iPhone Air
Apple today debuted the all-new iPhone Air, the thinnest iPhone ever made, with pro performance. iPhone Air features a breakthrough titanium design that is elegant and light yet strong, with an innovative internal architecture that enables the latest iPhone experiences. The back of iPhone Air is now protected with Ceramic Shield, and the front cover uses Ceramic Shield 2, delivering 3x better scratch resistance, making iPhone Air more durable than any previous iPhone. iPhone Air also features a stunning 6.5-inch Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion up to 120Hz. With the most Apple-designed chips in an iPhone — the powerhouse A19 Pro, N1, and C1X — iPhone Air is the most power-efficient iPhone ever made. Paired with the redesigned internal architecture and software optimizations, iPhone Air has fantastic all-day battery life. A powerful 48MP Fusion Main camera enables the equivalent of four lenses with incredible image quality, and the innovative 18MP Center Stage front camera takes selfies to the next level.
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iPhone Air is the thinnest iPhone ever made at 5.6mm, and it is incredibly light, with a large, stunning display. The grade 5 titanium frame is strong, with an elegant high-gloss mirror finish, and a new plateau on the back that is precision-milled on both sides to house the cameras, speaker, and Apple silicon. This maximizes space for the battery to deliver remarkable all-day battery life. The thin design also features the Action button, so users can easily access a variety of functions with just a press, and Camera Control, to quickly launch the camera or enable visual intelligence.
It’s $999 vs. $799 for the iPhone 17 and $1,099 for the iPhone 17 Pro. It’ll be interesting to see whether this is popular. To me, it’s impressive but not very appealing. Looking for a smaller phone, it seems like they shrunk the wrong dimension (and increased the other two). I’m more interested in the Pro camera and battery life than the Pro processor. Even if the prices were the same, I would probably choose the iPhone 17 over the iPhone Air.
Previously:
Update (2025-09-10): See also: Hacker News.
And yes, all the iPhones in the US are now eSIM-only, and that worries me. Fortunately that is (for now) not the case in the EU.
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You become completely dependent on your carrier’s ability to issue an eSIM–which can be a painfully contrived process requiring you to go to a store or scan a QR code that is mailed to you days later.
Even if you can have multiple eSIMs in a phone, switching carriers on the fly becomes effectively impossible (which is a big thing for carriers, and harks back to when US carriers did not use GSM).
Following today’s “Awe dropping” special event, Apple’s iPhone lineup now contains seven models at different price points.
This guide offers a detailed look at every difference—dimensions, design, cameras, battery life, and pricing—so you can make an informed choice.
The iPhone Air is all battery. The entire brains of the phone is essentially smushed into the camera plateau! 🤯
The first benchmark results for the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air surfaced in the Geekbench 6 database today.
The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max have a higher-end A19 Pro chip with a 6-core GPU, and the iPhone Air has an A19 Pro chip with one less GPU core.
17: less cache
17 and Air: more cache, 5 GPU cores
17 Pro: more cache, 6 GPU coresI wonder if they maybe clocked them differently, too.
iPhone 13 Mini: 141g
iPhone Air: 165g
iPhone 16: 170g
iPhone 16 Pro: 199g
iPhone 17 Pro: 206g
Update (2025-09-11): Kuba Suder:
The iPhone Air is:
- 21 g heavier than the last iPhone SE (which I use)
- 36 g heavier than iPhone 6
- 30 g heavier than iPhone 12 Mini
- and 52 g heavier than original iPhone SE 🫠
He has a table that shows all the dimensions.
Update (2025-09-12): Adam Engst:
Although the iPhone Air may not match the battery life of the iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro, it surpasses the iPhone 16e and iPhone 16 and is similar to the iPhone 16 Plus.
He has a table.
Update (2025-10-09): Steve Troughton-Smith:
Learned only yesterday that there’s a button in Settings to convert your SIM card to eSIM, so I went through the process. Very straightforward, and appears to have worked OK.
Elizabeth Chamberlain (Hacker News):
To be honest, we were holding our breath for the iPhone Air. Thinner usually means flimsier, harder to fix, and more glued-down parts. But the iPhone Air proves otherwise. Apple has somehow built its thinnest iPhone ever without tanking repairability.
I really want the iPhone Air but I also know I will hate it and should very much get the standard Pro.
I haven’t had this much decision paralysis with iPhones since the mini.
It’s literally just a manufacturing test – for the foldable iPhone next year. Thinness isn’t a relevant feature – 97% use cases anyway!
Why isn’t it named “17 Air”? Cuz there won’t be an 18 Air.
The iPhone Air main body is thinner than the iPod touch 5th generation’s main body. Still thicker if you include the Plateau though.
The iPhone Air is incredible, I am very happy with this upgrade.
