- 4 months ago
The iPhone Air is shockingly thin and light — kind of a throwback to 12 or 13 years ago when phones weren’t crammed full of so many hardware features. Going back to a pocket-friendlier phone might seem like an easy choice, but it means giving up things like longer battery life and an ultrawide camera. The iPhone Air asks the question: what are you willing to let go of?
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00:00A high-end phone weighs a little more than 200 grams. It has three cameras, maybe even more,
00:06and a huge screen, massive battery, and a powerful processor. It's heavy, and it's way too big to
00:12really fit into any of your pockets. But phones weren't always like that. The one you had maybe
00:1812 or 13 years ago, it had a screen half that size, only one camera, and it was light and small
00:25enough to slip into any pocket. It was awesome. So how did we get here, where your options are
00:31big or bigger? Has all the extra stuff crammed into our phones been worth it? And if you could go back
00:38to a simpler, lighter phone, would you do it? Or would it be too hard to let go of the things we've
00:44gotten used to? That's the $1,000 question asked by one very thin device, the iPhone Air.
00:55First things first, the Air is shockingly thin and light. It's even a tiny bit slimmer than the
01:02Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, which is the other thin phone on the market. You have to pick it up for
01:08yourself to believe it. I know that's annoying to hear, but it really is surprising how little the
01:14Air weighs. I hate lugging heavy phones around, and I'm into it. iPhone Air takes the place of the
01:21Plus model in Apple's lineup. But the funny thing is, I don't hear a lot of people debating whether
01:26they should get the regular iPhone 17 or the Air. People seem to be deciding between the Air
01:32and the iPhone 17 Pro, or even the 17 Pro Max. These are three very different devices with totally
01:39different sets of trade-offs. Let's start with what you do get from the Air. There's a 6.5-inch
01:45ProMotion screen, the new A19 Pro chip, MagSafe, the camera control, action button, and one 48-megapixel
01:53rear camera. On the front, there's a new 18-megapixel selfie camera that's actually pretty cool, but we'll
02:01come back to that. Like all the new phones this year, the screen is a little brighter with a new
02:06ceramic shield 2 layer that reduces glare a little bit better. But the iPhone Air's best features are
02:13the intangible things, the way it feels when you use it and carry it. I've been putting it in my front
02:19pocket when I walk around the city, and that is not something I can usually do with a phone. I also
02:24tried carrying it with Apple's new crossbody strap, which is nice, but I don't know. I don't think I can
02:30pull it off. Just sitting and scrolling with the phone one-handed feels more comfortable to me than with a
02:36heavier phone. It also feels better holding the air up to your ear to make a call. It fits into any of
02:42the pockets of my bag, and you don't even have to give all those benefits up when you put a case on it
02:47because Apple is bringing back the bumper. The clear case is still pretty slim too, and it comes with a
02:54bonus feature. No wobble when you use the phone on a flat surface. Otherwise, the phone rocks back and
03:00forth when you tap on the screen. But here's the obvious trade-off for that slim profile. A
03:06smaller battery. Apple doesn't say the exact capacity for its batteries, just that you can
03:12watch up to 27 hours of video on the air. On the Pro Max, you can watch up to 39 hours according to
03:19Apple. That's how it played out in my testing too. I've been using the air a lot over the past few
03:25days, but it's been down to around 20% in the early evening. It's important to remember that this is
03:31just after a few days of testing with a lot of background processing going on. What I'm more
03:37concerned about is how that battery life is going to degrade over time, and recent iPhones don't have
03:43a great reputation for battery longevity. In the meantime, I would want some insurance if I planned
03:49on using this phone all day and all night without a charger. Apple sells that in the form of a new
03:54version of its MagSafe battery pack. It's $99 and it's only designed to fit specifically on the air,
04:02which is a little bit cheeky. It's also pretty telling that Apple lists some of its battery life
04:07figures with and without the battery pack factored in. And that's fine, but once you have the battery
04:13pack attached, you're no longer using a super thin, super light phone. If you can't have a thin phone
04:20and a battery that goes all day, which one do you give up? There's one other minor trade-off on the
04:26air that bothers me a little bit. Instead of two speakers for audio playback, you just get the one
04:32at the top. Not surprisingly, audio lacks a little richness as a result. The Apple Vision Pro is Apple's
04:38long-awaited entry into the world of computers you wear on your face. The Apple Vision Pro is Apple's
04:43long-awaited entry into the world of computers you wear on your face. If you live with AirPods in your
04:49ears, then that's not going to be a problem for you. But basically every other phone at this price
04:54offers stereo speakers. So battery is a big consideration, but the other major sacrifice
05:01is the camera. There's only one, but it has a two-time zoom setting that uses the middle 12
05:07megapixels on the sensor so it looks better than your typical digital zoom. Apple's also doing a
05:13little extra processing on that 12 megapixel image to improve the quality over last year's version.
