iPhone Air • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone Air

#901

Post by davidclark » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:32 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #344

davidclark wrote: post #330

“Thinnest” should be measured by the thickest slice for a given dimension. I have an iPhone 11 which also has a camera bump and the experience of typing while the phone is on a flat surface is laughably annoying. For a company that prides itself on design aesthetics, it is honestly an embarrassing miss.

Genuinely curious: why do you often find yourself typing on the phone resting on a flat surface? I can’t think of a single time where that’s been the best way to handle my device.

I’d do it more if it wasn’t an annoying UX! I have message previews on lock screen turned off. If I get a message when my phone is sitting next to my keyboard on my desk, I unlock it to view the message. Might type a quick reply.

Re: iPhone Air

#902

Post by linuxftw » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:46 PM UTC

jdprgm wrote: 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.

Perhaps being thinner allows for people to put their phone into an external case, the combined size which is approximately the bulk of the current generation.

Re: iPhone Air

#903

Post by bobmcnamara » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:47 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #711

aurareturn wrote: post #58

It has A19 Pro. A19 Pro has matmul acceleration in its GPU, the equivalent of Nvidia's Tensor cores. This would make future Macs extremely viable for local LLMs. Currently, Macs have high memory bandwidth and high VRAM capacity but low prompt processing speeds. Give it a large context and it'll take forever before the first token is generated. If the M5 generation gets this GPU upgrade, which I don't see why not, the…

> bold sexy orange color Luckily they added the blood pressure check for when you get too excited about the color orange.

BondiBlue4lyfe

Re: iPhone Air

#904

Post by zahma » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

CephalopodMD wrote: post #581

nakamoto_damacy wrote: post #465

I have an iPhone 13 mini, just replaced the battery. If you want my money, give me an iPhone 17 mini with small width and height, I don't care about it being thinner like the Air. Also, no AI ruining the image quality of the expensive camera. I saw examples of a consumer-grade digital camera vs an iPhone 16 and the latter introduced "hotdog skin" effect and other effects that made the photos look over-processed.

Also still rocking a 13 mini. There are dozens of us! Dozens! (Also to those who say not enough people wanted a mini phone to be worth producing: I submit the case of Prego chunky pasta sauce. Not many people want a chunky pasta sauce, but you sell a whole lot more pasta sauce in total if you sell both regular and chunky pasta sauce. Malcolm Gladwell has a TED talk about this.)

Speaking of dozens. I’m on a 12 Mini and will be hard pressed to give it up. I also replaced the battery recently and am still quite pleased with its performance!

Re: iPhone Air

#905

Post by gregoriol » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

It's annoying me that Apple has called it "iPhone Air" and not "iPhone 17 Air", this is Apple creating (again) confusion for every tech person in the future

Re: iPhone Air

#906

Post by tibbon » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

ManBeardPc wrote: post #328

I want an extra thick model instead, let’s call it iPhone Travel (or Ultra?). Just thick enough so the cameras are no longer sticking out. Give me an all-week battery instead of an all-day one. Slim down the power usage and give a power saver mode that actually does make a difference. Let me go on a weekend trip in nature or festival without having to carry extra hardware or having to look for public charging station…

Agreed. Give me a phone thick and durable enough that I don't feel the need to add a screen protector and case to it, or strap a battery to the back to make it last.

It seems they are often peeling away useful features, which then you have to replace - yielding a worse experience often.

Small screen, thick, durable, good battery. Would pay $

Re: iPhone Air

#907

Post by mklarmann » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

nakamoto_damacy wrote: post #465

I have an iPhone 13 mini, just replaced the battery. If you want my money, give me an iPhone 17 mini with small width and height, I don't care about it being thinner like the Air. Also, no AI ruining the image quality of the expensive camera. I saw examples of a consumer-grade digital camera vs an iPhone 16 and the latter introduced "hotdog skin" effect and other effects that made the photos look over-processed.

This is funny, when you think about that our demographic (people with multiple tech devices, in need of a smaller phone, able to pay more for it, etc.) should match perfectly with everyone who works internally at apple on the phones. They must have frequent discussions on this, that get agressively silenced - to keep the focus on the bigger phones :o)

Re: iPhone Air

#908

Post by re_chief » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 2:11 PM UTC

As a feat of engineering, I find this very impressive, but as a product it doesn't seem to me to be very compelling.

Re: iPhone Air

#909

Post by amai » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

amilios wrote: post #503

nakamoto_damacy wrote: post #465

I have an iPhone 13 mini, just replaced the battery. If you want my money, give me an iPhone 17 mini with small width and height, I don't care about it being thinner like the Air. Also, no AI ruining the image quality of the expensive camera. I saw examples of a consumer-grade digital camera vs an iPhone 16 and the latter introduced "hotdog skin" effect and other effects that made the photos look over-processed.

Unfortunately both the 12 Mini and the 13 Mini did terrible numbers sales-wise. People say they want small phones but not enough of them actually buy them when they are available. :(

The problem is simply that the small form factor doesn't allow a big battery. So the iPhone 12/13 mini simply have a bad battery life compared to the bigger iPhones.

The reason why we have such big smartphones is that the ratio of screensize (2d area) to battery size (3d volume) is better for bigger smart phones.

Re: iPhone Air

#910

Post by amai » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

nakamoto_damacy wrote: post #465

I have an iPhone 13 mini, just replaced the battery. If you want my money, give me an iPhone 17 mini with small width and height, I don't care about it being thinner like the Air. Also, no AI ruining the image quality of the expensive camera. I saw examples of a consumer-grade digital camera vs an iPhone 16 and the latter introduced "hotdog skin" effect and other effects that made the photos look over-processed.

The problem is simply that the small form factor doesn't allow a big battery. So the iPhone 12/13 mini simply have a bad battery life compared to the bigger iPhones.

The reason why we have such big smartphones is that the ratio of screensize (2d area) to battery size (3d volume) is better for bigger smart phones.