> bold sexy orange color

Luckily they added the blood pressure check for when you get too excited about the color orange.

A19 supports MTE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186265

Which is a very powerful feature for anyone who likes security or finding bugs in their code. Or other people's code. Even if you didn't really want to find them.

If you compare the specs of the 10 and 11 series watches you will see they both claim high blood pressure detection.

https://www.apple.com/watch/compare/?modelList=watch-series-...

In the past few weeks the oxymeter feature was enabled by a firmware update on series 10. Measurements are done on the watch, results are only reported on a phone.

> the bold sexy orange color of the iPhone 17 Pro

The color line up reminds me of the au MEDIA SKIN phones (Japanese carrier) circa 2007. Maybe it's because I had one back in the day, but I can't help but think they took some influence.

I've always been a bit confused about when to run models on the GPU vs the neural engine. The best I can tell, GPU is simpler to use as a developer especially when shipping a cross platform app. But an optimized neural engine model can run lower power.

With the addition of NPUs to the GPU, this story gets even more confusing...

Hoping this budget macbook rumour based on A19/A19 Pro is real.

Where did you see the matmul acceleration support? I couldn't find this detail online.

I wish they would offer the 17 pro in some lighter colors (like the new sage green for the regular 17). Not everyone wants bold, and the color selection for pro is always so limited. They don't even have white with this generation, just silver.

The first SoC including Neural Engine was the A11 Bionic, used in iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X, introduced in 2017. Since then, every Apple A-series SoC has included a Neural Engine.

Viable may be already here: demo of smollm3/3b <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44501413> on iphone with asr + tts: <https://x.com/adrgrondin/status/1965097304995889642>

Intrigued to explore with a19/m5 and test energy efficiency.

The live translation is software. It works on the AirPods Pro 2 and the AirPods 4 with AND.

So is the high blood pressure detection. It's not from the new watch, it works also in the series 10 and series 9 watches.

> If the M5 generation gets this GPU upgrade, which I don't see why not, then the era of viable local LLM inferencing is upon us.

I don't think local LLMs will ever be a thing except for very specific use cases.

Servers will always have way more compute power than edge nodes. As server power increases, people will expect more and more of the LLMs and edge node compute will stay irrelevant since their relative power will stay the same.

Because of the prompt processing speed, small models like Qwen 3 coder 30b a3b are the sweet spot for mac platform right now. Which means a 32 or 64GB mac is all you need to use Cline or your favorite agent locally.

I was reminded of this today for no particular reason:

"iPhone4 vs HTC Evo"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg

Nah, memory is still the bottleneck. Kernel performance is already pretty good, but cpu memory is still dramatically slower than gpu memory.

Apple is playing 3D chess while every other PC maker is learning how to play checkers.

I'm most excited about the heart rate sensor in Airpods Pro 3!

> It has A19 Pro.

But it's not general purpose. Broken by design.

I'll pass. Not going to support this. We need less of this crap not more.

I will believe this when I see it. It’s totally possible that those capabilities are locked behind some private API or that there’s some weedsy hardware complication not mentioned that makes them non-viable for what we want to do with them.

Good luck actually getting access to ANE. There is a reason why Pytorch doesn't use it even if its been around for a while.

deleted

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.

Doubt most people want it as thin as possible. This is just the phone industry running out of ideas and trying to tell people what they actually need.

There's not much left to "fix" on mobile phones, and no real important features to add. Lacking that, they need something to sell the phones with, so they're going for these strange "improvements". It needs to be something that has some wow factor so they can lead with. This seems to somehow work on normal people so they'll keep doing these "improvements".

I expect in the future they'll pull this trick again, moving bits of the phone upwards towards camera, and create a second notch from half way down, where the phone will get even thinner, and they'll sell that.

I agree with you, you're still going to put it in a fat case to protect the camera.

Personally, I think thin is just "omg look at my engineering". blah blah.

I found the (expensive!) bullstrap case to be helpful - thin and slippery enough to slide out of a pocket easily, well engineered to protect the camera.

But really, I think the iphone 13 mini was the most useful/practical application of apple's engineering.

I think a mini-sized 3-camera bulge phone would be great.

I'm going to preorder one because I want a light phone and a large screen. This will be the lightest iPhone in years while also having a bigger screen than most. I dropped from the Pro Max to the Pro last year because I was tired of how much it hurt when I dropped my phone on my face.

I don't have much call for most of the camera system, and my battery life on my Pro is just fine. I have plenty of chargers typically, and for emergencies or times I know I'm going to be out I could potentially get the battery pack.

I basically never use cases on my iPhone, and at most will maybe use an ultra-thin one or some sort of structure adhered to the plateau just to make it flat across so as to not rock on a table.

It's a weird cyclical thing.

Samsung galaxy s2 was a super small super thin phone, 15 years ago almost, which still had user replaceable battery, microsd, 3.5mm, gps, and everything most people would expect smartphone to have.

We then spent a decade making phones 0.2" bigger each generation as if that's an advancement - I.e. As if we couldn't have made them big in the first place (all the while removing physical features).

Then we started making them thin again, as if we couldn't have made them thin before.

It makes me think of cars - VW golf used to be a small car, then it kept growing... So they released Polo... Which kept growing so they made lupo... But each year my entire life they have ads like "6 inches bigger than before" or "10cm more legroom than competition", as if there haven't been small and large cars before.

Grumble Grumble, seen it all before, kids get off my lawn :-)

Easy mid-way product realization from research they had to do for folding phones.

It's about the size and even more importantly the weight. I like small, light phones (I currently have the iphone 13 mini). I want something small that I can slip into my pocket and it's not this brick bouncing around as take a walk.

Although, I'm not a big phone user though, mainly use it when I'm outside of the house. In the house, I'll just use my laptop.

> Can someone that is actually interested in this explain the appeal?

It’s light and the thinness is just fun. I’m not putting a case on it. And I really don’t understand why a phone needs to sit flat on a table—if anything, the angle is a plus.

Even more annoyingly, the bump is non-uniform with lens extruding even further from the entire bump. I have been annoyed by this design ever since they started with it. The last phone the design of which brought joy for me was my OnePlus 3T - thin and light. It also had the camera bump though which I would gladly sacrifice even if it meant a lower quality camera. On the other hand, I suppose they could just insert a thicker battery and make the whole phone a bit thicker but remove the bump.

I currently have a 14 pro. I use a MagSafe wallet with it (holds three cards). This allows me a not crazy, but fairly uniform, thick single object I have to grab when I leave the…anywhere. While this might not work for everyone, it works great for me.

I’m potentially considering the air because wasted z-axis space the camera bump creates, I’d use with a MagSafe wallet again, so it wouldn’t be wasted for me. I like that the built in battery is likely sufficient for a day of my use, but can be easily extended with the MagSafe battery on days where I know I’ll be using more juice, e.g. when traveling. None of these things are unique to the air; instead the overall thickness which results from my usage is the differentiator, from which I think I might derive value.

I'm not an apple user, not into their design choices... but if i had a choice, i'd much prefer a phone as thick as the camera with a 3x the battery capacity.

I'd even go with a millimeter or two thicker to have the backplate attached by screws and the battery easily user replacable after a few years.

Several brands have released an ultra thin version of their phone, followed by a foldable version of their phone. One phone depth is good for just about everyone, but you can't double that up, you'd get a phone that's too bulky for modern tastes.

It stands to reason the iFold/iPaper/iSheet/whatever Apple will call it is drawing closer now that Samsung and several Chinese brands have pretty much solved the design for Apple.

Bearing in mind I haven't looked at specs yet...

I be been struggling with the 14 pro's weight. So that would mainly be my interest here.

Also almost certainly less likely to get obsoleted by some AI feature given the higher end GPU cores.

iPhone status symbol without having to haul around a huge bulky phone.

Most users probably use/need 10% of what a max pro iPhone offers, but they want 100% of the max pro status.

Now they can keep the status without needing to carry a chonker.

Optics is not going to be "solved" by anything but some fascinating kind of metamaterial.

There's nowhere to go with phones than thinner if you aren't doing folding. Thinness has practical value but past a certain point, probably not very much.

Marketing will create hype and desire and the feeling of exclusiveness. Those will lead to sales.

Not every big change is an actual innovation. A lot if just engineering sales via these methods, which aren't very different than fashion, jewelry, or luxury cars.

I might get one because I'm always a bit forced to follow the curve and can't afford to look 'backwards' or 'old fashioned' to stakeholders in the workplace, people in my life, etc who's good side I need to stay on who believe in the above dynamic.

Because China.