05:19And you can see the difference. There's also 35mm and 28mm equivalent settings that
05:25combine information from multiple frames to avoid looking too much like digital zoom.
05:30They're nice to have, but let's not kid ourselves. This is one lens, not four lenses like Apple keeps
05:36claiming. I can live without the telephoto, but I kept finding myself in situations with the air where I
05:43couldn't move back any farther. And I really miss that ultra wide. You do get the ultra customizable
05:48photographic styles introduced last year, plus a new undertone setting called bright. It's um,
05:55bright. And it mostly affects skin tones by making them smoother.
05:59I can't believe I'm saying this, but the biggest photo updates this year might be on the selfie
06:10camera. It's a new square format, 18 megapixel sensor that lets you change from portrait to landscape
06:16orientation without rotating the whole phone. You can manually switch between the two or you can enable
06:22center stage controls and it will automatically rotate when it sees at least four people in the frame.
06:28This rules because it just feels a little more natural to hold the phone vertically for selfies
06:34and everyone will be looking the right direction rather than off to the side. You can choose an
06:40aspect ratio yourself, though the one-to-one setting doesn't use the full sensor, so you can't really
06:45get the same effect by cropping later. But anyway, I think it's a really clever update and it's going to
06:51be super popular. The other selfie trick is dual capture, which records video with the front and rear
06:57camera simultaneously. The selfie video is positioned in the corner of the screen, but you can move it to
07:03a different spot if it's blocking the action. Just know that you're going to see it move in the final
07:08video and you can't change the position after the fact. It's neat and I'll probably use it a few times
07:14when I record video of my kid, but I can also see myself just totally forgetting it's there.
07:19The new selfie camera also comes with more robust image stabilization for video recording that's
07:25a little more steady when you're running with the camera. Here's our video producer Victoria trying
07:30it out and you can kind of see the difference. It's pretty subtle, but given how popular selfie videos
07:36are, it can't hurt. So aside from a striking design that screams, I have the cool new iPhone, the Air
07:44has a handful of the updates available on the whole iPhone lineup this year that I think people will
07:49really appreciate. And even with a single rear camera, you still get stuff like portrait mode,
07:54night mode, and 4k 60 video recording with Dolby Vision HDR. Of course, all of those things come to the
08:01Pro too, plus a little extra. For starters, the Pro got its own redesign this year. The camera bump is
08:13now a bar that stretches across the back panel. There's a unibody aluminum frame, no more titanium
08:20here. And instead of a pane of glass on the back, there's ceramic shield, which is way less likely to
08:26crack if you drop your phone. It's a strong look and boy, will everyone know that you have the new
08:32iPhone. The Pro comes in two sizes again, a 6.3 inch screen and a 6.9 inch. The edges are slightly curved
08:40compared to the flat sides on the 16 Pro, which feels a little less secure in my hand. Inside, you've
08:46got the A19 Pro as well as a new vapor chamber cooling system to help pull heat away from the processor
08:53and boost performance. The switch to aluminum is also supposed to help with heat dissipation.
