About this video

• Video Title: iPhone Air Review: Beauty is Pain
• Channel: Marques Brownlee
• Speakers: Marques Brownlee
• Duration: 00:16:21

Overview

This video reviews the new iPhone Air, focusing on its design trade-offs, particularly its thinness, and the compromises made to achieve it. Marques Brownlee discusses concerns related to its speakers, eSIM-only functionality, 5G support, USB-C port speed, thermal management, camera system, durability, and battery life. He also touches upon the potential future implications of this design for foldable iPhones.

Key takeaways

• Extreme Thinness: The iPhone Air is significantly thinner than previous iPhones and iPod Touches, achieved through internal component rearrangement, prioritizing form over function.
• Compromises for Thinness: To achieve its slim profile, the iPhone Air sacrifices a bottom speaker (leaving only the earpiece), adopts eSIM-only technology, omits millimeter wave 5G, and uses a USB 2.0 port for data transfer.
• Thermal and Camera Limitations: The phone's thinness leads to increased heat during sustained use and a simplified single-camera system lacking ultrawide and optical zoom capabilities, which may be a significant drawback for some users.
• Unexpected Durability: Despite its thinness, the iPhone Air is surprisingly durable, surpassing many expectations and even surviving bend tests, with a robust titanium frame and improved ceramic shield.
• Battery Life Concerns: The battery is a notable weakness, being the same size as older models despite the larger display and powerful chip, resulting in less-than-stellar battery life and slower charging, making it potentially unsuitable for heavy users or long-term ownership.
• Future Implications: The design and engineering efforts behind the iPhone Air may be a precursor to future foldable iPhone designs, pushing the boundaries of thinness and component miniaturization.

The thinnest and most interesting iPhone in years... is a preview for an even more interesting iPhone

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Phone provided by Apple for review.

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