Ben Thompson (Stratechery) has been documenting for almost a decade that the biggest driver of new phone sales in China is a new form factor.

I’m sure that might be the same in other markets where an iPhone is a status symbol. It’s definitely not one in the US where 60% of phone buyers have iPhones.

This phone has the highest screen area to weight ratio except for the Galaxy S25 Edge.

The thinness makes it easier to grip around the phone laterally. Think of it like having a slightly smaller basketball, which more people would be able to palm. Easier for holding, easier for one-handed typing.

The good thing about the bump is that it should make it easier to pick up the phone from a desk.

The size and weight of the phone does look tempting, but its battery life is a deal breaker for me. I'm pretty sure there's no way its built-in speakers could possibly match those in the Pro models, which is also very important to me.

>"Thin on its own I get but thin with a giant bump 100% defeats the whole point for me. Seems clear at this point there is little hope of them engineering their way into thin cameras."

I have this recurring vision of what could have been if we never lost Steve before the industry went whole hog in on the camera bump fad. It goes something like this:

SCENE: Steve Jobs' office on the eve of the iPhone 7 release

"Hey Steve here's the new prototype for iPhone 7, we think you're going to love it!"

Steve picks up the phone, fumbles it around for a moment, flips it over, and runs his index finger over the camera bump

"You're fired. Now, you" points to another engineer "Get rid of the bump."

And just like that, we were saved from this nightmare. Alas, the world is shit now and no one cares about anything anymore. But I can say without question he would have never allowed it.

Lighter == better, thinner == cooler. Phones are essentially identical these days anyways, and choosing one over another is based on ever-minimizing differences. Now that you can't even install third-party apps easily on Android, this is more true than ever.

It's also not actually that much more lightweight, compared to the 6.1" iPhones.

I largely agree, but when we hold phones it is generally by the side without the camera. That means that this phone will feel smaller in the hand, which could be a very effective marketing gimmick to upsell people from the base iPhone.

I literally almost got an injury from using my iPhone 12 Pro Max while laying on the side on the bed for the last few years -- it's too heavy. I had to do various therapies to stop feeling pain. It's almost 230g and I also have an Urban Armor Gear case that adds a little bit.

iPhone Air is at 165g. I'll get ~72% of the weight and be able to comfortably use the device without getting tired.

Sample size of one and all that apply, of course.

Some people will like the way it looks, have money, and don't care as much about overall performance/utility. Much in the same way a Rolex and Timex both tell time.

They’ve shrunk the phone so much that the bump is the computer + optics, strapped to a screen and battery.

The Air and Pro are essentially the same with a different skin. It’s a big deal imo as the phone itself is practically modular. It’s pretty brilliant as they can make the computer part in China and Taiwan and probably ship that unit to various locales for different form factors.

I liked the older thinner phones for the pocket-ability. Less of an issue with jeans but more so with lighter shorts or suits etc

It's more about physics than hope. There's not much you can do with lenses miniaturization after a certain point (which we already reached). The result is more and more computational stuff, which Apple does somewhat gracefully, but still in a way that sets the iPhone photos apart from a camera, and not in a good way.

total phone volume is what determines how well the phone fits in your pocket. especially on women's pants with small pockets. a thin phone with a bump will fit better than a thicker phone.

the argument that the bump defeats the purpose of a thin phone is only true if you're trying to squeeze it through a narrow gap in a rigid object.

It still takes up less room in your pocket.

It exists because it is likely the first volley in a push to a foldable phone. It's the same thickness as one half of the foldable phones on the market.

I am personally interested because I have found iPhones to be offensively bulky for... 10+ years, and this has the potential to feel differently.

They sacrificed size for battery life, just like with the mini models, just in another dimension. Since the minis were cancelled I expect this model to undergo the same fate. Maybe it's just an experiment? Call it an A-B test.

I'm interested in it. I have an iPhone 11 and have been looking to update. I don't use a case. It looks pretty cool, I guess? Do you need more of a reason than that to have anything more than an iPhone 11, heh?

It weighs a lot less. My pinky hurts and 99% of my photos are selfies, so I’d rather have less mass than more camera; I’ll rent a Leica if I want truly excellent photographs. Also my purse is hella full all the time so every less millimeter of phone makes it easier to get stuff out of the pockets, get phone out of purse, etc. Also it’ll fit with less bulge into my side-thigh pockets and pull less on the waistband, which is handy for my skirts and leggings and undershorts that all that have that.

> Can someone that is actually interested in this explain the appeal?

It looks really cool

Yeah, it has a bump. Thicker phones have a bump too. It's still less volume in your pocket.

Also, it looks really cool.

Perhaps being thinner allows for people to put their phone into an external case, the combined size which is approximately the bulk of the current generation.

No problem, the next iteration is a phone without a camera. And they will tell us that no one wants a camera oh his phone. And then they sell bluetooth cameras as extra.

I don’t get it either. They’re more difficult to hold.

What if there was a phone that was completely weightless and didn't take up any space at all

it is the precipice of stupidity. making an ugly, mis-shaped phone and calling it thinner than ever. its fugly. just make the guts thinner and use the extra space for more battery. thats what everyone wants. but apple wont do it because they arent brave anymore. they arent brave enough to stick out

It probably fits better in the front pocket of one’s trousers. And if so, that’s great news.

making it thinner than the camera save us a ton o money on battery materials!

signed, apple CFO

Easy. Top part is not where people holding their phones.

You don’t hold the camera bump…

Same question here. Why would I buy this instead of folding phones that provide a tablet-like screen on demand?

Honestly with rumors of a folding iPhone coming out in 1-2 years it makes me wonder if the primary drive is to experiment with thinner production hardware so that a folding phone isn’t super thick.

Aren’t you glad they have not called it something like Thin™ or True Thin™ or some shit?

I think they are appealing to the Razor crowd /s

Also still rocking a 13 mini. There are dozens of us! Dozens!

(Also to those who say not enough people wanted a mini phone to be worth producing: I submit the case of Prego chunky pasta sauce. Not many people want a chunky pasta sauce, but you sell a whole lot more pasta sauce in total if you sell both regular and chunky pasta sauce. Malcolm Gladwell has a TED talk about this.)

Unfortunately both the 12 Mini and the 13 Mini did terrible numbers sales-wise. People say they want small phones but not enough of them actually buy them when they are available. :(

I know that the iPhone Mini users are few but vocal. Instead of a yearly refresh of the mini, they should do a run every 5 years or so. Make a bunch, sell out of inventory by year 3, make a new one year 5 with updates matching the spec/price de jour.

It's like a LTR (Long term release) iPhone.

I know there are Apple Engineers lurking here, start the whisper campaign!

I love my iPhone 12 mini, the screen has great pixel density better than the 16 or 17 even. It is compact and light, easy to put in and out of the pocket. The battery is not great and the peak luminosity could be better, but it still runs so well in 2025. I've been contemplating buying a new one since the back glass is shattered and the front is scratched, the battery is also getting worse. I don't think it's viable now to get it fixed.

So I might reluctantly grab one of the new ones.

My main phone for a year or so has been a unihertz jelly star. Kind of an extreme but it's so nice in your hand / pocket. Definitely not thin though!

I own a 12 mini, and I'm planning to upgrade my phone this year, it's time. If there were an iPhone 17 mini, I'd buy it, but because there isn't one, I'll probably go for the Pro to get a bigger battery. Apple knows that many folks like me would buy a cheaper mini if there were one, and not spend as much on Pro.

Reading this and replying on the 13 Mini. Love it so much but wouldn’t mind if it were a little lighter. If it stays the same forever, I think I’d still buy it. Great phone. P.S. I work at home, so battery life is not my biggest concern.

I've got a 12 mini and honestly it's the perfect size. Every year I hope they bring back a proper compact flagship, but instead we get thinner, not smaller

This is funny, when you think about that our demographic (people with multiple tech devices, in need of a smaller phone, able to pay more for it, etc.) should match perfectly with everyone who works internally at apple on the phones. They must have frequent discussions on this, that get agressively silenced - to keep the focus on the bigger phones :o)

The problem is simply that the small form factor doesn't allow a big battery. So the iPhone 12/13 mini simply have a bad battery life compared to the bigger iPhones.

The reason why we have such big smartphones is that the ratio of screensize (2d area) to battery size (3d volume) is better for bigger smart phones.

I recently found my 4S, and that thing is tiny, but I like that I can easily reach the full screen. On even the 2023SE I use my other hand when there is a button I need to hit on the top of the left side

This! small form factor yet powerful. Any OS works. What has been happening is upping the specs mean larger size, less easy to carry and hard to use with one hand.

