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MSRP on the Galaxy Edge is $1100. The Air is just releasing and already there are trade in deals with carriers for people who have not upgraded their device in a while (AT&T is giving me $840 in billing credits for trade in of my 14 Pro with a busted screen).

The Edge definitely has a better camera.

The Edge battery actually tested worse in the EU certification testing regardless of claimed performance, it is rated for more charge/discharge cycles which is important for those who keep their phones for a long time.

Size wise the devices are almost identical... you point out that the Edge is slightly thinner but it is also slightly wider and longer to accommodate the larger screen. I believe it also might have done worse in drop tests (scoring a C where the Air scored a B).

The Edge is a good device, but I don't want to run Android.
The Edge's color rendition is way, way worse. There's a lot more to quality images than MPs. Tom's has a great comparison they dropped today, if you want to see what I mean.

I'll miss the wide angle lens, but I'll live.
 
This is illogical and illustrates a lack of basic understanding of how pricing and marketing works. This phone is a "whole new thing" at least in the weird context of smartphones. It is not designed or sold as a bargain loss-leader. Not expecting a premium for this type of product from a company like Apple is patently naive, and I'm being kind. And that doesn't make the base 17 any less of a bargain. Just don't buy one. Tens of millions of others will, just watch.
Yeah, no one's putting titanium anything into a loss leader. That shows a misunderstanding of Apple's approach, which is to fork the product line into a truck/sports car analogy. The Air is the sports or halo car that will bring even more people into the stores. That couldn't be said for the Plus or the dearly departed, beloved mini.
 
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All (at least most) reviewers have iPhones as their personal phones. They are biased as hell. All the advantages I mentioned are factual. Whether the reviewers decide to notice them is a different story.
Actually, your list of advantages was kind of silly and intentionally ignored advantages the Air has over the Edge, which is, you know, biased. "2 grams". Come on.

As for reviews, I'm not talking about YT influencers; rather more standard media whose embargoes dropped at 6am. Apparently you haven't read those? CNET, WSJ, NYTimes, 9to5Mac, CNN, The Verge, Engadget, Tom's Hardware, PC Mag (a noted Apple supporter, right?). Surely the conspiracy isn't that vast?
 
If battery life is merely good enough on a brand new device with 100% Battery Health, that's not a great sign for real world owners because it's only going to get worse over time.
If good enough is similar to the good enough battery life of the 15 Pro or 16 Pro, battery life becomes less of an issue. The limitations of the camera is the bigger issue (possibly) for me.
 
I think there is a very simple explanation for this behavior.

People are seeing the Air and think it’s beautiful, but they cannot comprehend settling for a phone that doesn’t have everything on it, but then they’re bothered that they’re not getting the pretty phone with everything on it.

So the solution is to tell themselves and everyone else the pretty phone sucks. They want to believe they’re making the right decision buying whatever other phone they’re going to buy and this is how they cope.

You see that with Vision Pro. Too expensive. So they convince themselves it sucks. Has no use case. Etc.

Myself I was never considering anything below a pro. Besides I think the pros look better. Bigger screen. It’s the only part of phone I look at. lol.

iPod touch like with a big camera bump is pretty much iPhone air. Slower than the base model. Crap battery. One camera. Crappy speaker. In terms of looks my pro 15 still looks better than any of the 17s. But I don’t get a phone based on how the back looks. Don’t care too much.

Now if the iPhone air was something better. In some way. Thinner or a bit lighter isn’t it. I’d even consider a new screen tech. Something. Anything. It’s worse than a base iPhone. Imagine having this 2-3 years.
 
WIRED's Julian Chokkattu on battery life:

"Heavy users will undoubtedly need to top up this phone during the day. On one travel day, I took the phone off the charger at 5:30 am and used it extensively for navigation, music streaming, phone calls, and Instagram Reeling, and I hit 2 percent by 4:30 pm."

One way to significantly extend battery time, when using a phone in your car for navigation, is to place it on a car mount that's connected to the car's 12V outlet via an adapter in the outlet, or if your car mount doesn't have its own power input port, just use a cable to connect the phone to the adapter in the 12V port. The constant back-and-forth negotiation with cellphone towers while driving around using GPS is a really heavy power draw.
 
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The Edge's color rendition is way, way worse. There's a lot more to quality images than MPs. Tom's has a great comparison they dropped today, if you want to see what I mean.

