BondiBlue4lyfe

It is almost strange, since iPhones were only available in ugly drab colors for several generations. And the Pro models in particular were previously never available in a decent color.

MIE

Good to know! The fine print:

As of September 9, 2025, hypertension notifications are currently under FDA review and expected to be cleared this month, with availability on Apple Watch Series 9 and later and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later. The feature is not intended for use by people under 22 years old, those who have been previously diagnosed with hypertension, or pregnant persons.

Going to be interesting comparing the series 10 blood pressure sensing against my Hilo (formerly Aktiia) band on the other wrist. Although without calibration against a cuff, I'm not super convinced the Apple Watch will give reliable information.

> MEDIA SKIN phones

Wow, thanks for sharing the name, these are really good! I don't know why I was surprised to realize that great designers have made fantastic products even in the past...

Some sites with images, for anyone curious: 1. https://www.dezeen.com/2007/01/17/tokujin-yoshioka-launches-... 2. https://spoon-tamago.com/best-of-2007-part-iv/

In reality you don’t much of a choice. Most of the APIs Apple exposes for running neural nets don’t let you pick. Instead some Apple magic in one of their frameworks decides where it’s going to host your network. At least from what I’ve read, these frameworks will usually distribute your networks over all available matmul compute, starting on the neural net (assuming your specific network is compatible) and spilling onto the GPU as needed.

But there isn’t a trivial way to specifically target the neural engine.

Isn’t the MacBook Air already pretty cheap at $999?

Apple calls it "Neural Accelerators". It's all over their A19 marketing.

The Neural Engine is its own block. Neural Engine is not used for local LLMs on Macs. Neural Engine is optimized for power efficiency while running small models. It's not good for LARGE language models.

This change is strictly adding matmul acceleration into each GPU core where it is being used for LLMs.

The matmul stuff is part of the Neural Accelerator marketing, which is distinct from the Neural Engine you're talking about.

I don't blame you. It's confusing.

LocalLLMs would be useful for low latency local language processing/home control, assuming they ever become fast enough where the 500ms to 1s network latency becomes a dominate factor in having a fluid conversation with a voice assistant. Right now the pauses are unbearable for anything but one way commands (Siri, do something! - 3 seconds later it starts doing the thing...that works but it wouldn't work if Siri needed to ask follow up questions). This is even more important if we consider low latency gaming situations.

Mobile applications are also relevant. An LLM in your car could be used for local intelligence. I'm pretty sure self driving cars use some about of local AI already (although obviously not LLM, and I don't really know how much of their processing is local vs done on a server somewhere).

If models stop advancing at a fast clip, hardware will eventually become fast and cheap enough that running models locally isn't something we think about as being a non-sensical luxury, in the same way that we don't think that rendering graphics locally is a luxury even though remote rendering is possible.

> Servers will always have way more compute power than edge nodes

This doesn't seem right to me.

You take all the memory and CPU cycles of all the clients connected to a typical online service, compared to the memory and CPU in the datacenter serving it? The vast majority of compute involved in delivering that experience is on the client. And there's probably vast amounts of untapped compute available on that client - most websites only peg the client CPU by accident because they triggered an infinite loop in an ad bidding war; imagine what they could do if they actually used that compute power on purpose.

But even doing fairly trivial stuff, a typical browser tab is using hundreds of megs of memory and an appreciable percentage of the CPU of the machine it's loaded on, for the duration of the time it's being interacted with. Meanwhile, serving that content out to the browser took milliseconds, and was done at the same time as the server was handling thousands of other requests.

Edge compute scales with the amount of users who are using your service: each of them brings along their own hardware. Server compute has to scale at your expense.

Now, LLMs bring their special needs - large models that need to be loaded into vast fast memory... there are reasons to bring the compute to the model. But it's definitely not trivially the case that there's more compute in servers than clients.

IMO the benefit of a local LLM on a smartphone isn't necessarily compute power/speed - it's reliability without a reliance on connectivity, it can offer privacy guarantees, and assuming the silicon cost is marginal, could mean you can offer permanent LLM capabilities without needing to offer some sort of cloud subscription.

As an industry, we've swung from thin clients to fat clients and back countless times. I'm sure LLMs won't be immune to that phenomenon.

Boom! [0]

> Deepseek-r1 was loaded and ran locally on the Mac Studio

> M3 Ultra chip [...] 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, and the 32-core Neural Engine. [...] 512GB of unified memory, [...] memory bandwidth of 819GB/s.

> Deepseek-r1 was loaded [...] 671-billion-parameter model requiring [...] a bit less than 450 gigabytes of [unified] RAM to function.

> the Mac Studio was able to churn through queries at approximately 17 to 18 tokens per second

> it was observed as requiring 160 to 180 Watts during use

Considering getting this model. Looking into the future, a Mac Studio M5 Ultra should be something special.

[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/03/18/heavily-upgraded-...

I think they will be, but more for hand-off. Local will be great for starting timers, adding things to calendar, moving files around. Basic, local tasks. But it also needs to be intelligent enough to know when to hand off to server-side model.

Android crowd has been able to run LLMs on-device since LlamaCPP first came out. But the magic is in the integration with OS. As usual there will be hype around Apple, idk, inventing the very concept of LLMs or something. But the truth is neither Apple nor Android did this; only the wee team that wrote the attention is all you need paper + the many open source/hobbyist contributors inventing creative solutions like LoRA and creating natural ecosystems for them.

