Apple often underspecs its first gen products. I suspect future Airs will get improved specs relatively to its generation and other models may also get Air type design changes.
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iPhone Air vs. iPhone 17 Pro Max Battery Life Compared in New Test
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I think some on this website, especially some of the more “techy” people who know what a megapixel is, are seriously underestimating the importance of both…
A: how something looks to the regular consumer
B: the fact that 99% of people who upgrade their phone do it through their carriers on upgrade deals that make the price between the 17 and Air basically a $5 a month difference.
I feel like there are plenty of customers who will see that the Air is way thinner and lighter than the 17, and will go for it simply based off of that.
Most regular consumers are not comparing speaker quality and cameras, they just aren’t.
Apple has not said the Air is a replacement for the Plus and it isn’t, in the same way the Plus wasn’t a replacement for the Mini. It’s lazy journalism that calls the Air a replacement for anything. The Air is a reaction to the Mini and Plus not selling well. Apple are hoping to Appeal to people who value design, weight and screen size relative to that above other features and benefits. It’s a product looking for a new market. If it’s successful (based on how Apple views success of a product) then we will get more than this and the next improved version. If not it will go the same way as the Mini and Plus.
Props to Tom's! This test is far better than just telling me how long I can watch a video on it. GSMarena also does some good battery testing, but they haven't posted their take yet.
Most of the reviewers posting Wednesday didn't even test the battery. Just said it lasted them all day in the two days they used the phone. Not that helpful. The Verge said she used a Pro Max for 5 hrs SoT and ended the day of light use with 16%, which sounds awful.
I also criticize reviewers comparing the anti-reflective to the 16-series rather than to Corning Gorilla Armor 2 on the S25U. We know that is a very antiglare screen, so I need to see them side-by-side.
Most of the reviewers posting Wednesday didn't even test the battery. Just said it lasted them all day in the two days they used the phone. Not that helpful. The Verge said she used a Pro Max for 5 hrs SoT and ended the day of light use with 16%, which sounds awful.
I also criticize reviewers comparing the anti-reflective to the 16-series rather than to Corning Gorilla Armor 2 on the S25U. We know that is a very antiglare screen, so I need to see them side-by-side.
It is a replacement at that middle price-point (bumped slightly, but still a middle child in the lineup). It is a decoy slid between the base 17 and the 17 Pro to make the Pro look less expensive by comparison. When you put 120hz ProMotion in the base phone and the next phone up is $300 more, it looks like a big gap, but when it is only $100 more than the Air, your brain is tricked to go Pro. They don't need to sell a bunch of Air phones for it to be successful, as its success is in getting more people to get Pro phones. It is a topic covered by Dan Ariely in his book Predictably Irrational. Good read.
I think that’s the point, the air is going to quickly become the new regular, the same way the MacBook Air replaced the regular MacBook, despite them coexisting for the first three years.
Notice how all of the rumors for next year‘s phones are saying that the regular 18 won’t even launch alongside the regular fall lineup, but instead won’t launch until spring 2027?
That’s because it’s being phased out.
Also notice it’s the one phone and this year‘s lineup that didn’t get a design upgrade whatsoever? That’s because it’s being phased out.
The standard iPhone and the “SE/e” will eventually combine into one around $600, leaving the air as the standard, super thin, will make pretty much everyone happy consumer model.
That also leaves room for them to start going all out with the pros and the folds, seeing as there’s pretty much no incentive for them to keep it around $1000 any more since, well, that’s the air spot now.
Between them not using a number in the name of the iPhone Air (something they’ve never really done before) plus the rumors of a 20th anniversary pro iPhone all screen that would technically be called the iPhone 19 but likely won’t, I think we are about two years away from a complete lineup reset where all of the numbers vanish, the regular iPhone disappears, the air becomes the new regular and we just have four lineups, just like the iPad.
iPhone regular: $600
iPhone Air: $1000
iPhone Pro: $1300+
iPhone Ultra/Fold: $2000+
No numbers anymore.
So we can shout "PRO, PRO, PRO" at them with our deepest arena voices?
We will have to agree to disagree, it might replace a perceived gap in the line up compared to the models that existed before but as a product it is not a bigger version of the 17 in design, materials or concept so as I previously asserted…….not a replacement for the Plus. Maybe you failed to understand the book…..and my point.
CNET’s review seemed to come to similar conclusions, at least during the first several days.
But then they had to qualify that by saying that a couple days in, once the battery life normalized, they would end the day with around 40%.
So it very much seems to be something that can vary, depending on how new the phone is, if it’s still indexing, etc.
Personally, I’ve pretty much noticed the same thing with every iPhone that I’ve ever owned going back to the 5 all the way until my current 15 Pro Max…
On day one, the battery can last me all day, maybe a day and a half to two days.
