Iphone Air
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
apple.comTechstoryHigh profile
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Iphone AirAppleSmartphone Design
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Iphone Air
Apple
Smartphone Design
Apple has released a new iPhone model called 'iPhone Air', touting its thin design, but the community is largely unimpressed, questioning the value of thinness over other features like battery life and camera design.
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Hm, i'd consider it (if i was upgrading yet again).
Why? My 15 Pro (not-Max) gets way too hot way too fast doing basically nothing and it p*sses me off - so, i'd rather not (yet?) take a bet if the new 17 Pro (Max) does better with an entire new thermal design - considering _something_ is _always_ off with new Apple hardware designs, starting with the iPhone 4...
When companies try smaller phones, like the iPhone 13 mini, they don't seem to sell very well. So the companies stop making them.
That’s not nothing
What do you need battery life for?
Aren’t you in your house or office or car near a charger most of the day?
Do you spend 90% of your waking day in the middle of an open field far from any sort of charging capabilities?
Why would I add more weight to a phone so I don’t have to put it on the charging MagSafe puck that is inches away from me at all times
I don't think the average person sits at home for 90% of the day doing nothing but using their phone and resting it on a magsafe.
But I could be wrong!
Either way, I'm pretty sure that's not the lifestyle Apple wants to market their phone to.
But I could be wrong there, too!
Those who commute to and from work by car can charge in the car
Those who work in an office can charge at the office
Those who are at school can charge at school
The vast majority of western society is in one of those settings most of the day
Planes also have charging ports
Trains have charging ports
If you are at the gym you can have a MagSafe portable charger in your gym bag that charges your phone when you hit the showers
Give me a few examples of who actually isn’t near a charger for 8 hours at a time
A full time skier or surfer?
I can’t think of the groups of people who need such long battery life
It does not seem Apple cares about customers being too stubborn to not want to use any of the many options to juice up a phone mid day
I guess those users can get the iPhone max and not have to charge all day. So you’ll be fine
As someone who's been all around the world and goes places every week, I'd take a battery that lasts all day and charges when I sleep over needing to stop and try to get another 5% of charge wherever I can and constantly being on the lookout for chargers.
Also, people go into nature. We take hikes and walks in the park. It's nice to have a map there. It's also not easy to charge in the middle of the forest. And there are lots of people outside and needing good batteries. Nobody is staying home 90% of the time.
A charger is like $50
Why would I carry around a brick in my pocket instead to save a few chargers
How does that make any sense
Also my iPhone 14 Pro lasts a full day 90% of my days on 1 charge
I use my iPad or MacBook most of the day for work or am driving
Seriously?
Where are people consuming so much content that they need more than 10 hours of screen time per charge
Just doom scrolling in the middle of a field for 600 straight minutes until their phones die?
but yeah, everywhere around all day there is charging options easily even in many public transports here around europe, battery life is simply not a convern anymore for most people at all. the only time i even thin kis when I forgot recharging over night for some reason, but then in the office theres plenty of options to recharge too
When travelling how? By car you have a cable charger or wireless charger in 99% of cars I’ve been in
Planes have plugs Trains have plugs Ubers have plugs
It seems like that is a once in a while occurrence for you
In which case you’d be better off with a thin phone the vast majority of other days and pack a thin MagSafe charger for those once in a blue moon travel days and it would just be slightly thicker than a thick phone while the vast other days you’d have a thin phone
No, thanks, I have up to 5 days of the runtime, I don't need a paperthin phone which I need to babysit.
It's when you need the phone the most that battery life matters and it's usually when you are very far from your common routine/habits.
When you are in holydays in a foreign city, constantly taking pictures, looking up stuff, using GPS to find places, this is when battery life is the most needed and relevant. Inconveniently, it's exactly the times where it will be hard to find a convenient power sources, exactly when you don't have time to wait in a single spot to let your phone charge and precisely when it's a pain in the ass to have to deal with external batteries and other half-assed inconvenient "solutions".
It makes a huge difference.
But Apple doesn't sell useful technology anymore, they are in the business of selling high end luxury fashion, that sometimes cosplay as technology, so whatever I guess...
Battery life isn't just about runtime it's also about the number of cyles you will be able to do before you have to deal with the bullshit that is iPhone battery replacement.
There is objectively no good reason to prefer that compromise appart from the "feeling" factor, which is not a reason by definition.
If get the battery compromise in the mini iPhones (even thought they could have just made them a bit thicker without changing much of the feel/functionality) because that's part of the deal with the form factor but going with a very large display only to make the phone thinner is beyond stupid.
And it's more expensive when most of the specs sheet is equal or worse.
For the people who are at home 90% of the time, they're probably not using a phone the whole time. They'd be better served by a desktop.
I've been hoping for Apple to return to "thin" and it's nice that they're trying. I don't know whether I would buy this, but my current iPhone 14 Pro feels like a brick — thick stainless steel
When I go for a run, it's uncomfortable to have in a pocket depending on what running clothes I am wearing. The heaviness makes it feel far more likely to break all the times I have dropped it (and I have dropped it many times, without a case)
the small battery won't affect me much. web browsing is the most demanding workload on my phone, which is not a problem on this a19 soc unlike the 13 mini whose soc struggles to keep up. i also charge my phone every night before i go to sleep and these phones do a great job at not draining overnight.
Granted I loved the 13 mini and that didn't sell so who knows.
Sorry, how is applying less force more dangerous?
(in general, wish the force meters would be widespread so that iFixit kit just had a monitor with a number and a beeper once you reach the needed force level)
Apple focusing on thinness is proof to me a foldable phone is next.
Seriously. Take a look at the foldable touchscreen phones that do exist. "Because" is the only answer.
And most people are like me, which you will see in a few years, when foldable sales take off.
And if you’re going to ask why a bigger screen? It’s the same reason your laptop or desktop isn’t 7” wide.
It is almost as good as the (smaller) first gen iPhone SE with the physical button.
[1] https://qz.com/1288272/bendgate-was-real-apple-knew-the-ipho...
Like the iPad which many said is useless and just a bigger iPhone and so far Apple has sold ~500,000,000 iPads
Yes, that's correct.
Got it.
BTW iPhone Air is 165g. It's 22g more than my iPhone 6s but since its much taller and wider I expect it to feel lighter.
It's 51g lighter than 14pro, which is very significant.
Apple doesn't care about weight. If they did, they'd use a lot more plastic and a lot less glass, metal and ceramic.
But admittedly the differences are smaller than they’ve ever been.
Apple: here's the thinnest phone ever
good. they just caught on with Android in 2020.
https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_mate_xt_ultimate-review-2808...
[0] https://youtu.be/lKie-vgUGdI
I view my phone primarily as something I'm obligated to carry on myself at all times to function in modern society. The easier it is to carry the better. When I need to upgrade my phone, I'll always choose the smallest iPhone by weight.
I was quite surprised to see this entire thread full of HN users who apparently want some brick phone to doom scroll lying flat on a table all day until the battery dies.
I'm considering it. I'm not particularly married to the thinness. But I like the lightness.
I'm not an avid photographer. And I don't put a case on my phones. The only real tradeoffs I need to look into is processing and battery life.
Just make the thing a uniform thickness and cram it with battery.
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