That's why I find this memo so cool (and will once again repost the link): https://semianalysis.com/2023/05/04/google-we-have-no-moat-a...

If the future is AI, then a future where every compute has to pass through one of a handful of multinational corporations with GPU farms...is something to be wary of. Local LLMs is a great idea for smaller tasks.

I regularly use local LLMs at work (full stack dev) due to restrictions and occasionally I get some results comparable to gpt-5 or opus 4

Couldn’t you apply that same thinking to all compute? Servers will always have more, timesharing means lower cost, people will probably only ever own dumb terminals?

Apple literally mentioned local LLMs in the event video where they announced this phone and others.

Apple's privacy stance is to do as much as possible on the user's device and as little as possible in cloud. They have iCloud for storage to make inter-device synch easy, but even that is painful for them. They hate cloud. This is the direction they've had for some years now. It always makes me smile that so many commentators just can't understand it and insist that they're "so far behind" on AI.

All the recent academic literature suggests that LLM capability is beginning to plateau, and we don't have ideas on what to do next (and no, we can't ask the LLMs).

As you get more capable SLMs or LLMs, and the hardware gets better and better (who _really_ wants to be long on nVIDIA or Intel right now? Hmm?), people are going to find that they're "good enough" for a range of tasks, and Apple's customer demographic are going to be happy that's all happening on the device in their hand and not on a server [waves hands] "somewhere", in the cloud.

The crux is how big the L is in the local LLMs. Depending on what it's used for, you can actually get really good performance on topically trained models when leveraged for their specific purpose.

If compute power is the deciding factor server vs edge discussion then we’d never have smartphones.

That's assuming diminishing returns won't hit hard. If a 10x smaller local model is 95%(Whatever that means) as good as the remote model it makes sense to use local models most of the time. It remains to be seen if that will happen but it's certainly not unthinkable imp.

It's a thing right now.

I'm running Qwen 30B code on my framework laptop to ask questions about ruby vs. python syntax because I can, and because the internet was flaky.

At some point, more doesn't mean I need it. LLMs will certainly get "good enough" and they'll be lower latency, no subscription, and no internet required.

local LLM may not be good enough for answering questions (which I think won't be true really soon) or generating images, but it today should be good enough to infer deeplinks and app extension calls or agentic walk-through... and ushers a new era of controlling phone by voice command.

Already available via Metal: https://x.com/liuliu/status/1932158994698932505

They might recommend using CoreML to leverage them, though I imagine it will be available to Metal.

The whole point of CoreML is that your solution uses whatever hardware is available to you, including enlisting a heterogeneous set of units to conquer a large problem. Software written years ago would use the GPU matmul if deployed to a capable machine.

No luck needed. This is for the GPU and is already available via Metal. https://x.com/liuliu/status/1932158994698932505

According to this page, [1] it reduces unwanted noise 4x as much as the original AirPods Pro and 2x as much as the AirPods Pro 2.

Though I do wonder, given the logarithmic nature of sound perception, are these numbers deceptive in terms of what the user will perceive?

1: https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/

It was 4x over the original version IIRC so should be ~ 2x over the previous

According to Apple's comparison tool, the Air has 27 hrs of video playback, compared to 30 for the 17 and 39 for the Pro.

Based on that, it doesn't sound like it's that much worse. Of course, if you're trying to maximize battery longevity by not exceeding 80% charge, that might make it not very useful for many people.

But there’s this now:

https://store.apple.com/uk/xc/product/MGPG4ZM/A

I think folding phones will remain a small niche unless someone figures out how to make a foldable screen that doesn't get permanently scratched by your fingernails.

> What are the PMs doing at Apple.

Probably trying to find better screen materials, and addressing reliability issues.

I used Palm devices with resistive touch screens. It was good, but when you go glass, there's no turning back.

I would never buy a phone with folding screens protected by plastic. I want a dependable slab. Not a gimmicky gadget which can die any moment. I got my fix for dying flex cables with Casiopeia PDAs. Never again.

Folding phones are ~1.5% of the market.

Apple cancelled their mini line which was 3% of sales.

It’s not a big enough slice for them to want to chase.

I think they'd rather sell you an iPhone and an iPad Mini rather than one device that does both, just like they'd rather sell you an iPad Air/Pro and a MacBook with basically the same internals, rather than a convertible macOS tablet.

Aside from the obvious mechanical issues, the screen quality compromises, et cetera, folding phones are just dorky. Apple wants their products to be anything but dorky.

There will never be a folding iPhone, simple as.

They're in the right. Folding phones are great, and I've used one for years, but the technology hasn't reached Apple levels. Get rid of the crease, make the screen less scratchable, and make them waterproof, and then it could go in an iPhone.

Folders seem gimmicky to me

The PMs are probably thinking folding phones are dumb…because they are.

Marques Brownlee said they have prototypes for a folding phone and will likely release one

Do any of the folding phones actually work well? I still haven't seen one in the wild (admittedly, I'm not living in a tech Mecca these days)

> 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.

They're buying another year of very-high margin phones I guess...

I dunno, I always felt folding phones added unnecessary complexity and moving parts. The slab phone seems closer to a platonic ideal and from a user/engineering perspective, has less compromises

In all seriousness, is there a folding phone that doesn't have a crease in the screen while unfolded?

The one I have used felt like using a real phone through a layer of vinyl, definitely not a pleasant experience.