I loved the mini and bought both the 12 and 13 mini. Also bought it for my siblings. Unfortunately after its sales Apple is very unlikely to ever make a small phone again.

I’d recommend Halide for the AI-free photography. Hiccups here and there, but getting pixels straight off the sensor is amazing.

What is hotdog skin?

I had the 12 mini. Perfect size, but awful battery life due to how thin they decided to make it. Give me a mini with more than half-day battery life and I'll queue on release day.

Stop. Making. Things. Thinner.

Personally, I really like being able to use lightweight MagSafe batteries instead of having a thicker iPhone. I used to agree with you, but the tech has gotten ridiculously good the last couple of years.

With something like https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HRY02LL/A/anker-maggo-pow..., you get a magsafe battery that doubles the life of an iPhone and can be independently recharged, and is so slim that I can put it in my pocket attached to my iPhone and not notice.

Just get the MagSafe battery, then you've got your extra-thick. It already exists.

It's not going to last you all week though. That's not going to just be thick, it's going to be a cube heavy enough to double up as a weapon.

Yes. Give me the iPhone 17 Pro Ultra. It's the Pro Max, but even more battery. Heavier duty case. Like I'm put the thing in a case that makes it big and bulky already, if you give me a heavy duty enough setup that I feel safe letting it go naked, people might actually see the status symbol... instead of the dbrand sticker.

This is why I mostly stick with the Moto G models which have easily multi-day battery and cost sub $250.

Thick is easy. Get a battery case. I used to have one that allowed for swappable samsung batteries packs that was great.

Agreed. Give me a phone thick and durable enough that I don't feel the need to add a screen protector and case to it, or strap a battery to the back to make it last.

It seems they are often peeling away useful features, which then you have to replace - yielding a worse experience often.

Small screen, thick, durable, good battery. Would pay $

But that will rob people of those multiple extremely satisfying feelings across those one or two years, before they change the iPhone, of paying more to Apple for battery packs and then another and then another… etc. You should think of that as well.

I don’t think many people would like a phone that is twice as heavy all the time. At least battery packs can be taken off.

If few people would buy it, Apple won't produce it. I think the Air will flop for this reason.

I use a battery case, it is amazing. Gives the phone some weight and 2 days battery.

Back when replaceable batteries were a thing I got this beast for my Galaxy Note 4 - https://blog.gsmarena.com/zerolemon-offers-10000mah-extended... ... it was ridiculous but awesome.

will someone please make this? a phone with a browser, basic camera, large battery and a UI that doesnt suck ass? a phone for adults that is affordable? i want more and more each day to get away from apple

this makes absolute sense. most of the times when my iphone 14 is literally in life support. honestly would trade off the thickness to not have to charge everyday

Phones are tools, not fashion statements.

iPhone Thicc- body positivity!

iPhone Travel? Please. We don’t go on Craig-approved drug-fueled vision quests just to land on mediocrity like that. You’re close though.

It’s gonna be the iPhone Voyager.

The Samsung S25 Edge, which has already been on the market for a while, seems to be pretty popular.

It's 0.16mm thicker than the Air. I've got to admit it was surprisingly pleasant to hold.

I even did a low key bend test and it did not bend, but I literally had store security walk up to me and ask me not to do that.

https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-edge/

This just seems like Apple's reality distortion field in full force. There are already thinner phones. Just like there were thinner laptops than Macbook Air when it was launched but Apple fans in their Apple bubble hadn't heard of them and so bought Apple's propaganda.

I say this as someone that owns 2 MacBooks Pros, an Apple TV and an iPhone.

Is anyone buying an iPhone because it's slightly thinner than other phones? I've never heard anyone say the width of the phone was their reason for picking an iPhone, or any phone for that matter.

What’s the evidence for which way causality works? Apple solving design problems they care about would inevitably involve solutions only viable at their scale. It’s hard to say whether that’s how they choose their design problems.

Their process seems pretty similar to their approach with unibody MacBooks or the original MacBook Air, both of which were introduced long before imitators were their primary competition.

Thinnest smartphone so far is Chinese HONOR Magic V5 folding phone at 4.1mm, though. iPhone Air is thicker by 1.5mm(1/16") at 5.6mm. Thinnest Samsung Galaxy is 5.8mm.

That was partly true when he was writing the book or doing research, but is no longer true today. China have manage to make phone that is under 5mm, and even stated the only thing that is stopping them getting even thinner is the USB-C port.

But on the other hand, apple seems to be the only company unable to get rid of that ugly huge notch. Everyone else improved on that years ago.

The only thing where Apple is consistently ahead of the rest of the industry is the processor.

If your "impossible" designs are manufactured by non-exclusive suppliers it isn't much of a moat.

Wireless chipsets have just always been notoriously unreliable. It will be interesting to see Apple can improve reliability here.

Very interesting that it has Thread too. I wonder if that will be a somewhat viable system in a decade. (Show me where I can buy a cheap Thread border gateway that isn't an Apple or Google voice assistant or whatever.)

I wonder if they will eventually add NFC to it. It probably needs to be certified since NFC is used for payments.

doubling down on matter! Adoption has been slow but it is starting to ramp up quicker

I wonder why they don't put it to 17/Pro.

It will arguably sit flatter than the prior iPhones, which rock diagonally. This will be tilted a bit, but at least be stable.

"Just" put an magsafe battery on the back.

1. Create a problem.

2. Sell the solution.

3. Profit.

Why should a phone sit flat on a table? What's the advantage of that?

I seriously don't understand this (common) complaint that I see. If anything a slight tilt makes the screen a bit more readable.

The camera bump is there for the same reason the wireless mouse has the charge port on the bottom: Apple want you to hold it.

Right now I have to lean my phone on my purse to get a nice reading angle, because the lens block is lopsided and my phone wobbles around otherwise. The Air bump is still a better angle than flat, and I bet the lens doesn’t keep it from resting stably on the lower edge of the chin (?) rather than the lens edge.

It will tilt towards you which would actually be more ergonomic than lying flat.

My iPhone 16 Pro with a case doesn't shit flat. I don't see why this is a problem.

This is total speculation on my uninformed part, but to me, the Air seems like the result of their research into foldables. The way hardware is laid out in that upper area is very reminiscent of the Flip category from other manufacturers with their a-symmetric halfs and considering Apple is a very efficiency focused company these days, letting that effort linger till display tech catches up to whatever Apple is waiting for, would feel like a waste perhaps.

Also, as long as we retain an actual Pro version that is willing to be a bit chunkier, I don't see any issue in having an Air line for casual users, maybe that will be the way mainstream devices go with future efficiency gains, similar to the MacBook Air now being "good enough" for most people. Silicon-carbon batteries will likely enable some of that pretty soon, suspect that like with GaN, the supply chain cannot handle Apple level demands yet. Remember, the original three MacBook Airs were beyond compromised too.

Just don't fall into the trap of making the Pro thinner, akin to the 2016 MacBook Pro disaster. Keep the iPhone Pros like the current MacBook Pros chunky for those who actually use these devices and we are golden in my book.

> My iPhone 11 still feels very much good enough (which I imagine must be terrible for Apple)

I think Apple has come to terms with the fact that people are no longer upgrading their phones every 1-2 years. They are probably happy just to keep you in the Apple ecosystem where they can sell you apps, services, accessories, other compatible apple products - and hopefully get your repeat business when you do one day feel the need to upgrade.

The issue with size I have with phones is that they are too high, so I cannot have it in my jeans front pocket and then sit down.

Thinness has not been an issue in the last 10-15 years.

A thin phone is also very hard to hold, it kind of flips in your hand.

I’d very much prefer a phone that’s shaped like a slab (smooth back), no weird camera plateaus and no sad excuse for a battery, but something that can last days.

I have 14 Max, and it is so heavy. I don’t mind the thickness, but the weight is very annoying.

So while I didn’t say “I wish my phone was thinner”, I did say many times “this should weigh about half of what it actually weighs”.

It's not just about thin. It's also about weight. The Air has a bigger screen but weighs less than the iPhone 17.

I have an XS and wanted to upgrade. But I still don't see a super appealing reason. Battery still decent at 72%. Photos still good enough. browsing fast, apps fast...

It is the best iPhone I owned (3, 6s).

But yeah, spotlight is slow and the phone constantly runs out of storage, so apps need to be deleted before installing updates and least used apps are constantly removed. Additionally the screens are way better now and you do see the difference with photos made on an iPhone 16. I guess I'll upgrade late this year when I am sure the 17 (pro?) is a reliable piece of hardware, like my iPhone XS is.

Agree. I don’t understand the teen of making the phones thinner but larger. I guess I’m part of the small demographics that love the mini, hope my mini 12 have a couple or more years of live in it.

