Why I bought the iPhone Air

If you read reviews of iPhone Air, you will quickly find that the pundit class has concluded it's a mixed bag. A "compromised" product, even.

For tech reviewers lining up all these phones next to each other and weighing the pros and cons, I can absolutely understand how iPhone Air doesn't seem to earn its spot in the lineup at $999. Just look at all these downsides:

• Battery: The battery life is slightly worse than iPhone 17 and much worse than iPhone 17 Pro
• Performance: The A19 Pro chip in iPhone is not only binned (it loses a GPU core), it's so thermal-constrained it probably wouldn't be able to use that core anyway—one review saw significantly worse sustained performance from iPhone Air than the base level A19 in iPhone 17
• Speakers: iPhone Air lacks stereo speakers, a feature that was added in iPhone 7 (a consolation prize for dropping the headphone port, I guess)
• Cameras: iPhone Air offers the same(-ish) main camera as its model year brethren, but lacks an ultra-wide lens, a telephoto lens, and a LIDAR sensor. That means no macro mode, no optical quality zoom beyond 2x, no spatial photo or video capture, and reduced portrait/AR performance

In its preliminary assessment of Apple's offerings, The Accidental Tech podcast went so far as to speculate iPhone Air wouldn't appeal to tech enthusiasts at all, and perhaps will only sell to fashion-conscious consumers who won't know what they're missing.

Indeed, the through-line connecting every review I've read—whether framed positively or negatively in its conclusions—is a struggle to answer the question, "Who is iPhone Air for?"

Well, it's for me. That's who.

Whenever the claim is made that, "nobody is asking for a thinner iPhone," I make a point of piping up. My favorite iPhone of the last decade was easily the iPhone 13 mini, and when I upgraded to iPhone 14 Pro, it was so heavy that I got in the habit of leaving the house with only my cellular Apple Watch Series 8. My favorite Apple computer of all time was the 12" MacBook, and I am perennially disappointed that Apple has deprioritized weight ever since (the lightest Mac currently on offer is the MacBook Air, which is 33% heavier than the decade-old MacBook).

That's why I didn't hesitate to put in an order for the new iPhone Air, downsides and all:

• Battery: Where others see the 39-hour battery life on iPhone 17 Pro Max as a triumph, I see it as dead fucking weight. My iPhone spends 90% of every day on a MagSafe charger near my front door. The iPhone Air's battery is about a third smaller than iPhone 16 Pro's battery, but in the past year I've only seen my battery dip below 33% a handful of times. Tell you what, when I'm traveling, I'll bring an iPhone Air MagSafe Battery just to put your mind at ease. It's true, I may need the last third of my phone's battery 10% of the time, but I benefit from my devices' relative size and weight advantages 100% of the time
• Performance: There isn't a single thing I use my iPhone for that takes full advantage of its computing power, and if ever there was, it would be a signal to switch to a more serious device like an iPad Pro or a Mac. At the same time, I get it. It sucks to see your new device post shitty benchmark scores, because it confirms that you have a tinier penis than your friends. I'll just have to find a way to cope, I guess
• Speakers: I'm not here to judge, but I can't understand why anyone uses their iPhone speakers at all. The only ones I see using this feature are people's shitheel children, inconsiderate assholes, and airport workers on break who probably can't afford AirPods. If you use your speakers in some non-disruptive way, God bless—what goes on in the privacy of your own home is up to you
• Cameras: iPhone Air's rear camera system is undoubtedly a shortcoming. Since Becky is going Pro, she's enabling my Air purchase by signing up for the emotional labor of being the family's chief photographer for the 2025-2026 season. We trade off on this—I lugged my iPhone 16 Pro around last year so she could lighten her load with a green iPhone 16. Even still, last year fewer than 5% of my photos were taken with either of the ultra-wide or telephoto lens, so I doubt I'll miss them

As someone who has been using iOS 26 all summer, there's one more reason I'm glad to be switching to iPhone Air: information density is significantly lower throughout iOS 26, which has a dramatic negative impact on the usability of smaller displays, even the 6.3" iPhone 16 Pro. That's because with the 26 series of releases, the new unified design across Apple's platforms features much more negative space between its controls and views—all in the name of concentricity. As soon as I updated my iPhone 16 Pro to the iOS 26 beta, I was immediately put off by how much less text was being rendered and how much more I was scrolling to get what I needed. By ordering another 6.3" iPhone, I'd be locking in those losses. But iPhone Air's larger 6.6" display claws back just enough additional screen estate to make it a wash. I don't want a bigger screen, I want an OS that doesn't punish smaller screens. And it's nice to want things.

Will iPhone Air sell well? Don't ask me, I'm the guy who just said his favorite iPhone was iPhone 13 mini and favorite Mac was the 12" MacBook—both of which flopped. I'm certainly not arguing this thing is going to light sales charts on fire, simply that it's not entirely irrational to conclude that iPhone Air is the best phone in this year's line up.

Anyway, this is just my take. You do you.