Why do we need a folding phone?

I know they have been out for a while but I have yet to see a single one in person. They just don't make much of the market.

iPhone could always use a camera that's not embarrassingly worse than every Samsung and Pixel phone's camera

I can think of quite a few things to fix just they are extraordinarily difficult engineering problems versus 10-20% improvements on existing features or random tweaks:

- novel approach to camera optics that can completely flatten them into the phone - front camera hidden behind the screen removing the island or inset - dramatically better battery tech density leading to like week long usage - way more ram (100gb+) and processing power for powerful local llm and other ai - significant reduction in thickness and weight. like this air with no bump but also under 100 grams - maybe some stuff with projectors

I want a phone that fits in my hand. Will have to leave the iPhone world in a few years when the 13 mini dies, but from what I can tell android is just as bad.

You can see the logical conclusion to this phenomenon with vacuum cleaners. Pointless little buttons and switches that don't do much, labels and fancy names for things that any vacuum can do, and aesthetics that prioritize a futuristic form over function.

> There's not much left to "fix" on mobile phones, and no real important features to add.

I'm happy with my iPhone, but it still has a week or so shorter battery life than even a relatively cheap Nokia phone and with all that available space I know something it could be used for.

3d holographic displays, IR keyboards, powerful local llm (so more powerful), Silent-Speech Interface (SSI), more powerful cameras (better than mirrorless cameras, 3d, multi focal length in one image etc).

Oh, there's a LOT that can be improved.

I predict people will want an ultra-thin phone, even if it’s just for weight reasons.

We’ll see what the sales numbers are like.

> no real important features to add

Niche, but (true) satellite communication. If i understand correctly what we have in the pixel 9/10 is not nearly as useful as having a garmin, never mind the fact that it works basically in europe and US only

There is a lot to fix on mobile phones:

- Batteries that charge fast. Batteries that can support 2-3 days of use. Lighter batteries.

- Thinner camera.

- Better screens outdoor.

- No overheating.

- Better software, or a lower bar: fix the bugs.

- Satellite connectivity.

just few things on the top of my head and things that will interest me and justify a new purchase.

the thin phone is supposedly first step toward the iPhold foldable. they will probably slam 2 iphone air sandwiched together for the fold so this is the first step i guess

Here's my hot take: A small metal loop for tying a wrist strap to.

All other cameras have wrist straps as a safety feature. From flimsy ribbons on the smallest (smartphone-sized) to padded leather on the largest. They were common on feature phones too. But smartphone makers want people to drop their phones, so people would have to buy new ones, I suppose.

You could get a case with a wrist loop, you say? Not on any of Apple's cases, anyway.

Never once used a case in 12+ yrs of iphone ownership and only cracked a screen once. Think there are a lot of people out there like me. Many people are way too anal about an every day utilitarian device.

> you're still going to put it in a fat case to protect the camera.

But a thinner phone still means the end result is thinner in a case.

I didn't understand the appeal of thin phones until I used them in cases.

Average thickness phone + case = bulky phone.

Thin phone + case = normal thickness phone.

That's what makes them great. It's normal thickness with all the protection.

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

The Apple cases aren't flat on the back. They have a rim around the camera bump (and they create a rim around the front of the phone, too). The rear rim is slightly taller than the lens bezels (not sure if I used the right word there), so they don't touch the surface the phone rests on. I place my phone+case on the desk face-down because the camera bump and the wobble it creates when resting the phone back down triggers some minor irritation for me. The slight rim around the front of the phone keeps the screen from touching the surface. All of this would be nicer if the phone were flat across the back.

The metal case and toughened glass mean I don't really need the case most the time. I once dropped an older model onto a concrete floor such that it landed on a corner, shattering the screen, so I'm more risk averse with them now.

Yeah, super thin phones that require bulky cases have never made sense to me. Why not make tough phones that don't require a case?

I've only broken the iPhone camera once in more than a decade of using iPhones. And that's when I was in IKEA and a box of unassembled furniture fell onto it.

If you really want protection, the screen is still more fragile than the camera.

iPhone 13 mini pro was the best phone they ever made.

> 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.

Now this, good people, is a real use case. If it seems like an edge case to you, I guarantee Apple’s design and product people know of — and optimize for — use cases much more rare.

I use an old iPod Touch to read in bed, it doesn't hurt at all! Shame they stopped selling them, and it has stopped getting OS updates.

I never dropped a phone on my face. How does that even happen?

I agree to an extent. Most phones back then had no water protection. They also didn't last long so most people carried extra batteries which sucks. Honestly, I'd welcome the whole non replaceable battery if I could completely submerge my phone in water. Maybe when they get rid of the charging port.

Yeah makes sense to do so when the R&D is practically already paid for.

Flat doesn't seem best to you? Next best for me would be a symmetrical bump. But the asymmetrical bump (I think) all iPhones have seems the worst of all alternatives. This results in that bad restaurant table wobble feeling.

It’s only 12 grams lighter than my iPhone XS. And it’s 20 grams heavier than my Pixel 4a. For a product called “air”, It doesn’t even succeed at being light-weight.

> if anything, the angle is a plus

Right. I am sure flatness would have Revolutionary™ had Apple decided to make it rather flat (of course with the "First Time Again In An iPhone™" tag).

I'm also pretty happy with my iPhone 13 mini and loathing having to upgrade to something much larger.

