I have thoughts on the iPhone Air

July 7, 2026

Hard to believe, but it’s been over 9 months since the current crop of iPhones came out, and I elected to grab the (apparently not super popular) iPhone Air, a new model of iPhone introduced for the first time. Rumor season for the new iPhones is in full swing, so it seemed like a good time to jot down my thoughts on the current model.

Immediately, it’s really something to behold when you pick it up for the first time, it feels weirdly thin, pretty much everyone I’ve showed it to has been like “whoa”. You sacrifice a fair bit to get to that, from cameras to battery life, but I’ve always been a sucker for something novel, so when something as huge as the iPhone had a quirky new model I was really stoked to check it out.

Heck, part of my frame of mind was that this device is going to have some serious limitations, which will probably also apply to the rumored upcoming folding iPhone which I also really want to check out, so it’ll almost be a warmup round to get me in the right headspace for a folding iPhone. I think that makes sense?

Either way, over the last 9 months it’s been my primary phone day in and day out, and I wanted to jot down my thoughts on what it’s like to live with as someone who normally goes with the Pro phones, because there’s been some surprises.

The design

Picking up an iPhone Air for the first time is almost weird. Phones have had such a consistent slab design for so long that making it so, so dramatically thinner almost confuses your brain a little bit, like it’s an illusion or something. Forget putting a case on it, live with the danger.

My favorite example was handing my phone to an employee at a local store to show her a product I was looking for, I could see kind of a confused look when I handed it to her followed by a “your phone is so thin”, almost like she thought there was something wrong with it.

But, here’s my hot take. After the better part of a year it no longer feels thin, it just feels normal. Sure, when I pick up an older iPhone I’m lke “whoa this is so thick it feels like a relic”, but the Air doesn’t really feel noteworthy to me anymore. It’s like if you live in a cinnamon factory, I assume day one you’d be like “this is the best smelling place ever” but after a few months you’d go nose blind to it.

That gives me pause, because it kinda makes me wonder that if any reasonably thin phone just feels normal after awhile, is it worth a bunch of compromises just to get it even thinner, when even that thinness feels normal eventually? I kinda feel like I thought about the thinness of my Pro iPhone the same amount after 9 months as I do now with the Air (which is to say, not really at all) but had a less compromised phone to show for it.

And it’s weird, because with the old wedge-style MacBook Airs this feeling never went away for me, I loved those machines and every time I picked it up I kinda marveled, but that sensation kinda just went away with the iPhone Air, perhaps since I’m picking it up so much more than a laptop?

The screen

I’ve always been a normal-sized phone guy. The Plus/Max phones just feel unwieldy, but I do admit whenever I hold one I’m like “dang… maybe…”.

The iPhone Air is the perfect solution to this, its screen size sits right in the middle of the normal Pro and Pro Max sized phones, and is one of my favorite parts of the phone.

It’s large without feeling unwieldy (so awesome for games and videos), typing is a joy on the increased size, and it really makes me wish this size was the normal “small” Pro phone. Apple could then make the Pro Max phone 8" diagonal or something, I wanna test how far these Pro Max people will go.

As a bonus my iPhone Pro can’t fit one of those tiny Xteink readers on the back, but my Air can perfectly!

The cameras

Camera quality feels as good as ever, it’s apparently not as good a main sensor as the Pro iPhones but I can’t really tell. It still has that distinctly over-processed look plaguing modern smartphones, but using an app like Project Indigo or Halide really helps here as they have modes that heavily reduce this distinct “phone” look.

The real issue is that there’s only one sensor. I didn’t think I’d mind that much but unfortunately it turns out I do.

On one hand, the iPhone’s main sensor has worse minimum focus distance than some Android phones, which means if you’re trying to take a photo of a document or something it often ends up blurry, you have to pull back a little bit then crop in after the fact. Since the sensor is 48 MP there’s tons of room to crop in (and even a built in faux 2x lens option) but it’s just kind of an annoyance versus either having an improved minimum focus distance or auto-macro mode using the ultrawide lens like on other iPhones.

The ultrawide lens is not one I used a ton on previous iPhones, so outside of macro mode I don’t really miss it. I’m surprised though that I really miss the telephoto lens. There’s so many options where I want to see something that’s further away, like something when watching sports, or even a cool bird, and cropping in on the main sensor is such a far cry from a 5x telephoto lens.

I’m in the minority here but I really wish Apple went back to having the secondary lens on iPhones be telephoto instead of ultrawide, and it makes me sad that going to the future folding iPhone will likely mean I still don’t get a telephoto lens back.

Aside: camera plateaus have got out of control. This one rocks so badly if you try to interact with it while it’s lying down. I so prefer the Pixel style phones that have a consistent thickness across the full width of their camera plateau, because even though there’s a substantial plateau it doesn’t rock like a table with one short leg.

The speaker (yes, singular)

For the uninitiated, the iPhone Air has a single speaker up near the earpiece at the top of the phone. Pretty much every other modern iPhone (as far as I can remember) has one at the bottom as well, which means when watching video or something the audio doesn’t sound like it’s coming from one side of the phone.

I was tempted to make an analogy to watching a video with only one AirPod in, but it’s not quite that bad, you do sorta get used to it, but it being subpar never fully goes away.

What’s arguably worse though is with only one speaker the max volume is substantially lower, if you’re in an even remotely noisy environment (say, washing dishes) and you’re a little bit away from your iPhone good luck hearing things.

Battery life

Battery life confuses me. Coming from an iPhone 15 Pro which from everything I can tell was not revered for having the best battery life, I was pleasantly surprised with the iPhone Air’s battery life, it easily got me through a day where it sometimes felt the 15 Pro wouldn’t. This felt like an impossible feat given the thinness of the device, but improvements in electronics efficiency is remarkable.

As time went on though, I started to be less impressed. Entering the spring season I started to notice getting the 20% battery notification a lot more often, and now in the summer it’s only gotten worse where it’s virtually every day. According to battery stats I’m still at 96% health.

Is this an iOS regression that’s causing more battery usage? Am I just going out and on cellular more now that it’s gotten warmer? I honestly have no idea, but either way I wouldn’t call this phone a battery champion. I really long for a day where battery life is an afterthought in phones, some of the Silicon Carbide battery stuff seems really interesting here, so fingers crossed there’s some cool battery tech in the folding iPhone.

Overall thoughts

Ultimately, I love this phone, but I don’t think I’d recommend it to most people. Honestly, I’m not even sure I’d get it again over a Pro iPhone when it really comes down to it.

If a fascinatingly cool design matters to you above all else, you should go for it. That sounds superficial, but I don’t think it is. Lots of people appreciate wearing a beautifully crafted mechanical watch over a $10 digital watch that is empirically more accurate and less fussy, there’s something just delightful about impressively crafted objects. I feel like we’re gonna be looking back at this phone even in 5 years remarking at its form factor versus 2031 phones, and there’s really something to say for a phone design being that bold.

But it really does go back to that original MacBook Air that Steve Jobs pulled out of the manilla envelope. Absolutely amazing piece of engineering, as if something from the future came back proudly to show us what’s to come, but also something with enough compromises that your average person probably shouldn’t brave these waters. (Does anyone remember CoolBook?)