i 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

But 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?

Looks uncanny at that screen size, my only hope for a mini replacement is probably a reality where glasses make screen size irrelevant.

I do like this, but since most people put some big case on their phone anyway, does the thickness of the phone matter that much?

What exactly is their strategy with preventing cannibalizing sales between the Air and the Pro Max? This release makes no sense.

Obviously, the next move is to build and sell the new iPhone Air 2 which has a two-day battery and improved camera system.

Anyone know if this has a silicon-carbon battery? The spec sheet just says “lithium ion”, which doesn’t answer the question.

I don’t care about how thin the phone is. Let me replace the battery without risking shattering all the glass on the thing.

Can anyone answer the important question? Can I take a big square photo with the whole of that big square front sensor?

All I want is a new SE-sized iPhone with a headphone jack. I'll preorder right now if you want to collect my money

They keep shrinking in the wrong dimentions.

Why do we need thinner and thinner phones?

This is cool but what I really want is another iPhone Mini. I got tiny hands, phones are way too big for me.

I want the iPhone square, where the phone is as thick as the camera bulge so I can put it down on a table.

there is only one target audience for this model and is users that already carry the iPhone without case.

IF 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.

Funny 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...

I feel like Apple hit the diminishing (stopping?) returns on thinness years and years ago. Who cares?

> "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..

My 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.

This is 100% going to bend, right?

> fantastic all-day battery life

LOL; fantastic would be several days.

all-day is better than gone by late afternoon.

Is this a foldable prototype. Will the iPhone foldable be 2 iphone Airs joined together?

Why does no one make flat back in phones today? everyone just accepted ugly design...

This 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.

I just want to know how much it weighs.

Still looking for a phone as light as the Pixel 5 at 151 grams

Why do we measure devices at their thinnest part rather than at their thickest part

Thin phone, giant screen. How bout thick phone, tiny screen. Call it iPhone Earth

I wish for the day Apple create a true slick Iphone Air … without a protuberance

Lateral move. shrugs

I'd been more excited if they brought back the 3.5 mm audio jack.

Hot 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.

bReAkThRoUgH dEsIgN

What a joke. Recycled design from 6/11 is breakthrough in Apple world

When they do a folding phone next, the thinness will have functional value.

Once 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.

Titanium? I thought they’d learned that lesson with the Powerbook G4.

If 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.

It's also (I'm assuming) completely impossible to repair.

Reminds me of pixel phones, but more rounded, and more protuberant.

Since all components are near camera, how is the heat dissipation

It's been at least 6 phones since anybody wanted it thinner.

when 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

I 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.

Here’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.

Pretty 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.

Long 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.

Looks as thin as the zfold 7 but without the inner display.

Cools pics! They should show it behind a pencil for scale.

It looks so fragile to me like I’ll bend it the first week

This chassis would be perfect for the 2nm chips next year

maybe 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!

Now make it 4 inches, and we'll be back to something approaching the perfection of iPhone 5.

Once 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.

Too expensive.

can they just make it flat? seriously

Regardless 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.

Now 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

APR?

This 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...

Cant wait for Bendgate 2025 edition

Thin design rendered moot by the ugly "plateau" (wtf is that marketing term?)

Just make the thing a uniform thickness and cram it with battery.

I am curious if this will bend.

I dont know whats apple obsessions with thinness, instead they should focus on usability and battery life.

Am 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.

Great, another cool iphone that I won’t be able to pick up off the table.

Mini phones please. Thickness is not a problem, solved 10 years ago.

> and fantastic all-day battery life lol, welcome to the future

Another phone that does not lie flat on the table.

I 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?

Quite 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.

Just give me my mini. Please.

can we just get an iPhone Fat with 20000 mAh battery and a LCD screen (5% of population is sensitive to OLED PWM)

hear 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

Such vision! /s

> dont know whats apple obsessions with thinness

It forces them to the forefront of miniaturisation and efficiency. It's also something they're unusually good at, which creates differentiation.