For reference, the 13 mini has a 5.4" screen, and the new-gen iPhones are 6.3", 6.5", and 6.8". Pixel 10 is 6.3" as well.

iPhone 5 was the most perfect size ever and was about 0.3" shorter than the 13 mini, though it had a much smaller screen due to the bezel: https://www.gsmarena.com/size-compare-3d.php3?idPhone1=5685&...

It's 17% heavier than the iphone 13 mini.

Source: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-13-mi...

No mention of the actual weight here but a quick search says 165 grams. Not as light as I expected.

The idea of an iPhone still as a status symbol in 2025 seems strange to me. I understood it in 2008. They are so commonplace and also not really that expensive where it is a financial flex like some watch that cost 10k+ or something.

Is iPhone still viewed as a status symbol?

Genuine question - maybe I'm too in my own bubble but it seems like iPhone just completely dominates the market and is viewed as the "default" phone, which to me implies status quo, not luxury.

I bought a new iPhone 13 for $200 a few months ago and I love it. It does everything I need by far. Newer iPhones take better pictures, yes, but the 13 is still no slouch in that regard.

> haul around a huge bulky phone

> chonker

Can't see the specs for the iPhone Air but it looks much larger than my SE 2022. I wish they would bring that form factor back. Obviously not as powerful as bigger iPhones so not useful for posing purposes.

I think you're making up a non existent issue.

On the other hand, the cameras on plateaus are real issues because they don't lay normally and the cameras are very easy to scratch.

Is there, in your experience, a group of people that consider a phone a substantial status symbol?

(Edit: Should have refreshed I see. Feel free to ignore.)

It doesn’t always have to be status. Apple is very good at withholding features from low end models to ensure everyone has that one thing they want that makes them go for the pro variant.

Since when are iPhones status symbols?

Even the very poor all seem to have new-ish iPhones.

Also not sure what you're on about with "huge bulky phone".

Is it a status symbol when more than half of the people in all the cities around you in your country have an iPhone?

iPhone hasnt been a status symbol in many years. Its as mainstream as a Toyota Corolla.

Umm most people buy them for the hardware. On paper my 16e sounds really good but is crap compared to the 17 pros cameras plus photonic engine. Apple gimps software in non pros. I don't take alot of pics so I don't really care for the pro. Id rather get an old DSLR.

No one could tell the difference between the Max Pro and the cheaper Plus model in the previous years or even the SE.

The reason for the Max Pro is the larger screen and better battery life

I bought a 14 Pro when it came out and returned it for a 13 mini because it was too heavy.

They switched the frame from stainless steel to titanium the next year which made the Pro phones noticeably lighter. And now this year the Pros are aluminum like the non-Pros have been for years, which is also pretty light.

The 3 big camera sensors certainly don't help with the weight either, but the good news is they did seem to recognize they were getting to heavy with the 14 Pro.

Taking a peek at the research: “While flat-optics cameras have transitioned from theoretical concepts to high-fidelity laboratory prototypes, significant interdisciplinary R&D—spanning nanofabrication, materials science, computational imaging, and systems integration—is required to realize commercial flat camera modules for next-generation smartphones.

Recent breakthroughs have produced multilayer metalenses only ~0.5 mm thick that can focus unpolarized broadband light across several discrete wavelengths.

Dual-Pixel Coded Aperture (CADS): End-to-end learned amplitude masks on dual-pixel sensors have shown >1.5 dB PSNR gains in all-in-focus images and 5–6% depth accuracy improvements in DSLR, endoscope, and dermoscope prototypes.

Color-Coded Aperture Imaging: Single-lens, single-frame depth sensing via color-coded apertures has been demonstrated on DSLR and preliminary smartphone modules with depth map extraction sufficient for basic AR and portrait modes.”

iPhone 4S has camera without bump and makes perfect photos. I don't understand why they are doing that ugly design.

GRIN and micromachined Fresnel lenses are both flat. I wouldn’t be surprised if apple is working at least on the latter

In the far future the camera will dictate the physical dimensions of the device and the display will be entirely virtual.

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

And this is good or matters to customers because?

That's a great piece of marketing straight out of Apple's Big Number Book of Important Numbers, but _who the fuck cares_ ?

Aside from a tiny amount of nerds needing post hoc rationalisation as to why they blew $1500 on a gimmick, absolutely nobody will go looking for a phone and consider grams/mm² as an important measure.

The thinness would make it harder to grip laterally. It's less surface area to grab on to.

"Now"? Are you referring to the future developer signing requirements that won't begin until 2027 globally? It's trivially easy to sideload on Android right now:

1. Flip one switch in settings to enable sideloading

2. Download and open an APK

3. Flip one more switch (which you get automatically redirected to and it's highlighted at least on Samsung phones) the first time installing from whichever app source (Chrome/FDroid/etc).

4. Click install

Other than step 1, the user is led through the process via prompts, and step 3 only has to be done once per source. i.e. the first time you install from FDroid, after that you just click install without any nags or scare screens.

As far as I remember the "enable sideloading" switch in settings has always been a thing, and the per source setting was added at least 5+ years ago.

Third-party apps were the only thing that kept me in the Android ecosystem. With that going away there's no point anymore, I already own a MBP anyway, so the "choice" is even easier.

width and height wise it's actually larger than the Pro though.

It's interesting how this isn't the obvious conclusion and allure. Is there some fanny pack trend I'm missing out on!?

