrade, plain and simple: starry-eyed by the redesign with its bold color (singular—there's only one worth having), I was upgrading from an iPhone 16 Pro Max, using my less-than-full-day battery life (at 99% battery health, no less) as an excuse. But I was a week past the preorder date, and availability for my desired configurations stretched into the weeks-to-months range. So I bought iPhone 17 Air instead in my usual configuration: the newest color, Sky Blue, with 512 GB of storage.

This is my 9th iPhone. My favorite has been iPhone 6 Plus—despite its larger form factor, the comfort factor remains unmatched. No phone since has had that spark; they've been great, just not magical. I kept that phone for three years, my longest streak yet.

I'm happy to pronounce the crown has been passed to iPhone Air.

This phone is every bit as comfortable as phones used to be, but wrapped around 2025 internals. I thought it was time to step down from the Max line because my hands were cramping when I'd use my phone laying down. But I was wrong. It wasn't the size causing problems—it was its close cousin: weight.

Below is a graph of every iPhone's weight. The valleys are base iPhones, the peaks Pro Maxes, color-coded by release year. You'll notice the base iPhone 15 weighs as much as several generations ago's Pro models.

My conclusion: heaviness is here to stay. And that makes me sad. I understand why—customers have been clamoring for less emphasis on thinness and more on the internals: battery, camera, and speakers. To achieve the Air's thinness, Apple had to compromise all three:

• A battery (3,149mAh) that's worse than the base (3,692mAh), Pro (4,252mAh), and Pro Max (5,088mAh)
• A camera with no telephoto or ultra-wide lens
• A speaker that only supports mono sound—they killed the bottom-firing speaker, leaving just the earpiece

On paper, there's no reason to buy an iPhone Air. So why did I keep mine? Am I irrational?

Yes, but hear me out.

Here's the best way I can summarize this phenomenon: My partner has an iPhone 12 Mini. Every time I pick it up, I think "too small for me," and with every clumsy keystroke, I'm certain of it. When I pick up the Pro Max, it demands your full attention: harder to handle without dropping, the weight creates more torque, it commands attention with its imposing presence, and frankly, it's only enjoyable with two hands or resting on something. The Pro line has gotten sharp and unpleasant to hold, like they're designed to be paired with a \$49 case. The base feels hollow and more bulbous than necessary—not cheap, but not premium either.

Then there's iPhone Air. The comfortable phone, regardless of hand size. The big screen you can text on one-handed. The phone in your pocket that doesn't sag your pants™.

It's the first phone I could rock caseless without it getting scratched like hands petting a feral kitten—a habit I sadly had to abandon with iPhone 12 Pro's fragile front glass. This phone made me realize how much I'd bought into the specs and features of the post-iPhone X era, and how little I'd noticed that phones were becoming so uncomfortable I wasn't enjoying using them.

I wanted to give it a month before writing a single word, to ensure I really knew what it was like. I needed to endure all the papercuts: "not being able to pick it up off the table" (super easy unless you put it face down), or "it's so thin it's uncomfortable to hold" (it's the most comfortable phone to hold, period). I needed to experience the missing camera lenses, which usually means repositioning the frame or asking my partner to snap the photo. As an audiophile, I needed acoustic environments where the speakers would falter—turns out that's just roaring showers and noisy kitchens (thanks, AirPods). I needed to feel the pain of terrible battery life, which did require some charger logistics to keep my phone juiced. However, I was already doing this—I haven't had a year-old iPhone that lasts a full day since iPhone 8 (even at 99% battery health). Most online comments say they get the same battery as their iPhone 16 Pros, some even matching Pro Max.

All these trade-offs are worth it, because I finally enjoy using an iPhone for the first time in a long time.

And I'm confident in this because of one piece of anecdotal evidence. Every phone I've handed my partner (iPhones and Pixels), her first words are either "this is heavy" or "this is huge." For the first time in six years, I handed her the Air and she said "wow, this is nice... but I'd put a case on it." That single compliment outweighed every review I'd seen online. I was certain.

The cost of iPhone Air might be too high, but having a phone both you and your partner can use comfortably is priceless.

When I read reviews online, I feel like iPhone Air was dismissed:

• Reviewers and podcasters giving it a day before proclaiming "it's bad and you should feel bad for buying it" as they continue purchasing the same Pro model year after year
• Redditors scoffing at these specs, convinced Apple is doomed
• Hopefuls looking to the future, seeing this as half of next year's foldable

But all these reviewers' subjective opinions are objectively wrong.

First, this phone made me realize I absolutely don't want a foldable. It's the worst of both worlds: insane mass all the time for a book-sized screen you use a fraction of the time. It's not a "foldable," it's a "slablet."

Second, people should blame Apple, not the phone:

1. It's awkwardly priced at \$999—\$200 more than the base phone with its complete feature set and just \$100 less than the Pro with everything. This pricing strategy makes zero sense.
2. iPhone Air colors are: white Sky Blue, white Light Gold, white Cloud White, black Space Black. These muted colors position the Air as a sophisticated, minimalist design statement, but this subtle marketing reinforces its role: a niche, aspirational device.
3. Marketing centers on thinness, not weight and comfort. I thought Apple would've learned from their recent Mac reversal on ultra-thin designs, but apparently not.
4. I haven't seen a single Air ad in the wild. Not driving through San Francisco, not on TV, not online. Nowhere except Apple.com, when you scroll past the Pro.

This phone was set up to fail, and I fear in Apple's eyes, it has. It sold so few units that Apple reportedly slashed production volumes drastically. Or not—who knows? What I do know is Apple has a historic precedent for killing the "fourth iPhone slot"—the Minis, Pluses, SEs, and potentially Airs.

I've thought about this phone a lot over the past month—how could I not? It's the most confusing phone in Apple's entire 18-year run. I've realized two things:

1. I'll wait for the next iteration (while replacing the battery) unless it takes more than three years—same as my iPhone 6 Plus.
2. I'll buy anything Apple releases as the Air's successor. If they add one camera or the other speaker, take my money.

Apple will never be happy with the volumes, and customers will never be happy with their favorite lines being cancelled. So here's my compromise: keep the base iPhone, Pro, and Pro Max unchanged while rotating a different experimental model each year:

• 2025 Air
• 2026 Fold
• 2027 Mini

This is, of course, a thought experiment assuming Apple has infinite money (lol). Creating molds and machinery for single-year iterations would be infeasible. But I dare you to prove me wrong, Mr. Cook.

I fear the iPhone Air is destined for the same graveyard as the Mini—killed by spreadsheets that can't calculate joy and Pro users who mistake weight for value. We'll forever be a tribe of holdouts, nursing ancient technology because Apple forgot how to make things that disappear in your hand instead of demanding attention from it. But maybe that's the price of remembering when phones were toys that delighted us, not digital anchors we're expected to carry.