It’s been a tough year, especially if you’re trying to decide which iPhone to buy. I’m not the first to point this out, in fact Apple’s own Molly Anderson even noted as much in an interview with the WSJ.
Every year that I’ve upgraded since the lineup fragmented, the Pro has been the easy pick. The base model was ruled out due to a lack of ProMotion (once you take your motion professional, you never go back). So Pro it was, I’ve never been tempted by the Max. The base iPhone Pro has treated me very well. This year however the regular iPhone got ProMotion aaaaand Sage green, a mighty fine offering and one that feels specifically targeted to me (green is my favourite colour). But they didn’t stop there, they also announced a brand new device in the line up, the iPhone Air. A large screen device in an ultra thin package, colour me intrigued. Lastly for the Pros this year they also ditched the glass sandwich and replaced it with a unibody aluminium frame and for the first time in the Pro it comes finished with an actual colour, orange. These are the days we’ve dreamed of.
Caught between indecision and a hard place, I did what any ordinary person would do and bought both the iPhone Air (Silver) and iPhone 17 Pro (Orange, obvs). The goal was to use both of them interchangeably for a week and then decide which one would get pocket privileges for the year. The decision making didn’t last beyond the unboxing of the Air though, by golly this thing is lovely.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone 17 Pro is awesome, the best yet and not just because Apple says so, but because the new aluminium frame is lovely to hold, the orange has “oh we heard you wanted a real colour” energy and all of the cameras are finally 48 megapixel meaning you can’t lose. Not to mention bigger batteries. The iPhone 17 Pro is finally full word professional.
Back to the Air though, you really have to hold this thing. Seeing a photo of someone else holding it really doesn’t do it justice. It’s like hearing someone else describe food. I haven’t felt so compelled by a new device since the iPhone X. It feels like you’re just holding a glass screen and nothing else. It feels impossible. After using it for just a few minutes I knew I’d be happy to trade off the extra cameras and battery life of the Pro and after a few weeks, I haven’t been wrong yet. The battery life is also totally a non issue for me (I haven’t had to adjust my charging habits at all coming from the iPhone 16 Pro).
I’ve seen a number of people posit that the iPhone Air is just a stepping stone to a foldable iPhone, that because its missing the 17 moniker its clearly a one off product. In an interview with All Things D, a while after the first iPhone was launched Steve Jobs gave the insight that the multitouch technology made famous through the iPhone was originally developed for a tablet, but when they got it working, they realised it would make for a killer phone. So they shelved the tablet project and focussed on the iPhone. Later they would return and finish off the tablet we now know as iPad. I bring this up because I wonder if it helps frame the iPhone Air a little better than some other frames seem to. After using it for a couple of weeks, I can’t help but feel it deserves to exist in its own right, and I wonder if that’s exactly what Apple discovered. Perhaps on a mission to produce two ultra thin halves of a fold, they realised just how nice an ultra thin iPhone can be and so shelved (or at the very least, spun off) the foldable project, to give this thin phone the attention it deserves. It seems very odd to me otherwise, to give people a taste of a delightfully thin phone, only to kill it a year later and introduce a device in a completely different category. Why can’t we have both? I think we should have both.
Honestly this phone feels like the truest expression of Apple’s design methodology in a while. When Apple are at their best the specs don’t make sense, but the devices do when you use them. The experience is so good that you don’t notice what’s missing. Sure extra cameras would be nice and a few hours of additional battery wouldn’t go amiss, but I’ll happily trade those off for a device that is just pure fun to use and hold.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that for this year at least, I’m handing in my pro card, I’m not an iPhone professional anymore, I’m an Air boy.
One minor footnote, if you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll know about my issues with the speaker grill on recent iPhones. Well if I needed one more reason not to get the Pro this year, the grill is now three times as wide! It’s a crumb guzzler. The Air retains the grill design of last year, which now feels like an upgrade.