I'll miss the wide angle lens, but I'll live.
It's going to be tough for me to lose Macro and the wide angle lens but I think I can survive. It's likely that within just a generation or two Apple will have this addressed in any event.
 
WIRED's Julian Chokkattu on battery life:

"Heavy users will undoubtedly need to top up this phone during the day. On one travel day, I took the phone off the charger at 5:30 am and used it extensively for navigation, music streaming, phone calls, and Instagram Reeling, and I hit 2 percent by 4:30 pm."

One way to significantly extend battery time, when using a phone in your car for navigation, is to place it on a car mount that's connected to the car's 12V outlet via an adapter in the outlet, or if your car mount doesn't have its own power input port, just use a cable to connect the phone to the adapter in the 12V port. The constant back-and-forth negotiation with cellphone towers while driving around using GPS is a really heavy power draw.
For context, the paragraphs preceding that one in that article:

"..The battery life of the iPhone Air is better than I expected.

The Air was generally able to last a full day with average use for me. I hit around five hours of screen-on time with around 18 percent left by 10:30 pm. This worked for me, but my expectations were also very low. I had to baby the battery so much on the last ultra thin phone I tested, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, and I was surprised to find this wasn't the case with the Air..."
 
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Shorter battery life, single camera, thermal throttled performance, needs external battery pack just to be barely all-day.

Too many compromises for a $1k phone. I’d say it’s DOA 🤷🏻‍♂️😉

The real star of 17 Series is actually the vanilla, base model 17. You get so many upgrades for the same $700.
 
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I read your post perfectly, thanks. You didn't say that though. You said people didn't want small iphones. Now you are saying there is a vocal minority. So that's some people then.
You clearly didn't read it perfectly because if you had you would have noticed this part of the post.

I'll bold the part in question for you: They have the numbers and clearly those numbers indicate that, despite a vocal minority, the smaller phones don't sell in numbers that would justify the cost of manufacture.

People clearly don't want smaller iPhones otherwise Apple would still be making them but if you're going to continue to argue semantics then I'll just take myself out of this discussion.
 
Shorter battery life, single camera, thermal throttled performance, needs external battery pack just to be barely all-day.

Too many compromises for a $1k phone. I’d say it’s DOA 🤷🏻‍♂️😉

The real star of 17 Series is actually the vanilla, base model 17. You get so many upgrades for the same $700.
Cost isn’t a concern for me but I almost went with the iPhone 17 which is $800 not $700. It is a better value.

I chose the Air because it has a slightly larger screen and 50% more memory and a much faster CPU. I do use business applications and those improvements will be well worth it for me personally.

Its one camera also has a better sensor than the one on the 17.
 
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Cost isn’t a concern for me but I almost went with the iPhone 17 which is $800 not $700. It is a better value.

I chose the Air because it has a slightly larger screen and 50% more memory and a much faster CPU. I do use business applications and those improvements will be well worth it for me personally.

Its one camera also has a better sensor than the one on the 17.

Thanks for correction, 17 base model is $800. I just feel A19 Pro in the Air will still be throttled most of the time, not to mention 5 GPU cores vs 6 in the 17 Pro/Max. I just feel the thinness compromises so much it may performs closer to base 17 instead. In the end it feels like a concept tech demo instead of a phone that people should buy.
 
Thanks for correction, 17 base model is $800. I just feel A19 Pro in the Air will still be throttled most of the time, not to mention 5 GPU cores vs 6 in the 17 Pro/Max. I just feel the thinness compromises so much it may performs closer to base 17 instead. In the end it feels like a concept tech demo instead of a phone that people should buy.
I’m guessing it depends on your use case . If you are coming from pretty much any older phone the iPhone air will have better battery than that and the chip is more powerful than that so for your experience it will be better than what you are used to . The base phone is the sensible purchase as it pretty much does everything for a great price . I guess if you want a bigger screen then you are torn between the air and the pro max which the pro max approaching a bit too big and heavy territory
 
I wouldn’t want an Air as my main phone, because I want both the telephoto and ultrawide lenses plus long battery life. On the other hand, it’d be great as my work phone, because for that device I want a big screen, but don’t need high-performance cameras (because it rarely shoots anything other than whiteboards), or maximum battery life (because I don’t log that much time on the work phone). Right now my work phone is an SE3, which is nice and light, but the small screen interferes with my ability to peruse email attachments and issue replies without cracking open my laptop. I am sure that I am not the only person with this use case.
 
