18:56
I like thin and light tech a lot. The laptops that I choose, the desktops that I build, I will purposefully choose devices that have worse performance or louder fans, and sometimes just higher price tags just because I value the small form factor so much. So, when the new iPhones came out a couple weeks ago, uh the very obvious choice for me, I wanted the iPhone Air to be my device for this year. Like, it's designed so well. If you haven't seen Zack bend this thing, go watch his video. It is wild how much force this phone needs to break. But the iPhone Air looks really cool. It feels nice in hand. It is arguably Apple's most interesting phone they've made in years. But I want to
address four pain points that definitely exists on this phone. Three of them I don't think are as bad as they're being made out to be. But the last one is something that I think is a bigger issue for a lot of people and potentially a dealbreaker. So, I thought right when they announced this thing that the battery life would hold it back because in 2025, consumers have access to so many incredible phones with crazy long battery life. And in comparison, if you compare the iPhone Air to one of those high-end flagships with big batteries, this has a very short battery life. But the other way to look at it is if you compare this iPhone Air to a normal phone that people would be upgrading
from, so like a 3 or 4year-old phone, this actually has very good battery life. It's not great, but it's a legit full day battery because Apple's put a lot of work into the efficiency of this phone. So, if you're using for regular stuff, I think it's a comfortable full day. If you play games, you're going to have to charge this thing halfway through the day. It's just it's built for a very light to moderate load for a full day. Now, there is the battery pack that you can get from Apple. It's a same size pack inside the MagSafe pack as the one that's inside the phone itself. A full Mags safe pack gives about 65% charge to the phone because wireless charging is inefficient and you lose
some of it to heat. But even though it does fit nicely, it is unfortunate that you have like this thin phone that becomes like a normalsized thick phone with the pack on. Uh, okay. The second thing I want to talk about is the camera. So, it's a single camera system on the Air and I'm happy with it. It's a good shooter. It's great in low light. It's really good in videos because it's iPhone. I found that in the past two weeks, I just didn't miss the telephoto or the ultra wide all that much in my day-to-day. I do think that if I was traveling frequently or going to events like concerts and stuff, I would miss it a lot more. Like I go through my camera roll and all my photos are just like the
regular lens typically, unless I go to places or I'm traveling, then I'll use the extra focal length. So, I think if you're on the fence about this, look in your camera roll. Just go through and be like, "What percentage of my photos were shot on lenses other than the main?" And I think that'll just make it easier to decide whether or not this is a good fit for you. Uh the front-facing camera is much improved this year. It has been detailed in my Pro video, but yeah, it's a way better front-facing camera, and it's the same camera across all of the iPhones this year. The third issue I want to address is performance. So, the iPhone Air definitely gets hotter than I expected. They've stacked this with 12
gigs of RAM and it's got the Pro chip. But when you look at the thermals of these devices, the Pro with its vapor chamber and aluminum chassis just handles heat much better than the Air with its glass back and titanium frame. And when you look at sustained performance between an Air and a Pro, it is obvious that the Pro is just built to be pushed for a long time with performance in mind. The Air is not. So, if you crank the iPhone Air, you will have to deal with heat and performance throttling. It's not going to affect the normal user, but if you want to like play a lot of 3D games or you edit videos in Cap Cut on your phone, I would go for a different device. All right, the fourth issue I want to talk about is
the speaker. This has a single speaker, and it's been 8 years since I reviewed a phone with a single speaker, and single meaning like mono speaker. There's no uh stereo sound. So, even the S25 Edge, which is also a very thin phone, this device had two speakers. With the single speaker on the iPhone Air, you get mono sound that comes at the top in portrait mode. But then in landscape mode, you get mono sound that comes out on one side alone. And it's a very thin and flat driver, so you don't get a lot of bass. But every time I would watch a show or play a game and just use these speakers, I'd be like, "These actually suck." But then the real problem, volume. I measured these speakers with a calibrated u mic and
there's about a 10 dB difference between the iPhone air and the iPhone 17. 10 dB. That's a perceived difference of almost double the volume for the iPhone 17. It is very significant. Now, I need to be clear. It's not like you can't hear anything on the iPhone Air. You can hear it. It's just it's a lot quieter than a typical modern-day smartphone. Now, I first noticed it when I got a FaceTime call. I was out in the backyard with my kids. We'd often take a call from my mom and we just do it as a thing. I we none of us could hear her properly. We all had to go into the house and take the call there. And it didn't clue in then. I was just like, "Oh, maybe it's just like a noisier evening." But then
the I think it was like 2 or 3 days after I was cooking and this is something I do very often. I have like the air sucking thing going on in my kitchen. I'm cooking stuff. I was like chopping some stuff up and I got a call in. I go into speaker phone. I actually I had to turn off the fan and turn off the gas stove just so I could hear the conversation. And that's when it clicked and I was like this I think this is a real issue. Now, it's not going to affect everybody. Obviously, most people don't even use this stuff. But I do think that if you FaceTime regularly in an environment where if you have like kids and family, you take FaceTime calls with multiple people and there's just
like ambient noise in the environment, you will absolutely notice the difference between the iPhone Air and basically every other phone that's available on the market with two speakers. Hey, this is just a voice. You can hear the difference in volume between the two different phones. Hey, this is just a voice memo so you can hear the difference in volume between the two different phones. It is not loud enough in noisy environments. So if you are someone who uses FaceTime or the speaker phone very often with a lot of ambient noise, you should take that in consideration. Now when you look at the four individual issues that I've talked
about, so the battery, the camera, the performance, the speakers, I don't think any one of them is like an immediate deal breaker universally, right? it. I think though that most people will be affected by at least one or more of the four. And the thing is the novelty of the thinness of this phone wears off pretty quickly. I'm on I'm wrapping up week two and it's still like every time I pick it up I'm like this is super thin. This is awesome. But I'm like I don't feel like my life has changed all that much going from like a very thin phone to an extremely thin phone. It is neat to pull out of your pocket and like when my kids handle they're like wow this is super thin. But the novelty has
definitely worn off. And the thing I'm trying to convey is that the novelty of it, like you don't want several months from now or like a year from now when you're still using this phone to be like, man, I've run into all these little obstacles and I keep having to avoid them and dodge them and kind of adjust how I use my phone because I went for thinness. Like I did this to myself. Damn it. I kind of regret getting the super thin phone. That is the mistake that I think we all are trying to avoid. And I would say that for most people, if you look at that list of problems and one of them kind of if it bothers you a little bit right now,
I would skip it and go for a different phone. But if you look at the list, you're like, "Yeah, man. I'm good with that. None of that affects me. I can charge phone regularly. I charge it at work all the time. I don't really use my camera. I don't really use FaceTime in loud environments, and I don't care anything about performance." You're going to love it because it is built for that type of user. Okay. Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it.
