Two weeks with the iPhone Air: It’s not what you think

There’s no doubt the iPhone Air is the most interesting new iPhone this year. It may not be the phone that most people will buy, but the engineering that has gone into making it this slim is fascinating. Ultra-thin devices used to mean making sacrifices and compromises, but after two weeks with the iPhone Air, I’ve found that that isn’t necessarily the case. The iPhone Air is a phone that defies expectations, and I think many people could be happy with it.

Design & display

The iPhone Air is one of those devices where the specs don’t paint the full picture. On paper, it doesn’t seem much thinner or lighter than a standard iPhone, but when you pick it up for the first time, you’d be amazed at just how slim it is and how little it weighs. It feels like no other iPhone and genuinely feels like a slab of glass. It also feels like a high-end item. Unlike the standard and Pro iPhones, which now have aluminium chassis, the iPhone Air’s frame is grade 5 titanium. Apple says titanium was chosen for its strength and lightness. There are four finishes to choose from: Space Black, Cloud White, Light Gold, and Sky Blue. Because blue is probably my favourite colour, Sky Blue is my pick.

For a phone that feels so delicate, durability is naturally a concern – those old enough will remember the iPhone 6 and “bendgate”. Apart from the strong titanium frame, Apple uses its new Ceramic Shield 2 glass material to protect the display, which the company claims is thrice as resistant to scratches. And instead of glass, the back is now Ceramic Shield, which Apple claims is four times more resistant to cracks than older iPhones with glass backs. Apple says the iPhone Air is the most durable phone it has ever made.

Now, such claims are hard to verify, but I witnessed the iPhone Air put through a bend test at Apple Park where it was subjected to 60kg of force. This is beyond what most people can achieve with their hands. Even though the phone flexed, it quickly returned to shape when pressure was relieved. More tellingly, a test by YouTuber JerryRigEvery showed that the iPhone Air only cracked after it was subjected to a force of 97kg – and even then, it remained functional. Despite its delicate appearance, the iPhone Air is a very strong and rigid phone.

Like the Pro iPhones, the iPhone Air has a prominent camera bar that rises high from the back of the phone and runs across its entire width. Apart from housing the single camera, the bar is also home to the main logic board. This frees up the rest of the phone for a large battery. It’s a clever design, but it also means the area heats up noticeably when the phone is doing anything that’s computationally intensive.

With its 6.5-inch display, the iPhone Air sits between the smaller 6.3-inch iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 and the larger 6.9-inch iPhone Pro Max. This is such a great size, because it’s appreciably larger than the 6.3-inch displays of the smaller iPhones, but remains usable with just one hand. I think it’s my favourite size for a phone display. It has the same Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion technology and 3,000 nits peak brightness as the Pro iPhones, and it looks fantastic.

Elsewhere, the iPhone Air has the same buttons as the Pro iPhones and iPhone 17, and that means it has the Action Button, Camera Control button, volume buttons, and the side button. I’ve said this numerous times in the past, but don’t sleep on the Camera Control button. It can be really useful. The USB-C port supports fast-charging of up to 50% in 30 minutes, but only supports USB 2.0 data transfer rates of up to 480Mbps.

Camera: Is one enough?

Arguably, the biggest compromise of the iPhone Air is that it only has a single camera. Well, technically, it has two, if you count the front-facing camera, which is the very clever Centre Stage front camera. I wrote about it in greater detail in the iPhone 17 Pro review, so check that out. But essentially, it uses a square sensor, so it can intelligently crop and reframe depending on how many people are in the frame and if the user wants to take a selfie in portrait or landscape. Even though I hardly take selfies, I will concede that it’s an ingenious solution to the selfie problem, and I expect other phone makers to copy this feature.

The problem with the iPhone Air’s lone camera isn’t that it is bad. Rather, it limits your options if you find yourself in a situation where you either can’t back up enough. This probably won’t be an issue in day-to-day life. How many people are taking ultra-wide shots of their workplace or neighbourhood? But I’m certain it will be an issue when you are on holiday. The overwhelming majority of ultra wide photos in my library were taken on vacation. And if you look at the sample photos I’ve taken below, clearly I could used an ultra wide camera when taking photos of the Rain Vortex at Jewel.

If it’s any consolation, the iPhone Air’s main camera is very competent. It’s not quite the same unit as the one in the Pro iPhones – their sensors are larger and their lenses are slightly faster – but the resulting images are mostly just as good. By default, you have a 1x mode and a 2x crop zoom mode that is really a digital zoom, even if Apple claims it’s “optical-quality”. Both modes produce pleasant and beautiful images. There’s also a 10x digital zoom mode, but I won’t use it unless I am absolutely desperate.

Note: All photos uploaded in full resolution and taken with Photographic Styles set to Standard with no adjustments made.