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MSRP on the Galaxy Edge is $1100. The Air is just releasing and already there are trade in deals with carriers for people who have not upgraded their device in a while (AT&T is giving me $840 in billing credits for trade in of my 14 Pro with a busted screen).

The Edge definitely has a better camera.

The Edge battery actually tested worse in the EU certification testing regardless of claimed performance, it is rated for more charge/discharge cycles which is important for those who keep their phones for a long time.

Size wise the devices are almost identical... you point out that the Edge is slightly thinner but it is also slightly wider and longer to accommodate the larger screen. I believe it also might have done worse in drop tests (scoring a C where the Air scored a B).

The Edge is a good device, but I don't want to run Android.

Any Android phone is just a counterfeit iPhone. Android is counterfeit iOS, and it's about as bad as any counterfeit.

I'm old enough to remember when Jobs announced the iPhone. Android at that moment was counterfeit Blackberry. It sucked. The day Jobs demo'd the iPhone, they started counterfeiting iOS.

Android still sucks. Just get an iPhone.
 
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Think it is a good phone. Battery life is also better than expected, I think. But would have liked to see brighter colors. The options now are very pale. Will be visiting a store once it is available to try it out.
 
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You clearly didn't read it perfectly because if you had you would have noticed this part of the post.

I'll bold the part in question for you: They have the numbers and clearly those numbers indicate that, despite a vocal minority, the smaller phones don't sell in numbers that would justify the cost of manufacture.

People clearly don't want smaller iPhones otherwise Apple would still be making them but if you're going to continue to argue semantics then I'll just take myself out of this discussion.
>> despite a vocal minority, the smaller phones don't sell in numbers that would justify the cost of manufacture.

This does not change whether people want small phone or not though, and people do.

>> People clearly don't want smaller iPhones

No, people do want smaller iPhones. This is independent of whether it's 'worth it' for Apple to manufacture them.

You do realise it's perfectly possible for people to want smaller iphones, but also not be 'worth it' for Apple to manufacture? the 2 are not mutually exclusive.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
 
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“Hi, it’s me, Macrumors Consoomer.

I don’t get the point of the iPhone Air. Who asked for this?

iPhone Air is cOmPRoMiSeD. Apple reviewers are BiAs (sic).

Why would you want a MOBILE device you hold in your HAND to be LIGHT?

Why would you want a MOBILE device you put in your POCKET to be THIN?

I don’t get it. Someone please explain. It’s all so confusing.

What I want is MOAR:
Moar GBs
Moar megapixels
Moar cameras
Moar GPUs
Moar MBs/sec
Moar vapors
Moar grams
Moar Pro

My ideal is a phone that resembles a 90s PC laptop - 7 lbs with every port, spec and feature you can imagine. Make sure it has Flash and a keyboard too.

Fire Tim Cook. Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave. Bring back Jony Ive and fire him again.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
I want the phone to be light because I like to read eBooks on my phone. A thick phone in your pocket, with a giant plateau bulge and a big techwoven case on it? Nice. LOL. Pro buyers might need the lanyard! As for all the MOAR MOAR stuff, why would one need that when you probably also have a Mac or iPad that gives you all of that already? This iPhone Air has more power, better battery life, and a bigger/better screen than my current iPhone 15 Pro.
 
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This enlarged camera bump will encourage more of us to place the iPhone face down when we are sitting at a table. That’s good for us, don’t need to stare at the screen every moment and some notifications can wait. :)
 
This enlarged camera bump will encourage more of us to place the iPhone face down when we are sitting at a table. That’s good for us, don’t need to stare at the screen every moment and some notifications can wait. :)
Go a step further and don't have your phone on the table. Basic manners.
 
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I want the phone to be light because I like to read eBooks on my phone. A thick phone in your pocket, with a giant plateau bulge and a big techwoven case on it? Nice. LOL. Pro buyers might need the lanyard! As for all the MOAR MOAR stuff, why would one need that when you probably also have a Mac or iPad that gives you all of that already? This iPhone Air has more power, better battery life, and a bigger/better screen than my current iPhone 15 Pro.
Either you missed the joke or you are playing 5D chess and we are missing your joke. Either way good job.
 
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