All tech demands compromise – and Apple gear is no exception. But as the rumor mill continues to churn about the upcoming iPhone Air, a familiar unease is bubbling up.
The singular obsession appears to be making the thinnest iPhone that ever thinned. It’ll be skinny. Svelte. Sleek. Slender. And every other synonym you can think of. But what’s set to get the chop in Apple’s pursuit of ultimate thinness?
Not power, according to reports. And not the display. The chip will still be overkill for daily doomscrolling, and the screen will match that of any iPhone with ‘Pro’ in its name. Beyond that, though, rumors suggest trade-offs that are varying degrees of bonkers.
To shave off those precious millimeters and reach a 5.5mm profile, the Air will reportedly ditch a speaker. So this potential flagship will be stuck in the sonic Stone Age of mono audio, like a bargain-bin Android phone. Want to lose yourself in a movie or gaming session with your iPhone Air in landscape? Prepare for a distinctly basic audio experience.
Then there’s the camera: a solitary 48MP rear shooter. Respectable, sure, but that means saying goodbye to macro and ultra-wide shots, unless Apple has cooked up some serious photography sorcery. Compared even to the vanilla iPhone 16, then, this will be a downgrade.
The real head-scratcher? The rumor of Apple considering shipping a separate battery case alongside the Air. Because, apparently, peak thinness leaves this phone gasping for charge before the day is done. Yet placing the Air inside a battery brick would defeat the purpose of buying a super-thin phone in the first place.
Even the USB-C port isn’t safe from this millimeter madness. Whispers suggest it might be nudged off-center on the bottom edge. A minor aesthetic niggle, perhaps, but this kind of design asymmetry would have sent ex-Apple design head Jony Ive into a spiral of minimalist angst.
A visual mock-up of the iPhone Air from AppleTrack.
iPhone Air: on thin ice?
We’ve been here before. The original MacBook Air was thin but woefully underpowered. The 12in MacBook was a visual delight but less delightful the moment you tried to do any actual work on it. Apple’s recent foray into super-thin with the 13in iPad (skinnier, even, than the rumored iPhone Air) has been an exception – but only because it delivered lightness without compromise. It was a genuinely better experience, which won’t be the case if even half of the rumors about the Air come to pass.
So what’s the endgame? First, Apple’s been flailing in the nebulous ‘other’ iPhone slot. The Pro and Pro Max print money. The standard iPhone is a massive success. The Mini and Plus? Flops. A new form factor might change that, acting as catnip for users who crave the latest thing. “The thinnest iPhone ever” is a headline engineered to generate buzz that translates into sales and reinforce the idea that Apple continues to push boundaries, regardless of a specs sheet.
However, it’s ultimately far from radical. The Android space is already littered with far more ambitious designs, with folding screens, dual displays, and actual multitasking. And those foldables are essentially super-skinny phones that happen to bend in half. So maybe the iPhone Air is therefore also a necessary step on the path towards Apple’s own bendy future.
All of which seems perfectly logical, but I’ll sit out this round of super-skinny iPhone unless Apple surprises everyone with a device that doesn’t sacrifice fundamental features I care about. Give me substance over ‘thinness for the sake of it’ any day.