> they should focus on usability

usability is so '00. Nowadays the focus is on ads.

Alright, 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?

travel

iPhone (Hot) Air.

For the demanding blowhole. Now available in pink.

Who on earth is this for???

I here to say... will it bend?

  As 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.

Some day soon they'll release a phone with no battery and you'll need to BYOB.

My 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."]

Thin 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.

Imagine 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.

[flagged]

What 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.

This 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), at this point they could just make a cardboard phone, wrap it with some fancy words and would sell it like crazy.

I 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

I think calling it critical is massively overestimating how important it is to almost anyone, but that doesn't mean your need isn't valid.

Out of curiosity, are there any phones from any manufacturer that support USB4 and can actually transfer data at more than 5gbps?

> 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.

They make some pretty beefy battery cases.

That would be the iPhone Pro

Ah, 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.

Safari on Desktop is just appalling, every year you wish there are some improvements and it is the same. webkit gets some update in terms of web features and bug fix. Safari itself doesn't seems to want to improve. Even Orion using same webkit engine is better.

See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44745897

TL;DR: Make sure Power Nap is turned ON. It allows macOS to consolidate wakeup requests into a bulk queue. So the thing isn't turning on all the time.

Use Chrome. Problem solved.

They 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?

Ad 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.

I 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.

That'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.

Don'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?

Recently 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.

I 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.

I 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.

TBH, this phone looks crap. I'm sure SJ would have hated the form factor.

Are 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.

The 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.

I'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.

Bigger, less featured, and more expensive than the iPhone 17… I don’t get it

THANK 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.

I 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.

Idk why they keep putting camera bumps. Can't they make it flat ...

> 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!

I 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.

Their 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

"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.

> 5.6mm

Fiiiinally something thinner than X820 !

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_x820-1556.php

> 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.

One 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.

The thin phone is engineering prep for Apple Vision Air.

iPhone 6 is where they peeked.

In a hike you probably want to use your phone to look up the map/gps location, take photos etc. Ime iphones are struggling with this use case a bit without a power bank. Putting them in low power and airplane mode, while using a lightweight app for navigation with downloaded maps helps a lot, though it is still not gonna take you as far as other phones with larger battery life. I would never go for a hike where I know I need my iphone without a power bank with me. But not doing these and using google maps to navigate will not take you very far into the hike at all.

Yeah 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 :)

Oh now it’s about a status symbol. So you can’t afford a status symbol and you’re upset? :(

... what is wrong with your wifi, that its non-functional with <200 mbps of transfer?

“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

If 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.

FWIW, I'm coming from an iPhone 12 and was dazzled by the Air.

> 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?

This 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.

As 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.

I 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.

Summing 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.

I 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.

I 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.

At 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.

I 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.

The 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

Apparently the "thin phone" trend is coming back.

I 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?

I'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.

Por 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.

I don't get why HN is so negative, I would not be surprised if this is one of their best selling phones in years

They’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.

I 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

They 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

I 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

The 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.

I’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!

I'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

While that is all true, it does give more time to realize what is going on, so I can address the issue, without leaving me in a bad spot.

On days with normal battery usage, how is having more battery life ever a negative? Long travel days, which may also have heavy map usage, leave users outside of normal patterns and often with unpredictable access to charging. Having a long battery life would ease stress around those days and be preferable to carrying a battery bank.

The 16 pro max weight is 227g. 227g to 141g is a substantial difference. 170g to 146g is not a substantial difference IMO.

Hopefully it doesn't morph to Aang: the Air bend er

Thousands of words to just tell me that nothing changed

>> impossibly thin and light design

Thin, except for the top part.

Just give me a phone without the stupid camera bump.

By 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.

is it me or does it look like the pixel 9/10

They should have offered a no-camera version.

I want a smaller phone, not a thinner phone.

i was on the fence getting this but I am definitely not after watching this. Probably s26u when it comes out in Jan

Price 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!

Booo bring back the 4" iPhone SE

Really?! 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.