After a while, no matter how good the battery was on day one, no matter how big the phone is, no matter if it’s a regular or a Pro Max, it will at least need to be topped up once at some point during the day.
I expect the Air to be pretty much the same, last a full day the first several months, until it eventually needs to start getting an extra boost halfway through the day.
And I expect this to be true with the 17 Pro Max as well.
It’s interesting because this is definitely something I very much would have cared about several years ago, but at this point charging is so fast and so easily available between MagSafe, USB-C, battery packs, battery banks, etc that it doesn’t really bother me anymore.
Even the “20% by supper” feels fine to me, because if I plug the phone in and I start eating, by the time I’m done eating it’s likely to be back at 60-80% and last me just fine for the rest of the day.
No, but your point is irrelevant to Apple's marketing plan. You can call out the journalism as "lazy" but it's really just semantics. The goal at Apple is to have 4 phones to choose from and you still have four.
I am convinced that Apple omitted the second speaker purposefully on the Air to boost battery life to acceptable levels.
The 16 generation really increased battery life over the prior couple of generations, so with the iPhone Air exceeding the 16 generation, it will blow away the 13, 14 and 15 generations across the board (exception to the Max versions of those generations which will be comparable).
So yes, unless you thought those versions were completely unacceptable, if you have a two to four year old iPhone, the iPhone Air is going to be good enough battery life and will seem like a battery life upgrade.
Interesting info. We really need someone to do 16 series vs 17 series tests at the same time under controlled conditions so we can be more certain that there are no differences in test methodology but if we take those comparisons at face value it's even possible that the Pro Max at least (the phone I use so the one I pay closest attention to) might even have got worse battery life with the 17 vs the 16.
The issue is that, although as I mentioned in an earlier post it's not explicitly stated, I assume the Tom's Guide tests on this year's Pros were using the US eSIM-only models and those have slightly bigger battery capacities than the versions in some other countries where they still have the physical SIM slot. As I understand it that wasn't the case last year where the eSIM-only models had the same sized batteries as the equivalent models with a physical SIM slot.
If all my assumptions are correct then for a like-for-like comparison to assess power efficiency for a 16 series Pro vs a 17 Series Pro (or Pro Max) we should really be looking at the 17 series models that still have a physical SIM card slot so that would knock some run time off the results for the 17 Pro and Pro Max maybe even to the extent (particularly for the Pro Max) of putting them behind the results for the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max given how narrow the advantage looks currently even when testing the eSIM-only 17 series against effectively the physical SIM slot 16 series.
I do find that conclusion hard to believe given that even the versions of the 17 Pro & 17 Pro Max with physical SIM slots have higher capacity batteries than their 16 series equivalents (or at least that's the rumour, I think not yet 100% confirmed by a tear-down) so it would really be disappointing if that higher battery capacity was indeed yielding worse run time results compared to the smaller battery models from last year. That would imply to me that some of the electronics in the 17 series Pro series is actually less power efficient than what was in the 16 series Pros.
Could be. Two speakers take more power to drive, certainly. But when you need to crank it all the way up because it is playing out of the earpiece, are you really saving any battery? Waiting to see a teardown. They still needed to put a microphone down there, so not sure if they would have really lost much more space from a speaker.
Spot-on.
I remember all of the recent doom and gloom comments about how bad the battery life would be on the Air using a smaller battery. While intentionally ignoring the fact that that Apple's C1X modem chip would consume significantly less power. And that the A19 chip uses one less GPU core.
Because the air won't take out for a day under load mostly. If the Apple was sure, they would not produce an additional accessory immediately at the start of sales in the form of a proprietary air battery
People who regularly bought the Plus are not going to feel that way since it seems to be a downgrade in most ways. In that regard, the Air is in a weird position just as the Plus was and I think the Air just makes the Pro phones more appealing which is likely the ultimate goal.
I was wondering whether the Air is likely to make the base phones more appealing.
People look at the Air - how light and thin and cool-looking it is - and start to wonder whether they really need three camera lenses, LiDAR, special cooling etc, and then realise they can save a few hundred by just getting the base model.
Honestly, other than the thin new look, it seems like everything else about the phone does push people to either the base model or Pro model. Even the screen size is not much bigger than the base model compared to the Plus models of the past. I do wonder with the fact that they aren't calling it part of the iPhone 17 lineup, if it is just some type of test for future phones.
A lot of people want a light weight phone and are tired of carrying around bricks.
Yeah I love the lidar like once in a blue moon when I need to measure something but I can manage without it. Tradeoff is really fine with me on that. I dont even use 5G so dont care at all about mmWave.