This was my first thought. My iPhone 15 Pro is fine and hopefully has much more life left in it, and I've gotten used to the size in general over the years, but I like to wear pants that are reasonably fitted and the "pocket bulge" outline of the phone still annoys me if I'm trying to deliberately look nice.

I'd believe this is an area where even a few millimeters of thickness makes a real difference in how much the phone in pocket stands out despite the overall footprint being larger? Will be curious to read once people get their hands on the things.

If it fits in the first place...

> there is nowhere to go with phones than thinner

Umm, smaller? We don't need thinner, we need smaller.

> 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.

It can still be a status symbol to have the newest phone. That’s imo the only reason for changing camera alignments between generations. So people (who know & care) can see that you have the newest model.

On the other hand, the iPhone Air is eSIM-only, and carriers in China generally don't support eSIM (with one exception apparently [0]).

[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/09/iphone-air-esim-china-u...

This is likely a prototype for their folding phone, which are essentially just two ultra-thin phones stuck together.

Stop bringing up the folding phone in different threads. Very few people want that.

The iPhone air is half the price isn’t it? But yeah, if you want a foldable the Air isn’t one.

A wing shaped iPhone could’ve allowed for a larger battery. Similar to how the original MacBook Air was so thin. The wedge

I’d rather have the world with nice cameras on my phone than the one where the back is flat for aesthetic design reasons.

Firing people willy-nilly as an admirable quality is a totally insane thing to look up to.

Jobs's "design horse-sense" was also strongly against the screen size you take for granted as well.

Maybe its time to put away these weird hagiographies.

Almost every statement with “every” in it is false. No it’s not what everyone wants and I’m quite sure this phone will sell.

My pet theory about why the Minis sold poorly is that the 12 Mini was released just a few months after the SE 2; I suspect a lot of the would-be Mini purchasers had just bought an SE 2 instead (not knowing the Mini was just around the corner), and are also not a demographic interested in upgrading their phone every year.

I'm trying to hang on to my 13 mini until next year, when hopefully Apple will have figured out Apple Intelligence and upgrade the phone hardware to run it. But I'm worried my 13 mini won't make it that long. It's starting to struggle with even basic apps and lags just reading news articles. Battery is still at over 80% though

Speaking of dozens. I’m on a 12 Mini and will be hard pressed to give it up. I also replaced the battery recently and am still quite pleased with its performance!

Agree, and as an ex-mini user, I wish this was the world we lived in.

I presume the problem is that iPhones are a lot more expensive to produce than tomato sauce, and it's a lot more difficult to get rid of the ones that people don't buy.

Apple could easily keep a "mini" around as the lightweight option for folks who don't want a pocket tablet

I kept seeing people mention the 13 mini but I always thought the 12 mini was the last mini. Just looked it up and I see why now, seems like the 13 mini is barely different from the 12 mini.

just gave up mine last month.

“An iPhone mini would sell like hotcakes” is a HN meme at this point.

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.

People don't buy phones every year. People don't want to pay 95% price for 80% of performance / features.

Smaller phones as an idea isn't the problem here. Companies just don't want to make equivalent smaller phones. Making a new phone every single year is a stupid trend that causes min-max effects. A good small phone will eat into profits that's harder to make up in a yearly cycle. People will not buy nerfed smaller phones which is a positive feedback cycle.

The problem is that the people who want small phones also don't like buying new phones.

Also last I checked the "mini" phones weren't particularly mini, phones just got bigger.

“Terrible numbers sales-wise” is a bit of a distortion when talking about iPhones - the number that went around in 2022 was the 13 accounted for 3% of iPhone sales in 2021, which indeed sounds terrible - except Apple sold somewhere around a quarter billion iPhones that year, which means ~7.5 million iPhone 13 minis in 2021 alone. Those are numbers that anyone else would kill for. That’s just about the entire population of New York City buying an iPhone. There’s 35 states with fewer people than that. Ford sold fewer F-150s in the last decade than Apple sold iPhone 13 Minis in 2021 alone.

I was extremely interested in a small phone back when the 12 Mini came out, but I didn't dare to buy it without seeing how it feels. This was during the height of the COVID lockdowns, so I couldn't go to a store and feel it in person. Ended up buying the regular iPhone 12, since that seemed like the safer choice to buy blind.

When it was time for another phone upgrade in the iPhone 15 era (because phones really don't change enough anymore to warrant more frequent upgrades than that), there was no mini option anymore. I wonder if others were like me. The Mini came out at a time where people were hesitant to try a new form factor because they couldn't try it in stores.

Each of those models sold at least 6 million units, about the same as the Xbox One in its first year, which was a “huge success”…

I think what happened here is that the target audience are people that do not feel pressure to upgrade to the latest mini every year. They do not look to have the lastest-shiniest-ohlookAI-snapdraxxon22pro phone. Just a phone that is a bit cheaper but gets the job done.

Why would you go from 12 mini to 13 mini, or to the concurrently released SEs if your phone still works?

I am also still holding on to my 13 mini. I would not have upgraded to the 14, 15 or 16mini even if they existed. I will upgrade at some point, and that point is when it either dies, or important apps stop working on the last iOS version supported by the hardware.

I do wonder if more people would buy a smaller phone if it had the same cameras and features as the pro? Time will tell if thinner sells better than shorter and less girthy.

I for one hate how even the 17 pro is creeping up in size compared to the 15 pro.

People want to buy small phones like they want to pay for Firefox.