I guess Apple finally listened to all the people saying they want a smaller phone, and totally misunderstood what that meant

5% more volume than a mini. Lame.

I wasn't asking for my phone to be thinner. I was asking for my phone to be SMALLER. In the other two dimensions...

I just wanted a folding iPhone.

That camera bump is ugly as sin

What'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

why the air is not 17?

what about next year will we get air 2 or air 2026 like the iPads?

At 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).

take 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.

hn endorsements? waow. better go line up for this one!

slippery like an ice cube and requires a case by design

Welcome back Droid X

> Is there a distinct advantage to eSIM-only, with no physical slot, for travel?

IDK about only but it’s easier to get an eSIM setup ahead of time. It’s also easier to keep a bunch of esims handy vs physical sims. Guess it depends on your needs.

I 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.

If 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.

Problem 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.

That's... a really good point! Never thought about it that way.

Foldables are weird at the moment, they are bulky and the aspect ratio (because it's a square) means that the viewable screen is often comparable to the S24 for example.

The majority of people buying an iPhone SE is because it is relatively cheap not because it is small.

As an oldtimer (Gen-X), I can't even with that mode of use. My thumb (is that what you use?) cramps up when trying to do that even a little.. I guess 30+ years of typing will do that.. The best I've done one-handed is type in my pin and launch an app and click an icon or two.

As it is, I hold my S21 with left hand, type with index finger of right - it's abysmal in terms of performance, but it's all I got.. landscape with both thumbs is usually worse because of such little lookahead / lookbehind - I can barely read the line I'm typing on - and fat thumbs. My kids do it all the time, but, well, their little girlish fingers (they are female) seem to manage it and they're quite quick at it.

My favorite phone (at least in terms of idea, execution wasn't perfect) was the Motorola Photon Q - full-size with slide-out keyboard. At least I could somewhat type quickly even if the keyboard wasn't great. Alas, 2012..

With a newish phone? I can probably type 10-20x as fast on my MS Natural keyboard (only one I can use for more than 30-40 minutes without RSI getting bad).. No wonder I don't "live on my phone" - I use it when necessary, and prefer my 40"+ 4K screen + real keyboard.

They want a bigger screen because they don't have a laptop.

> save the money they would have spent replacing it (plus the money they would have paid extra because larger is more expensive) to buy a cheap laptop or something

The kind of people who want an iPhone are not going to settle for a Cheap Laptop. A MacBook Air can only really be had new for around $800 nowadays and those big iPhones are only like $599 right now (if iPhone 16e).

I buy larger phones, and I don't drop them...so no money saved/lost there.

I have big hands, and can use my 16 Pro Max one handed no problem with minimal shifting of the device in my hands. I've never dropped it during one handed use on the go either.

Smaller devices are almost impossible for me to type on/be precise with touches because of this.

Yeah.

Air: 6.5in, 165gm Pro 17: 6.9in, 233gm My current Pro Max 15: 6.7in, 221gm

Coming from the PM15, I give up 0.2in, but it weighs 56gm less. I do 95%+ of my reading on my phone - articles, books, everything. But I find the PM15 screen juuuuust slightly too large to be comfortable in the hand, and the normal Pro screen much too small for lots of reading. And I’ve been noticing early signs of RSI.

These dimensions are the goldilocks combination I’ve been waiting for.

This seems to be true for almost every product update. Everyone hates everything. It's true when a new gen of a car comes out - "I guess I'm keeping my <last gen> model forever." or user interfaces or seemingly anything else. People hate change and predict the massive failure of every product revision. Flash forward six months and everyone has forgotten about these rants and likely owns the new version. Now, someone will come along and say "well, I personally" - Apple/Toyota/whoever doesn't care about "you personally", they care about everyone else who is going to buy the product. I'm not saying this is good or bad, it just is.

I'll be honest when I first saw the post I was intrigued, I thought it looked beautiful. Then I saw the size of the camera, the eSim only trade off, the boast about "all day battery" and slowly but surely started to realise that the things I care about in a phone are not those that would be hidden by a case. If they made the thinnest ever fold, then maybe.