Some people just want "the best" regardless of what it is. If you can improve a measurable spec on a luxury device, some people will covet it.

People who have no concept of material resistance who will come crying when their phone folds very easily with accidental day to day mishaps

When you need to stack 2 phones together because you're oncall, because you're a streamer, etc.

Honestly I do. I want it thinner and lighter. I don’t use my phone very much so I don’t care about battery very much nor do I about any kind of specs. Wait… yeah that’s why I won’t buy it I love my iPhone 13 mini

I've ever owned an iPhone and probably never will, but I very much like smaller, lighter, thinner. For a device that stays with you all day, the less cumbersome the better, no?

I agree but cynicism makes me think it’s a beta, not a flex. Shipping half your next flagship phone to learn about manufacturing, durability etc etc in the real world is kind of genius.

Probably right because it’s called iPhone Air and not iPhone 17 Air. Seems like this is a one off phone.

I’d place a bet that Apple does not go down the foldable route, they must have seen what happened with Samsung and their Z Fold. Much hyped but turned out to be somewhat of a dud.

> prelude to a foldable phone next year

Or perhaps a prelude to small, triangle-shaped phone that users stick on a shirt or lapel, and tap to activate.

https://startrekshop.ca/products/star-trek-the-next-generati...

Yeah I was first very excited to see a smaller iPhone again, but was very very disappointing that is about the thickness.

NO BODY cares about the thickness!!! I want something that I can hold like the iPhone 5!!!! Or iPod touch size!! Don't want a big screen to watch netflix!!!

This is freaking phone for god sake, back in the old iphone days there were a balance.

Stuff like this is what turns me back to dump phone. I want a phone, not a freaking computer in my hand!

> As someone who rarely takes photos, and never photos of importance

Even people who do take photos often would probably gladly sacrifice some image quality to loose that massive thing on the back of the phone. The thinness of the phone almost make it look worse as long as that camera sticks out like that; like a huge watch with a thin strap or something...

> My dream phone has a body like iPhone 12 mini (which I currently use) without the protruding camera.

Sounds similar to the iPhone 4, still my favorite of all the form factors in terms of "hand feel". It was the right thickness for me, just a bit heavy for it's size. If they refreshed it to reduce weight and extended the screen to the borders I think it would be amazing

If you take Apple's presentation at face value, most of the iPhone Air hardware is within the plateau, with the rest of the body being almost entirely battery. So it's not immediately obvious that even if they did do away with the bump, that there'd be a useable phone left over once considering the necessary reduction in battery size.

You might want to check the 16e. It has 16 insides (without magsafe and uwb chip), with screen from 14 and not very protruding (although still) but good camera. Its also cheaper than base model iphone.

it looks like the bump doesn’t have just the camera but also some other stuff like the processor ?

I agree with this so much. I recently upgraded to the 13 Mini and had to go back to the 12 Mini because I hated the big camera thing on the back. I actually like the 12 Mini camera more than the 13 Mini also. It felt like the 13 Mini couldn’t take close up photos worth a damn.

Pixel 9a is the closest to a no bump phone out of the major brands.

Talking about using this thing as a boomerang?

Nicknamed The Tomahawk

Sigh. I can't stand the camera bump. I would run not walk to the nearest Apple store with all my savings if they made a phone where the camera bump is made flush by adding thickness elsewhere to match, filled with extra battery. Thing would last for weeks. Ah well back to reality.

It's thinner, but at 165 grams it's not appreciably lighter than a regular-sized iPhone (the 16e in particular at 167 grams). People generally want a more lightweight phone more than they want a thinner phone. So it's only for people who also want a larger-than-regular iPhone screen.

> Biggest is that Apple can finally tell if people really want a thinner phone (I don’t).

It's going to be so painful if the answer is yes.

> Apple can finally tell if people really want a thinner phone

They would need to sell two otherwise equivalent new models att the same time where one is thicker for that.

Won't it still significantly add to the thickness, at least in terms of making one-handed typing harder?

I've long been inured to the Apple Tax, but that $60 plastic strap is taking it a bit too far IMO

...unless it lands on the big protruding camera lens.

It's also a bit weird that iPhone Air being an Air is more expensive. MacBook Air and iPad Air are the cheaper options in contrast

You fail to mention that the 17 and 16e don't only differ by weight. Miniaturization is costly.

Footprint to weight ratio is an important factor. S25 Edge weights 163g but it felt noticeably lighter in hand than other phones with similar weight.

A lot of pseudo-intellectual babble over what is clearly a cool piece of engineering that many people are excited about. Turns out, you can just do things, some people will think it's awesome while the people in the middle of the curve continue to keep the midwit meme alive.

It’s clear that super thinness is a technology imperative necessary to get Foldable IPhones. In order to fold, you first must solve thinness (since the final decide will be 2x once folded).

Apple focusing on thinness is proof to me a foldable phone is next.

I lament my 13 mini coming to the end of its lifespan. Good design.

"It starts at $999 for 256GB", I on the other hand am in the "prices gotten ridicilous" camp

> Granted I loved the 13 mini

It is almost as good as the (smaller) first gen iPhone SE with the physical button.

The group this does something for is the shareholders. Apple is still a product company, but their number one offering is AAPL.

The marketing shows what sells. People want to be 25, hot, in cool places with cool looking friends, with great lighting.

Also, satisfied people don't have any need to comment.

Yes; the mini phones never sold very well, yet there are always commenters that ask for it. There are no small phones on the market, even the asus zenphone - which used to be the best compact android - is just a big phone now.

I'm not sure that this will sell well.

$0.25 fentanyl sells good. Doesn't mean it's what people need.

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Okay, if your use case doesn’t require it, then don’t buy it…? You aren’t the only person in the world and some people might actually make use of this phone’s features(?)

You can hate Apple for it, but the phone costs $1000+ because people will buy it. Apple has been proven right year after year since 2017 (iPhone X)

You can still do everything you mentioned on a $150 phone, which exists in parts of the world. If anything, one could complain that the $150 phone still takes pictures worse than an iPhone 5

As you point out, it doesn't require it.

Your comment is like complaining about luxury handbags when cheap ones exist too.

I don't know what you're suggesting. Companies shouldn't make expensive versions of things even when there are consumers who want to buy them?

You should also realize that it's people buying the expensive versions of things that helps subsidize the cheaper ones made by the same company. And it's the quality Apple is providing that even makes a secondhand market viable, because their devices last much more than other brands.

In Turkey, iPhone Pro 17 costs $2,610, yet there are still queues outside Apple stores. Considering that the average income is much lower than in the United States, people are still willing to pay more for this phone than you might expect.

People pay for how they look (which is fine) not what they do.

im on an SE too and i have no idea what ill buy when this phone dies… i would rather buy an android than get a 16e

Recession indicator handset

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-17,ip...

Interesting. So apart of camera and battery life, the upgrade from iphone 12 mini to iphone 17 is unimpressive and for someone like me who likes smaller sized phones and don't care about refresh rate (my goal is to decrease my screen time rather then increase), its actually a downgrade.

Thanks to this site, i've just realized that the ip17 has bigger screen than ip16.

No kidding. I just want one that I can use one handed again. I’m on the IPhone SE, have hands that can play an octave + 2 additional keys on a piano, and I can’t reach the whole screen with a single hand.

I’m probably just holding it wrong.

We're in the minority. The iPhone Minis did not sell well. I think women especially do not want a small phone because they carry it in a purse anyway (and slap a case on it with an extra handle to make it easier to hold).

I recently doubled the thickness of my iPhone SE by adding an external battery. Fits in my jeans pocket fine along with several other things in the same pocket. If they can get it that thin, why don't they just add more battery and take us back to the time when we could run phones for weeks between charges.

[edit] I'll answer my own question. Nobody is going to replace an iPhone because it drops from 21 days battery to 14 days battery, but they probably will replace an iPhone that drops from 21 hours battery to 14 hours.

Yep. I keep holding out for a new Mini. They keep making phones wider and taller. Thanks Apple!

I’m still holding onto my 12 mini wishing they would update it. Perfect size imo.

I like the size of a regular iPhone. What I really want is a lighter phone. Unfortunately, compared to the iPhone 17, the Air is about 30% thinner, with worse battery life, camera, etc, but only around 7% lighter. I was expecting at least 20% lighter if it's called "Air".

Exactly.. and it’s not even the height. It’s mainly the width + placements of UI elements at the top.

Air could’ve been the perfect mini replacement. Same width, but higher.