A few people say it very loudly and nobody else does.

This meme needs to die. Normal-sized iPhones account for tens of millions of sales per year.

The fact that Apple was absolutely schizophrenic about its non-phablet market, introducing the iPhone mini 13 and iPhone SE 2022 at the same time, is utterly irrelevant to that point.

we will never really know for sute because the minis were gimped compared to the max options that had an extra telephoto lens and better ram/storage options

A $60 camera app is absolutely wild.

Apple still has 12 mini batteries in stock, and will for a while.

Might be worth trying to get the battery replaced at Apple.

Extra bonus: while it does cost money in theory, every time I've gotten Apple to replace the battery they end up breaking the screen, so I get a battery and phone replacement for free. 12 mini battery replacements _might_ be de facto free.

I just wish Unihertz wasn't so questionable! Can't a decent company make a small phone? (And actually update the software on it? And comply with the GPL?)

If they just made the 12/13 mini ever so slightly thicker, it would obviate the camera bump and improve the battery life. /shrug I don't get.

Search for "hotdog" (ctrl-f or cmd-f) in this page: https://candid9.com/phone-camera/

The downside with these is that in scenarios where you need the extra juice, like say a guided tour all day where you'll be taking a lot of photos and putting it in your pocket, they tend to run hot and drain faster. Then you're carrying an dead extra battery. You get more mileage with a power bank + cord.

I have an Anker battery and a Peak Design case.

The wireless battery just slows the drain unless my phone is totally idle while charging. I really don't think wireless charging is very effective, at least it hasn't been with my 3yo phone and magnetic battery (even when both were new).

Isnt that just a replicable battery with extra steps?

But that’s not like it’s an extra battery, it’s a gizmo that charges your original battery all the time, isn’t it? So technically it doesn’t make your battery bigger, but akin to keeping your phone on charge all the time. I expect it would just help you destroy that original battery, that is difficult and expensive to replace. Add some extra marketing, let them believe it’s some magical device, and kindly push them into buying a new phone when their battery dead.

I want a think iPhone with week-long battery life and the battery being easily serviceable, replaceable and ideally some unified standard one that I can buy from any decent vendor. That would be great to have. I hope we’ll come there eventually, since today phones could serve till they physically dead. If you make batteries easily serviceable, plus no software cripple with planned obsolescence.

Not at the prices the MagSafe batteries are

Do you carry these extra batteries? Or leave them in a hot car?

magsafe is not even close, wireless charging has terrible efficiency. Honestly the whole idea "wireless powerbank" is ridiculous. You are in need of energy; would you like to waste extra energy as heat?

The way it is currently yes. But hardware is way more efficient now. Why not sacrifice performance and optimize a bit more in that direction? It is plenty fast already for everyday life. I don’t like that we only focus on performance and we don’t see longer battery life that we could have based on advances in battery technology + more efficient processors.

I’ve had a bunch of Moto G phones, I love them. This round I decided to try their upper midrange Edge line.

I found a deal on a Moto Edge 2024 and it’s fantastic. It’s so light and compact vs the Moto G Power, and still can go two full days no problem. The camera is excellent as well, which was my only real gripe with the G phones.

It can plug into my USB-C monitor and act like a Chromebook (more or less). I play Minecraft with my kids this way.

But do you get to hear First Time in A Moto G™ when they announce something? See! That is what you are missing. That is what you pay for. That's revolutionary. Take my money Apple!

A battery case would work too. Was just hoping for a model that is trimmed and optimized for longer trips outside the city/with absence of reliable power sources. Cut some of the performance, only efficiency cores, bigger antenna and optimize hardware aggressively for low battery usage. Maybe use some of the bigger case for repairability…

Getting flashbacks to the HTC Evo era and having a thick ass battery case lol, before that i'd have to swap battery like twice a shift.

Oh wow, so cool! Do you have some blog posts about that, YouTube videos, any line of journaling? Would love to learn about that experience.

> letting that effort linger till display tech catches up to whatever Apple is waiting for, would feel like a waste perhaps.

To add to this, it's often said that research can only take you so far, at some point you have to ship something to get the opinions and hands on from a wider audience of users to make further discoveries and improvements.

As someone who is still on 12 pro and probably won't upgrade to a 17 because of no real need - there really is no better way to ensure my repeat business than selling me a phone that lasted me this long.

The format the Samsung flips use I feel like solves your issue.

Nobody cares about how hard it is to hold, otherwise we'd have 4-5" screens rather than the phablets that are the norm and basically the only option.

Pixel user here, but I feel the same way. The fact that my phones are getting heavier instead of lighter seems counterintuitive on its face.

Pixel 1 (143g)

Pixel 3 (148g)

Pixel 5 (151g)

Pixel 8 (187g)

Pixel 9 Pro (198g)

Of course the displays of these models get bigger which presumably contributes to the weight increase. But still, you'd think parts get lighter over time, not heavier.

I would actually like a phone that is lighter but fatter. Having empty space inside. Letting a good enough camera be flush with the back and the wider sides could add sturdiness. But as others have pointed out, consumer choice is an illusion. It's "you want this".

By 12g…

In the same boat, the 12 mini is the perfect size. My hands are probably average or slightly above average size for a man and I find any phone larger than the mini difficult to securely hold while using it with one hand.

Just going to keep this one until they make something similar again.

There're dozens of us! Dozens!

