Many folks will find some "the one thing that I could not give up" that prevents them from moving to a new device. E.g. in my case camera competence forces me to the iPhone Pros.
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iPhone Air Reason for not getting iPhone Air?
- Thread starter Qu1ckset
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Here's the thing, using Wifi 6 to transfer files between devices is plenty fast for 90% of users. Like it's 4x faster than USB 2. Now if you are doing a ton of video recording and then editing on a different device...yeah the Air is not for you...even with wifi data transfer.
Any app that can airdrop should be able to take advantage of WiFi speeds to transfer. But thinking about it a bit more now, airdrop isn’t an option with Windows. So I can see why USB 2 speeds may be less than ideal if not also using a Mac.
Fair enough, but your performance estimates are way off the mark.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/10/iphone-17-pro-iphone-air-a19-pro-benchmarks/
Air is 10-15% more powerful for both CPU and GPU than 16Pro (despite having 1 less core and compromised cooling - yes), which translates to not marginal anymore 30-33% more performant CPU/GPU than 15Pro. What it means for prolonged sustained usage we shall see, but at least in time it takes to run Geekbench, the gains are quite substantial to be fair.
I mean, how do you think companies work? Adding features from the flagship would cannibalize their sales, which would reduce profits. Companies exist to make profits, not just as a public service. It's no different than automakers who require upper trim levels in order to unlock certain options.
If a company does this too much, then people will turn to other options.