Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: The iPhone Air is a great advertisement for the iPhone 17

Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2025 20:13:18 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/t...

ThereΓÇÖs a marketing practice called Anchoring, where a mediocre product is
offered at a similar price to the one the manufacturer actually wants to
sell. Sure, you can buy the base model but the next model up, for just $50
more, offers so much more that buying the cheaper one feels like a bad deal.
Apple is no stranger to this practice, but I do think that the iPhone Air is
a fairly extreme example of it.

AppleΓÇÖs iPhone strategy has, in recent years, centered on four models: That
yearΓÇÖs model, its Pro sibling, and then larger-screened variants of both.
This year, the Plus size version of the base model was ditched in favor of
the iPhone Air. ItΓÇÖs a dramatically thinner phone, coming in at 5.64mm deep
compared to the regular iPhone 17ΓÇÖs 7.95mm. It has a more powerful chip,
packing AppleΓÇÖs flagship A19 Pro compared to the regular iPhone 17ΓÇÖs A19.
Oh, and it has a 6.5-inch display, slightly bigger than the 17ΓÇÖs 6.3-inch
panel. But those are its only advantages.

Phones have been getting larger and larger for well over a decade and every
time, consumers have bought them. The demise of the iPhone SE killed the idea
a large number of people were clamoring for a handset smaller than five
inches. But IΓÇÖve never heard anyone grouse about the thickness of their
handset, given these objects also need to be held comfortably in the hand.
Consequently, the AirΓÇÖs main reason for existing is, fundamentally, one
that offers a bunch of compromises to reach a target no-one asked it to.

In fact, it becomes embarrassing when you put the Air in a side-by-side
comparison with the base model iPhone 17. The handset has a slightly smaller
screen and is ΓÇ£onlyΓÇ¥ using the regular A19 chip but, in every other
metric, itΓÇÖs a far better phone. It has a bigger battery and a longer
promised runtime, dual 48-megapixel cameras over the AirΓÇÖs single lens. But
while the Air retails from $999, you can pick up an iPhone 17 for $799 with
256GB storage, which I think is a steal. In any logical world, the iPhone Air
wouldnΓÇÖt even get a second glance with 99 percent of buyers.

Of course, much like the MacBook Air this is going to be the shape of iPhones
to come. You can already see AppleΓÇÖs desire to slim down the form factor
and ditch legacy technologies like physical SIM cards. It wonΓÇÖt be long
before these changes come across to the rest of the iPhone line as users
acquiesce to AppleΓÇÖs desire to trim things down. ItΓÇÖs doubly obvious the
Air is laying the groundwork for any planned Apple foldable, too, given that
Samsung and Honor are releasing foldables that measure 9mm thick when closed.

But IΓÇÖd urge everyone else to restrain the desire to spend $999 of their
hard-earned to be a beta tester for AppleΓÇÖs hardware roadmap. Sure, IΓÇÖll
probably buy the iPhone Air 5 (or 22) but probably only because I donΓÇÖt
have any other choice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/t...
advertisement-for-the-iphone-17-201318112.html?src=rss

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