The 40% lighter is nice though.

What is it?

That's %7 lighter in a wider, taller and %30 thinner form factor. It's pretty significant.

Good luck taking any telephoto pictures with that iPhone 17. Or anything needing LIDAR. Or doing any sustained gaming. Or doing anything advanced with photography or video requiring RAW.

But admittedly the differences are smaller than they’ve ever been.

haha nice one, but mine is already struggling with all the glass effects

My iPhone mini lasts about 6 hours. If I hike in the cold it lasts maybe 2.5 hours tops, and hikes are usually 4-6 hours total, so it's usually dead by the time I'm done, and so I can't tap to ride the train home unless I bring a power bank.

If I have a long train ride, like 2 hours, and I read on it, it'll usually use about 50% of the battery in that duration.

If I go somewhere new, and use google maps a lot to navigate around, it'll last about 3 hours total.

If I go somewhere with bad cellular signal, it constantly fights to connect and drains incredibly quickly, often in a matter of 2 hours.

The Air looks like it's supposed to have a battery that's about 30% larger than the mini's, and the mini is wildly insufficient for regular use.

People go on hikes in areas where there are multiple days between charging opportunities.

Hiking often also occurs in areas with bad or no coverage causing higher battery consumption with the phone trying to connect. If you don't mitigate this (with eg. turning off or enabling airplane mode) this will burn through battery much faster than the usual city dwelling.

> How many people hike longer than their battery lasts?

ROTFL. All of them. If your phone stops in a middle of a forest, what do you do ? Just sit there until (magically) starts again ?

Replied to the other comment - but I poorly read your message that I responded to. You're absolutely right that this wouldn't be a normal / routine use-case.

Either all phone companies are stupid and leave money on the table, or nobody buys small phones.

a bit further down from the main stream, there are some fringe chinese manufacturers like unihertz doing small phones..

> I wonder if there isn't a market for budget Androids in this range.

I think there is: https://smallandroidphone.com/ This was started up by the people behind Pebble (including its re-launch this year). I actually emailed them a while back asking for a status update. They told me there are literally no high quality screens of an appropriate size available to OEMs. They would have to design & spin up their own display hardware, which is where things change from "expensive" to "infeasible." If there was an existing, high quality 4.5~5" screen, I think it'd be an easy slam dunk. But there apparently is not...

Too bad. I just hold out hope Apple will try the Mini again before my 13 dies.

> This is something that really surprised me to realise a couple of years ago - that unless they work in tech, most households (I don't know if most isn't an exaggeration, but a large proportion) don't have a laptop or desktop between them now.

This is noticeable when you interact with consumer software where the mobile app is clearly the preferred or only way to perform some action.

  This is something that really surprised me to realise a couple of years ago - that unless they work in tech, most households (I don't know if most isn't an exaggeration, but a large proportion) don't have a laptop or desktop between them now.

There was a joke I saw recently where Millenials have to teach Gen Z employees how to use a computer like they do for a boomer. Gen Z people, especially the younger ones, do everything on their phones or tablets. They don't know how to use a computer like Windows or a Mac.

Also, I've been in poorer countries where the vast majority of the population rely on their phones to work. My real estate agent only used her phone for work including marketing herself, talking to clients on chat apps, and even doing the lease contract. Their phone is literally how they make a living.

> that unless they work in tech, most households (I don't know if most isn't an exaggeration, but a large proportion) don't have a laptop or desktop between them now.

They have been told since 10 years that phones are "computers" [1]. Some even believe this.

[1] from this point of view, a washing machine or a fridge are also "computers".

As a member of the female class, I wish my clothes had pockets!

I 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.

The 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.

The 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...

Not 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.

"a breakthrough design"

They copied pixel.

I 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.

Anyone else unable to load the page in firefox mobile? It starts loading and then either crashes the tab or force-closes itself

I 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

I hope they include instructions on holding it correctly ;p

I 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?