I'll stick to my almost-4-years-old 13 mini as long as I can. Probably will change battery before original batteries are too hard to get hold of

Why would you need 2 phones for oncall?

With a single case fitting two iPhone Airs back to back and rotated, like a long stick? :)

I see people every day who have their iphone in their back pocket while sitting. I can’t imagine this model would handle that unless it’s made from pure unobtanium.

They often discard with the version number for the first release of a product bifurcating, and from then on it follows its own version path.

The first Apple Watch Ultra wasn't the Apple Watch Series 8 Ultra. Subsequent Ultras follow their own versioning. The same with the SE, Air Pod Pros, iPad Air, and so on.

0.16mm is roughly the diameter of a strand of human hair. (0.1 to 0.18mm.) In a consumer product, that's basically imperceptible -- and, in all but the most precision-engineered products, it would be within standard manufacturing tolerances.

So I suppose there already is a phone with an analogous form factor.

A proper bend test from jerryrigeverything:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yQHFCpO6gHE

>but I literally had store security walk up to me and ask me not to do that.

Are you suggesting they did this because they expected it to bend because it was thin? If so, I doubt it. Regardless of thickness, I suspect security would ask someone not to physically damage their devices.

What would you have done if it did bend? It's not meant to be unbendable, which would have made you liable for the damages that happened next.

Absolutely, and yes on the Macbook Air! Although the Honor phone mentioned elsewhere calls itself "thinnest at 8.8mm", +/- camera mesa, etc... So at best 8.8mm folded in pocket for a complete phone. Much thicker that an iPhone Air complete phone (and more screen space).

But mostly one thing that's difficult for us to evaluate is whether this is "at scale and profitably". On the competitors' side anyway. The Honor seems to be a $2000 phone (higher even than Google's foldable!) - probably before tariffs, not clear. How many will sell? What margin will Honor make on this? Hard to tell although it would be possible to dig the historical numbers.

Its unlikely anyone is buying a phone because of how thin it is (within reason), but it is quite likely that they are more likely to learn about a new phone available to buy if it is "impossibly" thin. Advertising is important — even for recognized names like Apple.

There are certainly people buying iPhones essentially for fashion/status-symbol reasons: i.e., because they look visually different from other phones, whether that is because of thinness or anything else. Why else would so many Android devices have copied the FaceID notch so soon after it was released?

People who buy iPhones don't need a reason to buy iPhones other than just for the sake of buying iPhones. That's the key to Apple's trillions. Apple would have made this phone 2.75cm thick and there would have longer lines and same people singing paeans of thick phones and how it is going to change the world and solve global warming and eventually bring everlasting peace.

I will buy one of these because I want a phone that doesn't create such a huge bulge in my pants pocket

>Is anyone buying an iPhone because it's slightly thinner than other phones?

Yes. I have at least two co-workers that have stated (we will see if they follow through) that they are going to move from their current phones (13 Pro and 15 Pro) to the Air because of the thinness.

> or any phone for that matter.

I'm strapping phone to my arms during runs; for me, shaving off those extra grams count. Bought an Infinix specifically for this reason. I didn't specifically look for the thinnest but it came the the most lightweight.

I don’t think so. But it gives buyers who were already inclined to buy an iPhone another form factor option. Nothing wrong with choice.

My sample size is small but the usual reason I hear from non-technical individuals is that they want the best camera possible.

Trend is towards screen real estate now, with folding phones

> What’s the evidence for which way causality works?

One qualifier would be "at scale and profitably."

But for more detail, yes, the situation has changed over time and probably the reasoning has changed over time.

McGee spends a lot of time on the difficulty for Apple R&D to keep up with Apple design bureau's demands. To the point that Apple execs arrive at decisions that for the sake of internal peace and meeting deadlines, Apple Industrial Design is not to make arbitrary demands (like they used to) and must consider manufacturing realities. Which still leaves Manufacturing struggling at every step to keep up. So - usually - manufacturing is very much pushed to the edge of what's possible by Design. Even though Apple teach China phone manufacturing (again "at scale and profitably"). Design are the ones pushing. Whether Design is really concerned with keeping ahead of competitors... is not explicitely told by Apple people. They do seem to love "impossible". In my recollection, it's more McGee's observations and conclusion.

Apple mainland China companies competition has also been a widely varying quantity. In part due to Chinese fashion trends and in part due to Apple political difficulties in China (which come and go). Underlying should be "at scale and profitably": Apple rightly shouldn't care if a few exotic phones come out. That wouldn't matter to their bottom line. They are described as caring when there is a flood of matching phones coming out - and even then with some latency.

Overall btw, "Apple in China" is fantastic. With massive amounts of local color and "story viewed from the Apple China people's side". Lots of bits that were missed if you mostly followed Apple from the side of what we see in the US.

it's a feature! /s

We're now on the third generation of iPhones that include Thread radios. Mines been sitting dormant for two years waiting for software that utilizes it.

The Aqara Hub M100 is a nice cheap Thread border router.

NFC is handled by an NXP chip which is completely different than the Broadcom (wifi, BLE) chip. its a simple, extremely well engineered chip that costs nickels and is passively powered so it doesn't affect battery life at all. No incentives whatsoever to build it in-house. Broadcom and Qualcomm were a whole different story.

my guess is ramping up production and for testing in real world. they did the same thing with C1 modem and released it only for iphone 16e.