But no.. why get the air when the pro has so much more of everything, and is only 100 more

You have to sacrifice screen size to shrink the other dimensions, and they already have smaller screen iPhones. It seems most people care more about big screens than size in that dimension

I’ve been a little concerned that the (non-transparent) back is “protected” by glass. I understand that Marketing has to work with what they’re given, but that’s a bit much.

I got the Samsung 25 Edge and did move from a the regular sized phone to "plus" without the constraints and weight that usually follows. I can reach the screen edges that I can't on the same size plus version. Added bonus that i don't get a strain in my pinky from the weight and its still very pocketable. So I'm sold on thinner phones except the wobble from hell when its laying on the table.

Yes, the fact that there is no American small phone with an e-ink screen is IMO proof that they basically want us to suffer.

It’s because they’re working on a foldable phone. And to make that work you need to phone half as thin first. This is not because they think people want thinner phones. It’s because they think people will want bigger screens and this will get them there.

Yes. In the era of slim pants.

Exactly my thought when I saw it. When I said smaller this isn’t what I meant!

The reason why we have such big smartphones is that the ratio of screensize (2d area) to battery size (3d volume) is better for smart phones with a bigger screen.

Exactly. I'm still using my iPhone 13 mini and won't change it for something bigger. I wouldn't mind something a little smaller.

Back when I got my iPhone XR I immediately thought it was too thin, and got a case for it which added a non insignificant amount of thickness.

I’ve found the Pixel 8 and 9 Pro to be quite a reasonable size and they run GrapheneOS pretty nicely.

No, but if I recall correctly the mini didn't sell as well as they wanted.

Every time a new iPhone comes up people on hacker news pine for a new mini, which I understand. But everytime someone has to bring back up that the 12 and 13 minis were the worst selling sku two gens in a row, with at one point the 13 mini only attributing to 3% of 13 sales [1].

I'm sorry, but the market has spoken. And there's Android phones in that form factor if you really want it.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula...

>Hahahaha LMAO. Here's your upvote my friend.

Back to reality, Apple sells close to 200 billion worth of iPhones per year, so yeah, maybe they know what they're doing?

(side note) And the folding phone will be a "Apple First".

I wonder if they still still have a stupid camera notch on the device. They is no point (to me) have a thin phone even you end up having a 5mm notch the size of your phone

Reusing parts for them, massive piles of software-bricked e-waste for us.

Genuinely curious: why do you often find yourself typing on the phone resting on a flat surface? I can’t think of a single time where that’s been the best way to handle my device.

Apple doesn't advertise this as the intent, but until the Air I felt that the Phone+Case combo is the complete phone, as it is intended to be used. Add any of Apple's official cases, leather, silicone, whatever, and that's the official "thickness" of the phone. The cameras are recessed, the front display is recessed, the whole phone is wrapped in leather and further customized to your style.

Now the Air has a bump that is so big no case can hide it without also being unreasonably thicc, breaking the trend. I wonder what a case mfg could stuff into the awkward space on the peninsula where the camera is missing so the case provides a uniform surface when laying flat, even if that means a bigger bump on the top when cased. The phone would have a natural angle towards the user, that's kinda nice. Maybe a little bluetooth speaker setup so owners of the Air can more efficiently irritate their fellow passengers.

I would love a lighter phone. If I chase after kids at the park, the thing is banging around like a lead weight in my pockets.

I'm in the market for this

I've been hoping for Apple to return to "thin" and it's nice that they're trying. I don't know whether I would buy this, but my current iPhone 14 Pro feels like a brick — thick stainless steel

When I go for a run, it's uncomfortable to have in a pocket depending on what running clothes I am wearing. The heaviness makes it feel far more likely to break all the times I have dropped it (and I have dropped it many times, without a case)

Thinner phones are aesthetically pleasing and feel nice to hold. I can keep a battery pack nearby for emergencies

I’m asking for thinner

What do you need battery life for?

Aren’t you in your house or office or car near a charger most of the day?

Do you spend 90% of your waking day in the middle of an open field far from any sort of charging capabilities?

Why would I add more weight to a phone so I don’t have to put it on the charging MagSafe puck that is inches away from me at all times

Since they aren't going to offer the smaller profile it seems that at least some segment of people want, and they don't have any new ideas to innovate on, they have to release something in order to maintain "growth" - which we all know must happen on schedule.

i hardly use my phone. it mostly sits in my hip pack. i'm extremely interested in the Air. the thinness means it takes up less space in there, which is very much appreciated. since they won't make another mini, this is the next best alternative. i'm also thrilled about having all-Apple silicon down to the cellular radios. more power-efficient and faster updates when improvements to cellular capabilities come out. very exciting.

the small battery won't affect me much. web browsing is the most demanding workload on my phone, which is not a problem on this a19 soc unlike the 13 mini whose soc struggles to keep up. i also charge my phone every night before i go to sleep and these phones do a great job at not draining overnight.

I'm actually curious about this one. Something that feels more seamless in my pocket, however like you mentioned, it would require for me to not use a case, which is something I might do.

See my other comment. It’s a necessary feature of foldable iPhones. First you get them then, then you release a foldable phone.

iphones are also a fashion accessory. lots of people will buy it for its distinctiveness

If you check the actual specs, the Air’s battery life is the same 27 hours as the 16Pro. That’s pretty good for such a thin device. Obviously 27 hours is an optimistic estimate but to match the 16Pro means that the Air battery isn’t actually bad.

They likely offer the battery pack to make people feel more comfortable who don’t ready the specs but just make an assumption based on looks.

"this box was made in California"

WOW. You managed to make a cardboard box without using Chinese factories! Very impressive, Tim Apple!!

Apple released the first magsafe battery years ago. The battery life is also the same as the 16.

man that is depressing

> Where's a 5 inch display

When companies try smaller phones, like the iPhone 13 mini, they don't seem to sell very well. So the companies stop making them.

I'm also curious who the market is for a thinner phone. I imagine pockets on some clothes women commonly wear might work better with a thinner phone, but those pockets are almost always too small in other dimensions to actually hold the phone

"a supercomputer inside a camera that fits in your pocket" stopped being a novelty 15 years ago. We call it just "phone" now!

"lying flat on a table" is a critical feature for a device that on a daily basis lays on the table.

If it clanks and thuds every time you press it (and pressing it is the only way to use it) while lying on the table, then it is bad design that should be addressed.

Because we already all own a supercomputer inside a camera that fits in our pocket so the technology specs don't really move the needle.

Maybe a supercomputer from a 1980s perspective.

I actually sold my Nakamichi cassette deck to afford the NOKIA Communicator back then. The OS was problematic and couldn’t deliver the functionality that I expected. I ended up switching to a Palm or Handspring device, can't remember which, and stuck with a Nokia monochrome phone until the iPhone came along and changed everything.

The mmWave functionality requires a glass section on the frame as it can't pass through metals. They've redesigned this on the 17 Pro[1], but likely didn't find a way to integrate into the Air's design.

  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

The C1 modem didn't support mmWave and I assume it's the same case with the C1X.

I’d guess they are trying to limit power draw given the smaller battery. It’s a trade off.

What does that mean in practice?

i'm sure most people reacted like you in focus groups. I dont know how many times they said "its our most durable phone" and "its so strong" etc. Got to be a way to directly counter this first impression.

That’s what Apple care is for.

it's titanium, which is quite rigid compared to aluminum

iPhone Cup is coming out next year, pre-curved.

We’re a dying breed. I wish they’d just turn the SE line into minis.

> The Moto Z beat them

The unfortunate part is that you can make anything better in a single parameter, but Apple has effectively no competitors. People who buy Apple will continue to buy Apple.

For people to switch, the competition has to come out with something that is visibly and unbeatably better than what Apple has.

I know many people in developing countries who'd rather have a 5 year old iPhone than a new android.

like Apple Vision Pro?

I specifically want an iPhone with less mass.

I view my phone primarily as something I'm obligated to carry on myself at all times to function in modern society. The easier it is to carry the better. When I need to upgrade my phone, I'll always choose the smallest iPhone by weight.

Right, thinness doesn't help with anything. I want smaller width and height (i.e., a iPhone 17 mini) so that the phone will fit better in my jeans pocket.

Thinner makes sense if it's consistently thin. I don't get what's the value of thinner with a giant bulge.

> Who actually wants a thinner iPhone?

I'm considering it. I'm not particularly married to the thinness. But I like the lightness.

I'm not an avid photographer. And I don't put a case on my phones. The only real tradeoffs I need to look into is processing and battery life.

It's half a folding phone.. they did the R&D, might as well offer it as a halo product.