- It feels faster than the iPhone 16 plus (my previous phone)
- The camera is great
- It’s insanely light and easily fits in my pocket (HUGE upgrade)
- Battery life has been a non-issue
Amir:
This is how the thickness of recent iPhone cameras look next to each other.
PR jujitsu by Apple.
The iPhone 17 Pro wipes off.
The iPhone Air does NOT. It’s scratched to hell.
It took about seven years of design evolution for Apple to come up with a worthy successor to the iPhone X. Everything that made the X extraordinary lives on in the Air. “From chips to materials to improved interactions, it is what you don’t see that makes the X a great phone,” I said. The Air is that vision fully realized, enhanced by seven years of technological progress.
The evolution from X to Air tells a compelling story about Apple’s relentless pursuit of refinement. The iPhone Air’s larger screen (6.5″ compared to the X’s 5.8″) somehow feels more compact, perhaps because it is so thin at just 5.6mm—27% thinner than the X’s 7.7mm. It makes the new iPhone 17 Pro look positively chunky by comparison.
The first reviews of the iPhone Air have been published by selected media outlets and YouTube channels, offering a closer look at the device ahead of its launch on Friday.
I’ve been loving my iPhone Air. A week in I think it’s my favorite iPhone since the iPhone X.
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The only area I’ve kinda been disappointed on is the camera situation. No, not the telephoto, I really never used that personally. And not the ultrawide, for me that just felt too wide. But the ultrawide did allow for awesome macro capabilities that this iPhone Air is sorely lacking. At least currently.
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The iPhone Air’s minimum focus distance is just too short.
Maybe my favourite, concise review of the iPhone Air from a big YouTuber. Dave is always very practical and honest in pointing out certain things:
“And the thing is, the novelty of the thinness of this phone wears off pretty quickly. I’m wrapping up week two and it’s still like, every time I pick it up I’m like, this is super-thin! This is awesome! But I don’t feel like my life has changed all that much going from, like, a very thin phone to an extremely thin phone.”
Is one lens really enough? Will you miss ProRAW and LiDAR? To put this to a test, I took to New York with an iPhone Air and an M6.
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If you love bug shots, the Air is not for you. But the available focal lengths are more than enough for the rangefinder crowd.
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It isn’t a camera for beginners[…]
There are dozens of obvious reasons to buy an iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro instead of the iPhone Air. But when I hold the Air between my thumb and index finger and feel its weight and thinness, I begin to wonder how much those reasons matter.
Update (2025-10-22): Hartley Charlton:
The business publication claims to have learned of a major cut to iPhone Air production motivated by weaker-than-expected consumer interest, nearly to “end of production levels.” Despite early reports of the iPhone Air selling out within hours of launch in China, the overall reception has apparently been lukewarm in the region.
Combined with weak demand in other markets, sales projections have dropped significantly.
Even from our iPhone screen protector sales we can see that the iPhone Air isn’t a big hit
Which is sad because I love mine!
Every year I see these rumors, “Apple is cutting iPhone production,” but they all seem like BS, and it never affects Apple’s revenue in their quarterly reports. I’m skeptical.
There was no reason to ship the iPhone Air “in preparation” for a foldable iPhone next year if they didn’t think the Air would be a success on its own. They could have just started with the foldable next year.
I think it’s both. They thought it would be a success, or at least had a good chance of being a success, and they also wanted to learn for the foldable through manufacturing at scale. Another way of looking at it: if there were no plans for a foldable iPhone, would there have been an iPhone Air at all?
One thing that’s weird about these reports of low sales numbers for the iPhone Air is that it doesn’t seem like Apple is advertising it at all. If I were Joz, I’d be advertising the hell out of it. I’ve been watching a lot of sports on commercial TV since September, and I haven’t seen a single ad for the Air. Tons of commercials for the orange iPhone 17 Pro, but zip for the Air.
Update (2025-10-30): Max Seelemann:
Also seeing really bad cellular data rates? Is the C1x to blame?
I have 2 bars 5G and am essentially offline. I know I’m not on the best network, but this is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than before. This is my most significant gripe with this device.
Update (2025-10-31): Matt Birchler:
Here’s the catch: when I use my phone, I rest it on my pinky, which bears much of the device’s weight. You’d think the lighter phone would be easier on that finger, but I found the opposite to be true.
If the iPhone 17 Pro is a butter knife, the iPhone Air is a steak knife.
Yes, it’s lighter, but it digs into my finger far more than I expected, and there are two reasons for this, as far as I can tell.
Update (2025-11-10): Juli Clover:
The thin, light iPhone Air sold so poorly that Apple has decided to delay the launch of the next-generation iPhone Air that was scheduled to come out alongside the iPhone 18 Pro, reports The Information.