08:59We actually got ahold of a thermal camera and set up the 16 Pro Max in the 17 Pro Max as they ran
09:04Resident Evil Village with graphics settings cranked up. Sure enough, you can see the heat from the
09:10processor on the 16 Pro Max concentrated in one spot while it's more spread out on the 17 Pro Max.
09:17The 17 also maintained a higher frame rate than the 16, so the new cooling and heat
09:22dissipation measures seem like they add up to a better performance under a heavy workload.
09:31This year's telephoto has been upgraded to 48 megapixels and switched from a 5x to a 4x optical zoom.
09:39That focal length is a little friendlier for portraits and the extra resolution means the camera now
09:44offers an 8x crop zoom setting. The jump to a higher resolution sensor even helps digital zoom, meaning
09:51the 5x digital zoom on the 17 Pro is actually a little better than the optical 5x on the 16 Pro.
09:59This was a really smart swap and it gives the camera system some flexibility it didn't have before.
10:05But overall, the differences are less noticeable. The main camera is pretty much the same as before
10:11and same with the ultra-wide. All these photos look pretty much the same between the 16 and the 17 Pro.
10:17Apple told us they tweaked a few things in the image pipeline and in some instances I can see the
10:23differences like this text on a side of a camera lens, but you really won't see a big shift in general
10:29photography in your day to day. And just like on the air, the most notable upgrade this year is the
10:35front-facing camera. Same square sensor with upgraded stabilization and the same software tricks like
10:42center stage and auto zoom. Yet again, the new selfie camera is the most exciting update. Who had that
10:50on their bingo card? And for the video pros out there, there are some new features worth going through.
10:56These Pro phones can now film in ProRes RAW, but you'll need to use an external drive for it. You can film
11:03directly to internal storage in ProRes, but only up to 4K30. ProRes RAW also unlocks filming in OpenGate,
11:11which looks like this. You get a little more height. Also, once you're in ProRes RAW, you lose
11:16stabilization. Aside from ProRes RAW, these phones now support Genlock or Timecode Sync. It's highly
11:23useful for larger productions, but it's not something we had time to test for ourselves.
11:28So by opting for the Pro, you pick up a couple of extra cameras and that bigger battery. But so far,
11:35I'm not too impressed with that battery life. It does better than the air, but it still seems to be
11:40draining a bit faster than we'd like, and it's needed an evening battery boost just to get to the
11:45end of the day. Compared to the 16 Pro, I'm just not seeing any huge gains. And I can't stress this enough,
11:53but the first few days of testing are usually really tough on the battery. So I might have
11:58some more thoughts to add in a little bit. After a few days with the air, the Pro strikes me as
12:05dense in a way that it didn't before. And that's the thing. If you never pick up and use the air,
12:12then you don't really know what you're missing out on. But it also requires you to let go of a lot.
12:17Yes, the air feels great. Yes, it's easier to carry and nicer to use for longer periods of time.
12:25But if you're coming from an iPhone with a second camera and a bigger battery,
12:29then you'll know what you're missing out on when you use the iPhone air.
12:33Those are two very hard things to give up. And I think most people probably want better images and
12:39more hours of screen time than a thinner device.
12:41The Pro is the practical choice. And I don't think it's a bad one at all, especially that orange color.
12:48It's so good. I've come around to thinking of the air as a statement. It's a statement from Apple
12:54about what it can achieve and who knows, maybe a hint of things to come. But choosing the air
13:00also makes a personal statement. Maybe that's just, I have the hot new iPhone, but it also says
13:06something about your priorities. That you're a person who's not glued to your phone all day and
13:11you're not too hung up about how many cameras your phone has. If you're the kind of person who can
13:17let go of the extra weight and bulk that has piled up on our phones over the past decade, well,
13:22then the air is going to feel like something pretty special.
13:27Thanks for watching. Head to theverge.com to read all of our iPhone coverage.
13:31Make sure to check out the review of the iPhone 17. We didn't really get to cover it much here,
13:36but there's a ton of good updates this year. It might be the dark horse, but let us know what you think.
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