The iPhone Air also benefits from Apple’s updated image processing pipeline, so photos this year look less digitised and more natural, which is great because Apple’s heavy-handed photo processing is something I’ve been complaining about since the iPhone 14 Pro.

Even though the iPhone Air has the A19 Pro, it lacks “pro” video capabilities, such as the ability to record in ProRes and ProRes RAW. That said, it can still record 4K Dolby Vision videos, and they look good. My only complaint is that flare and reflection from light sources are still an issue, especially at night.

Battery concerns

Fitting the largest possible battery into the iPhone Air’s thin frame was a priority. Therefore, to maximise space, the iPhone Air doesn’t have a SIM card tray. It’s eSIM-only in all markets. Fortunately for us, e-SIM is supported by all major telcos and the majority of MNVOs. This article tells you exactly which telcos and MVNOs support eSIM.

Apple never discloses battery capacities, but teardown videos have revealed that the iPhone Air has a 3,149mAh battery – that’s positively tiny by today’s standards. Even so, Apple claims the iPhone Air can last up to 27 hours when playing videos. Interestingly, Apple claims last year’s iPhone 16 Pro can do the same. And in everyday use, I did find the iPhone Air to last just about as long as the iPhone 16 Pro, which I’ve been using for the past seven months or so. My day starts before the sun rises, and I found that the iPhone Air’s low battery warning would typically pop up around 8pm to 9pm, and that’s with around 4 hours of screen-on time. It’s not fantastic, but neither is it terrible, especially in the context of a phone this thin and with a battery this tiny. It’s certainly usable if you aren’t a heavy user.

Apple clearly expected owners to be jumpy about battery life because they are offering a MagSafe battery that’s designed specifically for the iPhone Air – it doesn’t work with any other iPhone. This battery pack is incredibly slim and provides up to 65% more charge. I had a go, and it works just as advertised. It doesn’t add much bulk to the iPhone Air, and it charges quickly. One convenient thing about it is that if you attach it to the iPhone Air, you can charge it and the phone at the same time. My sole gripe is that at S$139, it’s expensive for a MagSafe battery.

To further optimise power efficiency, the iPhone Air also features Apple-designed cellular and networking chips. The modem is called the C1X, an improved version of the C1 modem that first appeared in the iPhone 16E. It supports 5G (only sub-6GHz, and not mmWave), and Apple says it delivers twice the performance of C1. It also features Apple’s first custom networking chip called the N1. The chip is also used in the iPhone 17 and Pro iPhones, and it supports Bluetooth 6, Wi-Fi 7, and Thread. I can’t tell if they are any more power efficient, but they appear to work just as well as the Qualcomm chips used in last year’s phones. Cellular and Wi-Fi speeds were good and within expectations.

Performance

The iPhone Air is powered by a less powerful variant of the A19 Pro chip. I’ve covered the A19 Pro extensively in a separate feature; go read it and find out more. It has 6 CPU cores like the Pro iPhones, but has one less GPU core. In most benchmarks, especially quick ones with short workloads, the iPhone Air racked up numbers that weren’t too far from the Pro iPhones. Its performance only starts to waver when running longer, sustained workloads. For example, on the intensive 3DMark Solar Bay workload, its score was lower than the iPhone 17’s A19 chip.

The reason for this isn’t so much because of the missing GPU core, but because the iPhone Air heats up quickly and then doesn’t dissipate that heat as well as the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. When playing games or running any intensive app in landscape, you’ll find that the side with the camera bump is warmer than the opposite side. But even then, it remains a powerful chip. The iPhone Air will run anything you throw at it with ease.

Follow your heart

If you’ve read everything I’ve written up until this point, you’ll realise that the iPhone Air doesn’t actually sacrifice much in its pursuit of thinness. Durability is pretty much a non-issue, and performance is stellar. Battery life is decent, though much will depend on your usage behaviour. Casual users could find it completely acceptable, but heavy users will no doubt need a mid-day charge to get it to last the entire day.

Personally, the single camera system is what will keep me from getting the iPhone Air for myself, not because it’s bad – it’s very good – but because I know there will be times when I’ll miss having a second camera. If you are alright with missing out on capturing the odd shot, you’ll be fine with the iPhone Air.

But for a phone that starts at S$1,599, is this acceptable? Probably not, especially when the iPhone 17 and the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are so good. The standard iPhone represents excellent value, while the Pro iPhones are incredibly capable devices. It’s tricky to justify the iPhone Air if you make purchasing decisions with your head.

But I don’t think the person who buys an iPhone Air necessarily cares about such things. Where the iPhone Air excels is in the way it makes you feel when you pick it up. It feels like you are using a very special phone. And by all accounts, it is – because of how slim and performant it is. It might as well be a phone from the future. And if owning and using something special is more important than having a second camera and long battery life, you’ll love the iPhone Air.

Note: You can find the iPhone Air on Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.