As a feat of engineering, I find this very impressive, but as a product it doesn't seem to me to be very compelling.

Every 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.

I'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.

I 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).

This will be the replacement for my iPhone 13 mini. Although I wish they would make another mini instead.

We 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.

The 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.

I 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.

So 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.

Related ongoing threads:

Compare the New iPhone Models - 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 - Sept 2025 (42 comments)

Apple Debuts iPhone 17 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186023 - Sept 2025 (104 comments)

I am constantly reminded how far away I am from the median phone buyer.

5.64mm, 165g. Compare with Samsung Edge: 5.8mm, 163g, 200MP camera https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-edge/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-air-vs-samsung-s25-edge...

I 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.

It'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

This. While I’m still using the mini form factor—incidentally, as are most of my friends—I long for a better camera.

They also made the displays have some weird scaling factor that caused an annoying bloom in dark mode. Took me a while to realize why it felt off, even though the form factor was right up my alley.

I think Apple discontinued the Mini line because it's a bit like new software features makes the code harder to maintain over time. Every time Apple introduces a new generation of iPhones, they'd have to figure out how to make the upgrades fit in a much smaller chassis.

Who is we? What density increase will be launched by whom end of this year?

Being far from a cell tower would also place a lot of stress on the battery, so hiking by itself is probably more draining than you'd expect

TheDong, can you test if putting it on air plane mode makes any difference? Maybe you're on the edge of multiple cell towers and your phone is trying to connect/disconnect too aggresively?

This 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

The Motorola Razr of course was part of this trend too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Razr_V3

So there's one feature the Air is missing according to a deep dive of the Compare sheet (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?

  When Camera Control was introduced on iPhone 16, Apple moved the 5G mmWave antenna to pass through the back glass of the iPhone, that way it was no longer something you needed to see.

  Now though, with iPhone 17 Pro – that can’t work. The iPhone is now largely made of aluminum, requiring Apple to revert to an old design technique: a glass cutout for 5G mmWave passthrough

I'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?

I 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.

5.6 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-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.

Initial reactions are negative, so I predict this will be a hit.

Who actually wants a thinner iPhone?

I would prefer my phone to be operable by one hand.

The camera bump looks like it's twice the thickness of the entire phone.

When 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

Around 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.

iPhones 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…

Customers: we need better battery, no camera bump, better displays, more storage, ...

Apple: here's the thinnest phone ever

It 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!

You 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.

It'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

AAPL is down 1.3% on the news, while GOOGL is up 2%. Their phone offerings have diverged so dramatically with this last refresh cycle.

All I want is a 4-5 inch phone :( bring back the mini!

Iphone Air does not have LiDAR Scanner if it matters to anyone.

I 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-ipho...

Technologically impressive, how thin they got it.

Since it costs $1000-$1400, I'm going to need a nice big thick ruggedized case around it.

Can 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.

I 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.

A19 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.

Can'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.

> Old people cannot see small text.

The old people you know need a better optometrist. (Hint: progressive lenses.)

Things 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.

Most people aren't old.

Small screen sizes will not allow Apple to sell you as much as they do now.

Because above all, the iPhone is a vending machine owned by Apple and paid for by you.

minis didn't sell. Your wants are not mainstream enough :)

HN is for nerds. Majority of population is not. Not really indicative.

Well, for the same reason I’ve mentioned, they should: even pro max on 1,25…1.5 zoom will easily become mini

It’s now the only model in the lineup with a frame made out of Titanium.

Yea, indeed strange. Will be interesting to see people test the durability.

Fortunately different Operating Systems have different RAM needs and they’ve been making the trade-off between power usage (battery weight) and RAM fairly well.

If the Air is thinner than non-air with the case on it's still a win.

It'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).

I'm sorry you had that experience. That has not been my experience, but I am on the latest iPhone so I could see that an older model might have more trouble. Hope you have a better experience in the future, it's not acceptable that's for sure. I'll keep this in mind when recommending AppleCare+ in the future.