I do, I've been waiting for thinner iPhones to retire my iPhone 11.

i'd take a phone 5 times thicker if it meant i got a week of battery life instead of a 5 hours

People who want to show off that they have the latest iPhone

A lot of people who put their phone in their pockets do.

I'd like to hold it, it seems like it might be more one-hand grippable in this form factor.

Supermodels who wear really tight jeans. We care about minority here sir.

I'm going to put a chunky Otterbox case around it no matter what.

I want it smaller. iPhone mini was the best.

Not me, I was hopping for a folding iPhone

everyone.

But you can't fit as many ads and/or cookie banners on a smaller screen. The tech treadmill requires those things, so here we are.

The most annoying thing about handling my 12 Pro Max one-handed is the weight, with thickness being 2nd, and screen size being a distant 3rd.

I went from someone who had to have the latest phone on pre-order to someone who doesn't bother: this is the first time I'm considering a new phone release in years. I suspect many other people are in the same boat.

I'm just not sure if I'll miss 3 cameras too much.

I have an iPhone 16 pro max, I’m five four with I assume smaller than average hands for a male and I have no problem using my iPhone one handed

Thats what Steve always wanted

It's a UI problem not an hardware one imo. Pretty much when iPhone came out UI research flattened and everything seems so standardized now, I only see gimmick stuff like liquid glass. For example, I don't see why a submit button cannot float near the thumb on the right or left side of the bottom of the device(could predict by checking device orientation)

It probably aligns very well with any sensible case.

My memory is from around 1998-1999 when I did some research to buy my first phone. From memory, I think that at that point Ericsson was winning that race in the more affordable end of the market, with models that I remember being smaller than Nokia models from the same time, such as:

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_pf_768-108.php

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_t10s-115.php

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_gf_788e-110.php

And Motorola had the smallest/lightest phones at the premium end of the market, with the StarTAC line.

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_gf_788e-110.php

* https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_startac_85-74.php

In the end I realised that size was not the most important factor for me so instead I got a Motorola 8700 [1] which I didn't enjoy using, then sold it shortly after to get a Nokia 5110 [2] which I liked very much.

[1] https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co80944...

[2] https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5110-7.php

You want a phone that can run an LLM for a week uninterrupted? Wouldn't that weigh like 4 lbs and require a backpack to carry around?

Somehow I don't think you're the demographic Apple is interested in.

Well both of the Pro models increased their battery life. Apple isn't going just one way.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

They did increase the RAM for the iPhone17 by 50% (8GB -> 12GB [sorry, there was no RAM bump, I was looking at the iPhone17 and iPhone17 Pro page and confused the 17Pro RAM for the 17 RAM amount]) and the 128GB storage option is gone, so the 256GB option is the minimum now, for the same price as the initial iPhone16.

Every time I hear "people/customers want it" I answer that I don't want it and immediately hear in response "but you are not a human/customer". I'm confused... I stopped asking.

Somehow the Apple customer base loves to be told what they should want.

It has better battery life than the iPhone 16 - was that terrible?

Same....I was like does this phone have a stand in the back? Stared at that picture for like 1 minute and gave up. :D

Same! Though it was some liquid glass distortion of the phone or something.

And then I stared at the line about "remarkable all‑day battery life" and wondered what is so remarkable about that. Anyway... "The new iPhone Air MagSafe Battery has a thin and light design that magnetically attaches to the back of iPhone Air to extend battery life during busier days." So you can always turn it into a normal thickness phone with normal battery life it seems.

I didn't get it until I read your comment. I simply gave up.

I thought it was foldable in a weird way..

Aaaaahh so that’s what it is!

Same here, I got excited thinking it was a folding phone on the left

lol Yeah they need to fix that. I thought it was some new kind of phone stand.

AAPL often drops after launch events. “Buy the rumor, sell the news.”

Maybe the Google stock was affected by this?

https://www.reuters.com/business/google-cloud-anticipates-le...

> Google Cloud revealed Tuesday it has lined up about $58 billion in new revenue over the next two years as it vies to become a more central component of the tech giant's future.

> The company said during its July earnings that the cloud division had surpassed a $50 billion annual revenue run rate. Google Cloud's backlog of non-recognized sales contracts is growing even faster than its revenue, unit chief Thomas Kurian told investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference.

Im a long time Apple person and in the last year I moved to Android just for the folding phone. It's just too good to pass honestly

Do you think Google stock is up because of this announcement? It's not like they generate most of their revenue from Pixel phones, or Android overall.

The reason why we have such big smartphones is that the ratio of screensize (2d area) to battery size (3d volume) is better for smart phones with a bigger screen.

People get old. Old people cannot see small text. Big text requires bigger screen to fit.

One could argue that a lot of 50-ish people have pro max with iphone 5-ish screen estate.

Small screens ain’t gonna happen

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 :)

Does it has a screen ?

I remember Matt Honan's ridiculou8s write-up in Wired magazine when he was Editor, complaining about getting in a taxi with the iPhone 6 in his back pocket and it bending. I'm sure we will see more of that.

That was 10 years ago. The stability has improved massively. What was the last phone that bent under normal circumstances?

AppleCare+ is really good IMO if you're interested in caseless. I can get my screen or back replaced same day for as little as $29. On my iPhone 17 I've broken the screen twice and gotten repairs done same day.

Unless you can deliver multi-day battery, it's useless to provide anything more than all day battery. If the battery can only last 1.5 days for example, then the user is stuck trying to find a charge in the middle of the day. All day battery means they just need to charge overnight (which most users already do).

> you can pay $100 more for the Pro and get significantly more features and battery life

Segmentation. More features aren't material if you don't use them. And plenty of people (not me) habitually charge their phones to the extent that carrying around extra battery just in case is sort of like having a 400-mile EV for grocery runs.

Because longer battery life comes at the expense of heavier phones and lots of people think the current phones are too heavy already.

You wouldn't want that weight. Well, 99.5% of smartphone users wouldn't want that weight. Maybe you would.

I believe the counterargument here is that we've gotten used to phones being relatively thin, and people have learned to charge their phones every night anyway. Something about stated vs. true desires, just like with the Minis where people said they wanted smaller phones but then nobody bought them. I believe it might be a similar thing where people say they want thicker phones with big batteries but they won't actually buy them when they realize they will be noticeably thicker and heavier.

This. Absolutely this. Presumably the foldable flips back up and extends to just beneath the camera bump, hence most of the phone is effectively double the thinnest part of the iPhone air.

Yes, and everybody will think Apple invented it.

It really looks like a Pixel:

https://store.google.com/product/pixel_10_pro

To be fair, their announcements where close apart. There's a chance Pixel copied iPhone.

Edit: forgot which thread I’m on, yes the air looks much more like Pixel.

Copying pixel would have been great. They copied AND made it worse.

I wouldn’t in a million years buy a pixel, but their team deserves credit for making really beautiful hardware. IMO better than iPhone 16 Pro and MUCH better than iPhone 17 Pro.

Yep, me too

https://archive.is/1MQJf

Top tier comment!

Given the no one has any idea about how much power the A19 Pro SOC will use for activity, what actual purpose would that serve?

They actually have both offline and streaming video playback time, which had been pretty standard for iPhone for a long time as their battery life measurements.

That bothers me way more than it ought to too. When I hear people saying it IRL I keep thinking that trillion dollar companies are engineering our speech.

What can ya do? :/

Yeah, I noticed this too when watching the keynote. It's interesting and must be deliberate, I wonder why they do this.

I wonder if the thinner profile will make it more comfortable in smaller hands (both in terms of reach and center-of-gravity), but I'm skeptical.

Ditto. This adds 10.5mm of width, but shaves 4mm of depth (2mm on each side, as measured when holding in one hand). So the net increase is only 6mm. I won't be pre-ordering one of these, since I want to feel it in-store prior to purchasing.

The weight is also significantly (in percentage terms) greater.

They'll just use the improved battery density to make it wafer thin (with a big camera bump).

Which will mean they remove all buttons and connectors making it annoying as hell.

But it'll be cool.

> in a few years time this iPhone Air will have double the battery life

So, we can buy this iPhone Air in a few years!

who is 'we will have'? I've had this in my Oppo Find N5 for the last half year already. Bigger battery than any iPhone on the market including the upcoming ones. And that certainly wasn't the first on the market silicon carbon phone

Saw another comment that said this will give Apple the opportunity to learn if people really want a thinner iPhone. I hope they learn that people don't. Curious to find out the answer.

I thought this. I've had a previous phine with bending issues and I'd personally stay well clear of anything this thin.

I notice the release claims "our most durable iphone ever" - curious if this is actually true and whether there's any design to stop the risk of bending.

