Greetings from a fellow Air owner and longtime lurker 🙂
My own 2c, for what they're worth:
Regional store offered it to me brand new, 520 euro cheaper than the 17 Pro.
520 euro cheaper with the 4yr extended warranty included mind, so, yeah, bought it.
First two days, battery life (as in real life, actual usage) worried me greatly.. no way this thing would last me the day. First day in, it barely lasted me half the day and i'm being literal.
After a) updates, app installations, et al. were over with, b) i sorted it out to function as a normal cell phone and c) disabled Siri? Entirely?
I couldn't care about the battery life, am more than good. Barely at 60% when i'm back home 🙂
So, point one:
+ Battery issues greatly exaggerated. For its intended audience*
Moving on, if one were reading posts here, one would have thought its rear camera is useless, horrible, etc etc (we even have this guy stating he cannot do his eBay ads anymore, the zoom isn't enough..?).
At 2x zoom i can take a document picture standing, at a distance, with artificial ceiling light only, evening at home typical scenario; and be able to read it clearly from my macbook's monitor when AirDropped. So.
Leading us to point two:
+ For normal usage and/or people, the rear camera is very good, more would have been wasted.
If you "aspire" to photography on the cheap and/or do "social", this isn't for you, sure. But then again, you knew that getting in, not for you, so why complain; honestly.
More importantly, why type and type only so as to wrongfully convince others the camera is insufficient? It's not.
+ Even though a slim difference, it is lighter, it is thinner, you do feel that.
Working with it, your 16 Pro now feels chunky.
+ Apple's own modem.
Not enough people focus on this one. And they should.
i) Qualcomm and Mediatek's modems? They "phone home". Does Apple have 100% control over this? Where and what they "phone" back in? No one knows.
We all know, exactly, where Apple's modem does. Not in China. Not in data farms.
ii) Capabilities? I'm bypassing my cellular provider's resolution service, use my own DNS even when Wi-Fi is disabled. Zero DNS leak, after extended testing. My provider has no control over where i go, what website i visit, even when i need rely solely on them (5G only). All from a simple mobileconfig file that i made myself. My 16 Pro cannot do that, i tried. It lacks Apple's modem 🙂
Huge thing this one. They don't control me, i might as well be at home on my Mac with my sophisticated router, in as far as "internet" experience/functions may be concerned.
Leading us also to privacy; privacy, without sacrificing performance, battery life, or suffering a financial penalty (purchasing third party apps offering similar).
+ Contrary to what you'd expect (see: MacBook Air variants), you get the full compliments of the Pro motion display, ie those 1600 nits. With the relevant price hike, sure, but; SE Europe, broad daylight, sun's glaring, and you wouldn't know it looking at the screen.
* If you're after "Air" variants, you're after function, you want the basics; you need it to work, well and reliably; you do not expect gimmicks, extras, flashiness. Pure function. And something tells me a lot of the people complaining had only the price tag in mind (which is steep and unreasonable in comparison, i'd agree on that. But yet again, something tells me the comparison metrics others employ focus.. elsewhere).
The iPhone Air is as "air" as it gets.
I love mine.
I get exactly what i expected out of it.
M4 MacBook Air + iPhone Air happy owner, over and out 🙂