They did

Have you tried the iPhone SE 1st gen ? Lighter, better processor and screen but almost same design. It’s only 9.5yo and still works perfectly, you can find plenty second hand for 100€.

Agree, the 4 was great (except the home button which broke).

16e with a skinny case, and you have a completely flat phone

It won't be completely stable, when used without a case. The geometry is such that on the side of the lens it's the lens that is touching the surface where you put it, not the bar-shaped bump. Meaning, it won't sit on the long edge of the bar.

I've got an iPhone XR with a chunky (highly protective) Speck Presidio case that's comfortably thicker than the camera protrusion and therefore lays 100% flat.

Gotta say it would drive me nuts to have a phone that didn't lay flat and couldn't therefore be put down safely on the edge of the sink etc.

Apple is always one step back, two steps forwards.

If it runs all day like they claim that probably won't be a big seller.

But hey, at least the battery is (partially) replaceable that way.

I don't want/need the whole thing to be flat but I do prefer it to be stable. For instance if the plateau were a bit thicker so that the camera lens was flush with the surface (even just an extra bar sort of inside the plateau) it would mean that when I put it down it would never rock back and forth when I'm tapping at it on a table.

The problem with the one-sided camera bump is that the phone is unstable. It wobbles when you touch it, making using it while lying “flat” on the table incredibly annoying.

No, it wobbles and doesn’t rest on the lower chin. Look at the Verge hands-on video on YouTube.

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

That would definitely be a problem.

No it isn't. The cheapest option is the iPad, then iPad Air and then Pro. It'll be the same with macs once the rumored A-chip based mac launches.

Not weird.

iPhone E, iPhone, iPhone Air, iPhone Pro

There's no MacBook E and MacBook non-air, so the order matches.

Apple’s pricing structure is: X SE < X < X Air < X Pro.

Yes but the name “Air” claims lightweight, not thin

Definitely. I think many larger screen buyers of iPhonee will be happy there is the option to trade off the extra battery they used to get by default with a large screen for now less weight.

It's just odd to me that despite its price it feels closer to a superthin upscaled e, rather than a superthin upscaled 17 or instead being extralight. Now I imagine they didn't have a lot of weight to lose given how optimized for weight phone components were already. The Air branding just had me hoping they had a bigger engineering statement to make than what they did.

I see this said all the time but I think people underestimate what an extra few millimeters of thickness would feel like in the hand. Both in terms of grip-ability and weight. I would reckon if people actually got to use a device like that they'd quickly realize they don't want to use it in their day to day.

The iPhone 14 Pro was noticeably heavy, but the switch to titanium the following year made the 15 Pro feel way lighter. The only difference was 206 grams -> 187 grams, but you'd swear it was 25% lighter.

I'll do you one better, how about the camera is not flush but recessed so it is less likely to be the thing that gets smashed?

Pixel 9a is probably the closest to what you're describing on the market today.

Could you just buy a case that adds the thickness to get rid of the bump? Much cheaper and easier than waiting on apple to do it.

> the camera bump is made flush by adding thickness elsewhere

Cant a case do this for you?

I wonder if an aftermarket shell and battery could achieve this.

why not get a battery attachment case/snapon

I naively assume the amount of internal aluminum/supports probably canceled out some of the potential weight savings.

6.1 inch display vs 6.5 inch display. Not quite apples to apples here.

For the reference...there was an app (I think it's banned on all the stores now?) that used the phone's sensors to record its hangtime when thrown in the air (pending it survived the landing, I guess). I think there was a scoreboard?

Yeah especially because it's not even compatible with the Apple Cloth, for when it gets dirty.

IME it's pretty comfortable to use.

The sides can be made grippier and the back of the phone left slippery, so the in-out of pocket experience is nice, while the grippier parts fit in the palm when in use.

The added thickness on the border is also a welcome affordance, and as your fingertips are on the thinner back it feels thin still.

To me it's kinda the best of both world.

That's fair. The corresponding full-body case Apple is releasing for $49 does have a conspicious extra lip higher than the camera bulge (albeit that's typical to mitigate camera flash glare). https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MGH24LL/A/iphone-air-case...

Why do phones need to bend?

I attempted to replace my 13 mini's battery today using the iFixit kit. I broke the OLED panel doing so. Removing the screen take much more force than I though. I did this hopping to keep my iPhone maybe 2 more years. Now I am waiting for ordering the 17 next Friday. I will have to manage having half of my screen being white until then...

Same. I have 12 mini and got a 13 mini refurb. Perfect phone.

I have mine right here. Upgraded away from iOS but not because it came to the "end of it's lifespan"

… shareholders who expect Apple to sell phones that people want.

I legit don't think I have even once used my phone lying on a table. Ergonomically that makes no sense. But then again I neither use my iPad nor Macbook lying flat on a table either, so what do I know...

What an absurd take. If we use FLOPS as a crude measure, the Air would be comparable to the leading supercomputers of ~1999/2000. There's many reasons why that's a very poor comparison but ignoring the absolute insanity of the raw compute available in a pocketable, thin, battery-powered handheld that you can buy literally this week, is ridiculous. Modern smartphones are nothing short of sci-fi when compared to even recent living memory. We're simply used to them due to their sheer ubiquity.

Fentanyl is a fascinating market case study because nobody actually wants fentanyl, they want oxycodone or heroin.

It's the "market data reveals that consumers actually want the cheapest shittiest airplane tickets" of drugs. And you can read that in a couple different ways.