Live data from Hacker News

iPhone Air

apple.com

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: iPhone Air

#251
Related ongoing threads:

Compare the New iPhone Models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186294 - Sept 2025 (95 comments)

iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186044 - Sept 2025 (42 comments)

Apple Debuts iPhone 17 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186023 - Sept 2025 (104 comments)

Re: iPhone Air

#252
post #208

This has a couple of up sides. 1. Biggest is that Apple can finally tell if people really want a thinner phone (I don’t). Maybe once they find out the answer, they can finally start using the space more productively. 2. They mentioned local LLM in passing, but this is the biggest possible selling point of the executives actually back real work on making them consumer-level easy. Have a LLM marketplace. Let users sub-…

Sigh. I can't stand the camera bump. I would run not walk to the nearest Apple store with all my savings if they made a phone where the camera bump is made flush by adding thickness elsewhere to match, filled with extra battery. Thing would last for weeks. Ah well back to reality.

I'll do you one better, how about the camera is not flush but recessed so it is less likely to be the thing that gets smashed?

Re: iPhone Air

#253
post #227
post #187

Can someone that is actually interested in this explain the appeal? Thin on its own I get but thin with a giant bump 100% defeats the whole point for me. Seems clear at this point there is little hope of them engineering their way into thin cameras.

Same question here. Why would I buy this instead of folding phones that provide a tablet-like screen on demand?

This is likely a prototype for their folding phone, which are essentially just two ultra-thin phones stuck together.

Re: iPhone Air

#254

This is becoming comical. iPhone Air only supports USB 2 speeds. Seriously? Also iPhone Pro only comes with USB 3 speeds while amplifying ProRes RAW support...

I don't think I have ever plugged in my phone, like at all, ever, and it's not even an iPhone. And if I want to get any photos/videos I made with it, they are just in Google photos?

Like I get there are some people who maybe use the thing as an actual camera and they suddenly need to download tens if not hundreds of gigabytes of media off the phone but like.....I guess it's just not the phone for them? And like you said the Pro supports USB3 speeds so what's the issue? 5gbps is really not fast enough?

Re: iPhone Air

#256
post #208

This has a couple of up sides. 1. Biggest is that Apple can finally tell if people really want a thinner phone (I don’t). Maybe once they find out the answer, they can finally start using the space more productively. 2. They mentioned local LLM in passing, but this is the biggest possible selling point of the executives actually back real work on making them consumer-level easy. Have a LLM marketplace. Let users sub-…

It's thinner, but at 165 grams it's not appreciably lighter than a regular-sized iPhone (the 16e in particular at 167 grams). People generally want a more lightweight phone more than they want a thinner phone. So it's only for people who also want a larger-than-regular iPhone screen.

Re: iPhone Air

#257
post #167

"Impossibly thin" is right in line with Patrick McGee's "Apple in China" who argues that the main reason for Apple's designs is to keep imitators at bay by introducing manufacturing challenges that only they can meet. Indeed impossible at the time of release. One generation after the other. He estimates this gains them about 6 months of headway. Tough world. (Yes, to be fair, there is more to this new phone than just…

The Samsung S25 Edge, which has already been on the market for a while, seems to be pretty popular.

It's 0.16mm thicker than the Air. I've got to admit it was surprisingly pleasant to hold.

I even did a low key bend test and it did not bend, but I literally had store security walk up to me and ask me not to do that.

https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-edge/

Re: iPhone Air

#258
The thinness of the letters in the title really accentuate the camera bump. For me it makes it looks like it's called APR and really draws attention to a design feature I dislike, having said that I know that some people find camera bumps a positive feature.

Re: iPhone Air

#260

I'd be paranoid all the time about breaking it by accidentally sitting on it. Thinner just means it won't have as much strength to resist being bent into an ass-shaped curve, right?

i'm sure most people reacted like you in focus groups. I dont know how many times they said "its our most durable phone" and "its so strong" etc. Got to be a way to directly counter this first impression.

That's so weird, they're implying that it's more durable than the thicker iPhone 17
Post reply on HN