I had the 16PM before the air, and my wife has the 17. The speakers on those phones are indeed bad. Yes, I fully admit they’re better than the Air’s speaker (although “two tin cans connected by string” is ridiculously hyperbolic - the speaker on the Air is more than fine for a phone speaker). But I honestly don’t understand how anyone listens to phone speakers regularly. Clearly lots of people do, but IMO it’s a terrible experience that could be easily and massively improved even with cheap bluetooth headphones or speakers.
As I wrote, I don’t think adding a second speaker would make much of a difference at all. There’s simply not enough physical space to make a meaningful difference, and I firmly believe most of the people on MacRumors screaming about lack of a second speaker wouldn’t be able to tell the difference had one been included. Maybe I’m wrong and you can come back next year and point out how much better the Air 2 sounds.
But strongly I suspect adding a second speaker will be like when Samsung would boast about its cameras’ huge megapixel numbers and still use a crappy image sensor. Just something to list on a spec sheet that actually doesn’t make a meaningful difference.
My Air definitely has similar battery life to my wife's 16 Pro before she switched to the 17 Pro. Obviously different apps and usage patterns, and my Air was new and her 16 Pro was a year old, but the battery life was on par (if not a bit better) on the Air. I can't speak to the second part of his argument, but the first is absolutely true.