Apple obviously could create a multi day phone battery, they would just need to make it thicker. But there are 230 million people that buy an iPhone every year. I suspect Apple knows what it's doing.

I 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!).

You don't need mmWave for 100Mbps.

I have seen 2+ Gbps over mmWave.

"Regular" 5G can do hundreds of Mbps, maybe even 1 Gbps under ideal conditions.

What’s with the size?

I comfortably use pro max with one hand: phone rests on the pinky at the point where usb-c hole is.

Reachibility (gester of swiping down on home indicator) brings UI half screen down to reach upper regions.

Some use pop sockets.

Three sets of glasses means you had nearsightedness before you got presbyopia.

That means you still get to see fairly good at short distances.

People with ordinary presbyopia can’t see shit at arms length and closer.

This 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 ...

Same 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?

But 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".

Me too, and I’m planning the same upgrade. Always wanted to downsize but 60Hz was a deal breaker for me. Been using 120-144Hz+ displays exclusively since the VG248QE in 2013.

I was quite surprised to see this entire thread full of HN users who apparently want some brick phone to doom scroll lying flat on a table all day until the battery dies.

There are dozens of us, dozens[0], who love that damn form factor!

[0] https://youtu.be/lKie-vgUGdI

In the same camp as you. Perfect phone form factor.

Based on what understanding of battery chemistry and technology?

Based on what history of any other battery powered device where that has happened?

Many hate the distortion to the point of being physically sick

ok I was going for sarcasm but this works too

First iphone was released 17 years ago

iPad 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.

Exactly. A thousand pundits don't have a tenth of the vision of a single Apple PM.

I'm not sure about this. I think that if the weight balance is weird (esp. in the heavy top light bottom scenario - I sincerely hope it's not a thing with this new iPhone), it'll act as a lever and put more strain on your fingers to hold the phone.

Opportunity for you to make a blog about taping two iPhone Airs together and reach the top post of HN for a few hours.

But the whole point of presbyopia is that you cannot see what’s in close proximity.

The way you know you need your glasses is when your arm’s length isn’t enough to move your phone farther (not closer) to see.

So a product that sells 500,000,000 units is not successful because the previous CEO who died 14 years ago would want it to not be a toy?

Got it.

> Steve Jobs didn't make the iPad

Yes, that's correct.

Yes

If you like these, check out the INFOBAR phones from a few years prior. https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/cho... People like the multi-colored one, but I've always been partial to the green. I believe there's been a few newer homages to these over the years.

It's really task-dependent, text summarization and grammar corrections are fine with local models. I posit any tasks that are 'arms race-y' (image generation, creative text generation) are going to be offloaded to servers, as there's no 'good enough' bar above which they can't improve.

It's not difficult to find improvements to LLMs still.

Large issues: tokenizers exist, reasoning models are still next-token-prediction instead of having "internal thoughts", RL post-training destroys model calibration

Small issues: they're all trained to write Python instead of a good language, most of the benchmarks are bad, pretraining doesn't use document metadata (ie they have to learn from each document without being told the URL or that they're written by different people)

The sum of all edge nodes exceed the power in the datacenter, but the peak power provided to you from the datacenter significantly exceed your edge node capabilities.

A single datacenter machine with state of the art GPUs serving LLM inference can be drawing in the tens of kilowatts, and you borrow a sizable portion for a moment when you run a prompt on the heavier models.

A phone that has to count individual watts, or a laptop that peaks on dual digit sustained draw, isn't remotely comparable, and the gap isn't one or two hardware features.

pretty amazing, as a student I remember downloading offline copies of Wikipedia and Stack Overflow and felt that I have the entire world truly in my laptop and phones. Local LLMs are arguably even more useful than those archives.

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So.. 6 hour batteries like the Apple Watch?

IMO it's underwhelming considering folding phones have been out for many years now and we still don't have a folding iPhone. What are the PMs doing at Apple.