I've yet to notice a substantive difference between my current Moto g 5g, which cost ~150 USD and my previous phone, a Pixel 5a which cost ~450 USD. I balked at the price of the pixel at the time, but figured that's just the price of admission these days. It is now useless since the screen/mobo failed soon after I switched. After it was obsoleted, I just opted for the cheap Moto and will probably never spend more than 200 USD on a phone again.

If you're on here, you probably work in tech, and if you work in tech, you're probably pretty affluent, which means you don't need to signal that you're affluent.

I completely agree with this; in practice I have to charge my iPhone in the daytime to make it through the day (probably not when it was new). It would be great to have it go multi day for the days I don’t/cant do an overnight charge.

totally agree, chasing ultrathin designs has diminishing returns. There's so many practical ways to extend battery life such as letting users selectively dial down performance, adding a bit of extra thickness/weight, rethinking how power hungry features are scheduled... It's a matter of priorities, and Apple is obsessed with design (with dubious results, ie magic mouse charging port)

That would be how you get a one pound iPhone which no one would buy.

Like the iPad, in the future it will be called the iPhone Air 2025 (which runs iOS 2026).

I have an only esim since the iPhone 11 was released.

Pros:

- Super easy to get esims while traveling. e.g. in Mexico i downloaded an app while still in the airport and paid $5 with apple pay and instantly activated a 1 month esim.

- You can have multiple esimss. With physical sims you are limited to the physical number of sim slots on your phone, usually 1 or at most 2. With esim there is no such restriction.

- More secure. esims can't be cloned (e.g. sim swapping attack) or simply removed from a stolen phone like physical sims.

Cons:

- If you get a new phone, you cant just pop your physical sim in. You need to go through your provider to transfer, which requires calling them and verifying your identity.

I actually dont see this as a con really, I see this as a security benefit. Since I only get a new phone every 3-4 years, the 20 min on the phone it takes to transfer is not a significant burden.

When they first introduced eSIM only on the 13 iirc, not every country had that rolled out especially with old telcos in South America so if you travelled there for work or family you were completely shut out and it means buying a burner. I am not sure how that has progressed in the past 4 years but hopefully more telcos adopt it. The downside is no real portability of cheap plans using regular sim cards.

SIM cards are huge. Even the smallest form factor is a pretty large component. It has to be accessible from the exterior of the device and often has an ejection method of some kind. Getting rid of it is huge from a form factor standpoint.

I am sure there are downsides to eSIM but particularly for the average consumer who gets a SIM in their new phone and never changes it... there is probably zero difference.

Depending where you are in the world some banking apps only work with phones that have physical sim cards.

fwiw, I dropped my e-sim iphone in the water.

I asked my provider to issue a new e-sim that I could use in another phone, but it asked me to verify my id by sending me a text message I couldn't receive because I didn't have a phone.

I couldn't buy a new phone without a new sim, because I had forgotten the pin of the card I needed to use, and the pin was visible on a website that was protected with 2FA.

So I bought a physical sim card from my provider shop (using my last physical 10 euros), then went to a used iphone reseller, who let me setup the phone before paying, so that I could use the phone to actually pay for it.

It was not fun

You can’t swap them easily between phones.

If you break your phone, you may lose access to the number until you return to your home country.

Other than that, it’s the same.

For most people esim is better

Not sure, but my provider don't do eSIM so I guess I can't get one.

eSIM is essentially a client-server protocol for provisioning secrets into an embedded SIM (whether discrete chip soldered on the mainboard or emulated by the modem).

The QR code you get when you purchase an eSIM is merely an access token to initiate the provisioning process. Some carriers may make these single-use, or attach extra restrictions such as fees if you want to get a new one, or restrictions they themselves don't know about like that you must be on an IP from your carrier's home country to reach the provisioning server (good luck debugging that if you're not already aware of it - and no, on-device VPNs won't save you as the OS will not use your VPN for this traffic).

Even the mechanism that allows you to move an eSIM from one iPhone to another requires carrier involvement, which they have to support (internally I don't believe it moves anything, instead merely requesting a new SM-DP code in the background and sending that to the new phone). It doesn't work for all carriers.

Oh and you already need to have some existing IP connection to provision the eSIM in the first place, so first-time provisioning is tricky. I'm sure there is a workaround for it, but again carrier support varies.

TLDR: it allows the carrier to interfere when provisioning or moving the eSIM which carriers can and do take advantage to make the process more costly/painful and discourage easily using alternative carriers.

Yep, weight matters a lot more.

For this they could engineer a good plastic but it wouldn't sell because it wouldn't feel "premium" enough. So instead, we get nonsense like that. And it suits them well because the thing is that much more likely to break so they get more chances to have the customer pay for repair or phone change.

Win-Win for them, lose-lose for the customer, basically everything Apple is about currently.

Steel is too heavy. As they pointed out aluminum is much better at dissipating heat than titanium. Shooting video has always heated phones up. A lot of the video features were aimed directly at actual professional video work so I’m not surprised if preventing throttling was a key goal. Game performance will come along for the ride as well.

They also said that this was the first unibody iPhone. Can titanium be made the same way? The unibody MacBooks are really nice though I’m not sure if the same rigidity issues are at play in such small devices.

What do you use USB for? Most likely your use cases are now classified “pro/expert”, and the Air isn’t focused on that segment.

They're just flexing their engineering skills. Mass producing such a thin phone, where most of the non battery internals are housed in the camera bump can translate to meaningful products

Like wearables, glasses, etc. The fact that they're mass producing this is key

I don't think many people read the link where it says the Air has 27 hours of video playback compared to the 33 hours of the iPhone 17 Pro.

I think people are assuming it lasts 6 hours just because they sell a magsafe battery pack.

It's barely much a trade-off at all for a phone that has the norm of daily charging.

The Plateau also includes all logic boards and most other components for the phone except those that must be physically located on other edges, so getting rid of the camera wouldn’t really help.

The main body of the phone is just battery and display.

Air lost lidar btw

all the text in this thread is smaller than one of the large iphone announcement photos. Don't worry

Do they use compression?

No need to worry, tech bros got enough cash for storage.

What is Thread? https://www.theverge.com/23165855/thread-smart-home-protocol...

What is Matter over Thread? https://www.theverge.com/22832127/matter-smart-home-products...

How to set up Matter over Thread? https://www.theverge.com/23823041/matter-thread-device-setup...

https://www.apple.com/iphone-air/specs/

The iPhone 17 air is 146 g vs the iPhone 16 at 170 g. I don't think you're going to notice the 25g weight saving in your pocket.

The first thing I do after opening this page (or any other phone announcement) on Hacker News is press cmd+f and search for "headphone". Turns out not many people care about this anymore.

I feel like "are we in 2012, who's asking to replace their phone battery?" would equally reflect the real world.

I'd say the vast majority of people don't actually care about either.

Don’t put your iPhone on your motorcycle handlebars if you value the camera: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102175

It really does feel like there is a long term strategy with miniaturization and functional integration.

The power of a MacBook Pro in the bump of a phone, the rest is just battery, screen, antennas and heat dissipation. What other form factors are they working towards?

Software is eating hardware. I mean, who needs a phone or a laptop if they can be virtualized from a headset? Maybe the phone in the pocket becomes just a folding keyboard + battery combo.

iPhone SE 1st edition was my peak iPhone. Everything else has been downhill.

Design-wise it's iPhone 4 for me. It still feels great to hold. I wish the Pro models went back to this all-flat design, and let the other models worry about thinness.

I want an all-screen iPod gen 2-4 as a phone.

It was the 4 / 4S for me. Perfect size.

this is basically a modern iPhone 6 plus, so I guess they agree with you

iPhone 3GS was peak.

Well, a thick phone with a thick case is very thick while a thin phone with a thick case is only somewhat thick and a thin phone with a think case is only barely thick.

There's a small potential for enthusiasts to potentially make an aftermarket shell that sits flush and uses the space for an additional battery. Won't be cost-effective nor mass market but people have done crazier things (like add USB-C support to Lightning phones) before.

You joke, but this is basically what a foldable iPhone will be (though there will undoubtedly still be a camera bump...).

For the people who don’t care about a thin phone, they can still get the Pro with its better battery life. This is just an option.

I was totally going to get the Air (I do want a thinner phone), but the screen is way too big. I’m so tired of giant phones.

Phones are the main computing device for young people and hosted LLMs are eating the world right now. Not everyone will find a problem with this, but I am hoping for practical local LLMs sooner than later, and for maximum impact, they should also be able to run on phones. This amount of computing power in a phone is what could help make that happen.