Update (2025-11-14): John Gruber:
Rolfe Winkler and Yang Jie, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link, News+ link) under the headline “Apple’s iPhone Air Is a Marketing Win and a Sales Flop” (which headline, going from the web page
<title>element, was originally the less sensational “Apple’s iPhone Air Sales Disappoint”)[…][…]
If Purdy’s brother’s photos (taken with an iPhone 17 Pro) were all taken with the telephoto 4× lens, and all of Purdy’s photos (taken with an iPhone Air) were from telephoto distance and he relied on digital zoom, then yes, his photos from the Air surely did look noticeably worse. But the lone (1×) camera on the Air is very good.
Sure, there are all sorts of variables, like maybe the brother had better skills. But presumably he’s been to other events with his brother and so would know whether the phone was the main difference. I don’t really understand the argument that one shouldn’t care about noticeably worse results because they still meet the bar of being good enough. If it matters to you, it matters to you. It’s probably true that most people could improve their photos by working on their technique instead of getting a better camera, but iPhone overall is selling the opposite vision, that you just press the shutter button and it will take care of the rest. The takeaway that this will work better with the Pro than the Air is not wrong. I’ll repeat the Ben Sandofsky quote from above, where he says it “isn’t a camera for beginners.”
It is Apple’s thinnest smartphone yet. You can measure it.
Well, the question is which part do you measure? The main body is thinner, but the top is 11.3 mm according to Wikipedia. It’s not clear to me whether that includes the camera or only the plateau. Subjectively, I would agree that the iPhone Air feels the thinnest. But then Apple and Gruber say that the (flat) M2 MacBook Air is thinner than the (wedge) M1 MacBook Air, even though parts of the M1 are much thinner. Personally, I find that the M1 looks/feels thinner, even though its overall volume is larger. Maybe that that’s partially due to the M2’s increased weight, though.
Update (2025-11-18): Chance Miller (MacRumors):
According to Gurman, the second-generation iPhone Air “hadn’t actually been earmarked for next year — at least not in recent months.” This, in turn, negates the narrative that Apple delayed the device due to its sales numbers.
Update (2025-12-01): See also: Do you still love the iPhone Air?.
Update (2026-02-19): Hartley Charlton:
A newly reported incident was first documented in a support thread on Reddit spotted by Wccftech, where the user “itstheskylion” described waking up to find the device had completely lost cellular reception. According to the user, the phone displayed no signal bars and diagnostics indicated a hardware-level cellular problem.
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I gotta say I am way more impressed by this than I expected to be. I still think heat might be a problem but I really like what they are going for.
Not that any of them care, but I’m putting out there right now: I’m going to be harshly judging any Apple tech pundit who uncritically parrots Apple’s “5.6mm thin” nonsense. I saw a photo on X where somebody at the event slapped an iPhone 6 down next to the Air, Apple’s marketing is pretty obviously deceptive for anyone with more than 3 brain cells. Attempting a Jedi mind trick over the camera ‘plateau’ on a device supposed to easily slip into a front pocket is asinine. Give me back my mini! I am wanting to buy a phone with a camera not a camera that can make calls.
Given how tightly packed its components are, I imagine the Air is an experiment to improve future devices, including the Vision Pro. Selling it is just an attempt to recover some of the research cost.
As people on social media have noted (and Scott above too), the body of the Air is as thin as years old iPhone 6. This is only possible as everything expect the battery is packed into the plateau. I expect the plateau to become smaller as time goes on and components are miniaturised further. Eventually this knowledge will improve other devices, especially the Vision Pro.
Apple being Apple, will market the hell out of the thinness as if it’s a new breakthrough. But the actual breakthrough is the plateau.
It seems to me that Apple’s official measurements are 5.64mm for the iPhone Air and 6.9mm for the iPhone 6 but that for the iPhone 6 they are including the protruding camera (which is quite small) and for the iPhone Air they are measuring the thinnest part (even though the plateau is rather large).
Another thought. To make the Air stand out even more, it should have been port less. Maybe that will happen in a future version.
They introduced the "camera plateau" after already having the "dynamic island"; I wonder how many more geographical features future iPhones will have?
As an aside, I absolutely hate eSIMs. I recently picked up a Pixel Fold, and it prompted me to convert my SIM to an eSIM. Stupidly (and curious what would happen), I did so. This disabled my SIM card.
Then, the Fold died. Usually, I could just take the SIM out of the phone and move it to another phone, but with an eSIM, this only works if your phone works. So I went to one of my provider's stores, thinking they could give me a new SIM, but no. They could not. I had to order a new one online, which was difficult because the website's 2FA system required me to be able to receive text messages under my original number.
In the end, what should have been ten seconds of SIM switching ended up being a week without cell service.
@Scott
> Give me back my mini!
Pretty much this.
I'd half-expected they'd roll out SE 4 out of 12/13 mini parts or something. Minis were alright. Sadly, that never transpired.
Gruber calling some random guy a "terrible photographer who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about" because he returned his iPhone Air is a hilariously unhinged take.