I have the 13 pro. I personally find it quite heavy (quite a thwack when you drop it) or just tension when you wear shorts for example. That said, I have zero interest in this phone.

> Why would someone push so hard for a thinner phone?

They have to "inovate" somewhere. The suckers won't pay hundreds of dollars for the same crap over and over again. They tried to "inovate" the GUI, it was a disaster. Now they turned to HW.

My first thought was, “thinner and lighter? Apple has totally run out of ideas.”

If you flip one upside down and attach it to another one, you end up with a stable phone that has twice the battery life.

It says 165g. It's lighter than the base model.

Hot take

"Hot takes" are for Reddit.

People on HN are expected to think before they respond.

Apple already released a folding phone, the iPhone 6 Plus!

they are mostly likely using a higher density battery in the air, at least that's what the rumors suggest

I remember this take when the iPhone X came out, which incidentally also felt like the first year (here in the US) where Apple was truly detested, publicly. Instagram and Twitter were chock-full of memes like "999x Kinder Chocolate or 1x iPhone X?" and the notch/design overhaul met a pretty lukewarm reception. The agony of yearly upgrades really set in, then.

It's not impossible for this to take off, but I won't hold my breath. It's a small gamble that could go either way.

I would be surprised, but not very surprised.

I think the price point above the 17 and close to the 17 Pro gives it less appeal, but I guess it does make it more "premium" too.

I definitely don't think you're out of left field.

Live translation u/i feels like a significant upgrade for that specific product, especially if you are in a dense area with different types of speakers. It feels like a way better MVP than Meta Glasses that are only meant to do troll videos on tiktok or youtube. The examples they trotted out feel ridiculous but that's because they have been approved by their internal systems.

Look at the age of the people running Apple (management up to the board) vs other tech companies.

When you work at apple this (and $3000 glasses) is your reality.

> It's like they are building tech for made up in corporate conference room use cases.

Totally felt the same during the live-translation demo, when these two casual business folks were talking about "the client will love the new strategy". Dystopian corporate gibberish.

“It’s our most revolutionary nothing changed in the history of iPhone.”

I mean, who doesn't like big on top and thin everywhere else?

It uses 100% recycled cobalt.

https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone...

The Google Ad states; “If it feels like your phone hasn’t change in years, .. maybe it’s time to change your phone.. Google Pixel 10 Pro”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjqHLLHruA

The problem is that these people are very loud on the internet but sales for small phones are abysmal.

The laptop class (myself included) just don't understand. A huge portion of the world only has 1 computer and it's their phone. They rely on it for work, entertainment, and connectivity. They don't have a laptop where they can do all these things on whenever they want. Their phone is it. They want a big screen phone. It's no surprise that every time Apple made the screen bigger, it sold better.

I loved my 13 Mini but I understand why Apple has given up on it. It was a very good effort. They tried. Didn't sell. Maybe a foldable can solve this problem for both sides.

My wife has a 13 mini and is sad she'll have to go to a larger phone.

Yeah I was really hoping for the phone to be smaller in different dimensions. Thinness is the least important of them.

It's a vocal minority on the internet which also owns a lots of other computing devices. I'm one.

IMHO most people in the real world increasingly use their smartphone as their primary computer and want a big screen.

I don’t like gigantic phones but smaller phones are incredibly hard to type for me

No, Apple's been obsessed with thin & light for decades. Only with Apple Silicon did that actually result in usable devices.

The Air is going to be very popular.

You wouldn't sell any smart watches if you could actually use the phone with your hand.

looks like my iPhone SE 2nd gen will need to survive a 6th year lmao

"all the people" do not exist. Apple is obviously good for building small devices. They have built multiple of them, explicitly, against the direction the market was going.

If "all the people" wanted these phones, they would still exist.

They nailed it. Big horizontal dimensions so it’s hard to hold in one hand (yes, I realize that many users want this, but many users don’t want this), a big thick camera so it doesn’t actually fit well in slim pockets (but lots of young people seem to like their phone sticking out of their pocket?!), and super thin everywhere else so a high capacity battery doesn’t fit. Nice job!

Seriously, Apple has not attempted a narrow high-end phone since the iPhone 5. The 12 and 13 minis were not positioned as premium phones and they did not have great cameras or battery life. If Apple had tried for a 13 Pro Mini and it didn’t sell, then maybe I’d believe that their market statistics were worth something.

It may still bend! We'll see how much this Titanium 'exceeds expectations', eyeroll.gif

There's a magsafe attachment you can get to increase the battery life

Small phones don't sell well. The numbers prove this. Most people want to doom scroll or consume video content on their phones and it is better to do that when the screen is bigger.

I don't think I have ever plugged in my phone, like at all, ever, and it's not even an iPhone. And if I want to get any photos/videos I made with it, they are just in Google photos?

Like I get there are some people who maybe use the thing as an actual camera and they suddenly need to download tens if not hundreds of gigabytes of media off the phone but like.....I guess it's just not the phone for them? And like you said the Pro supports USB3 speeds so what's the issue? 5gbps is really not fast enough?

I've never transferred data over a wire to or from my iPhone, interesting that this is important for some use cases.

I've been a PC guy my whole live, and was forced onto a MacBook Pro this year for work.

The battery life is insane. The idea of charging my laptop has become this weird ritual now, only known of in lore and legend, that I partake of only when there is a blood moon.

They did that too, in the other products. Longest battery ever.

I assume they're getting ready for a folding iPhone, so the thinness tech is being developed largely for that. They're releasing this thin iPhone to test the market and to make use of it in the meantime.

I don’t see it; to my mind the last great Apple thin product was the 12” MacBook from 2015.

> 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.

You and more than half the world.

They keep trying to hire me, so they haven’t given up.

It’s limited by TSMC. M2 is where v1 is. I expect they want at least double the efficiency, and maybe this new pro liquid cooling, to try for a v2.

https://mashable.com/article/samsung-galaxy-a21-airplane-fir...

https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/More-than-One-Million-Anke...

Well you could just stick a huge fat Magsafe battery on the back of the phone...

I prefer the term iPhone Thiccc

What does this have to do with Apple Air?

See also the Paperclip movement, and Louis Rossman, championing the antithesis to unkind treatment of you, the user.

(Note I didn't say consumer as that's reductionistic)

Can always get an Android phone and run GrapheneOS with no Google services or apps. Good luck functioning in the modern world though...

Uh ok… what does have to do with iPhone Air? What are you on about? Nobody is forcing you to buy it. It’s a neat thing about free will.

Don't post AI-generated comments to Hacker News, especially long comments which scroll the page but add nothing to the discussion.

It's been long enough that this doesn't seem true anymore. The current Macbook Air is fanless, and has around 18 hours of battery life with an 8-core M4.

Did you uhhhh read any of the announcement, or just jump straight to writing this comment?

The 17 Air reports 27 hours of video playback - the same as the 16 Pro.

Upvote for Otterbox

Eh the new bumpers and clear cases look interesting (but the white MagSafe pattern is just stupid — should just leave it off). I'll probably get an Air and one of these cases, or a thin third party case.

The iPhone 17 will rock less than previous iPhones with the bulge since this new bulge goes across the entire phone width.

> Oh fuck off.

> Amazing marketing wank.

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Awww you upset you can’t afford it?

I am not using a car, I do not commute, I do not go to an office.

I usually spend my days outside, roaming the city, sitting in parks and cafes. I have a 13mini and started to carry a lightweight power bank in my backpack because it tends to run empty before I get back home, which is a problem with electronic ticket for public transport.

A lot of people will also simply prefer the convenience of not having to plug their phone in more often than necessary. They have it in their backpack or purse, which makes it extra inconvenient to think of taking it out just to charge plus needing a cable and charger in multiple places, compared to the evenings when you may remove multiple items from it.

Proximity to a charger isn’t the answer. I’m home all day, but I still don’t want to be monitoring battery life all day or tied to chargers. I only want to change while I sleep.

I have a 16 Pro and every so often something runs in the background that destroys my battery in half a day. I still don’t know what it is. The settings don’t make it clear.

I haven’t complained about the battery life on the Air, but I’d rather have a bigger battery to the point of eliminating the camera bump, than having a marginally thinner phone that shoves everything in a bigger relative bump.

Going on a hike in the weekend? Or basically anything where you're not going to the office? lol

> I'm curious who needs more battery life than the iPhone...

You aren't curious at all. You have formed an opinion. :)

Apple recognizes the deficiency, hence they created the battery accessory which they would love to up-self.

Step 1: Reduce battery life

Step 2: Sell battery accessory, profit.

I live in an area which has frequent power cuts. Having a larger battery would certainly relieve me of carrying power banks.