That iPhone Air exists at all is a marvel of Apple’s engineering teams, but that marvel was achieved through such compromises that the iPhone Air is close to being just a proof of concept. It’s Apple saying it can do this thing, and now we know it truly can, but its sole real benefit is its startling thin size. The iPhone Air does have a larger screen than either the iPhone 17 or the iPhone 17 Pro, it also has poorer battery life. Apple also released an iPhone Air-specific MagSafe Battery Pack that doesn’t fit on anything else, which is telling. We won’t know just how essential that battery accessory is until the iPhone Air is being tested in the real-world. But Apple trying to spin it as a great option just underlined that not everyone is going to get “all-day” out of this iPhone. There will, of course, be people who do not need this all-day life. Either they don’t travel far from an outlet, or they are simply casual users of their iPhones. In which case, though, they are paying more than they need for a device that they won’t pick up and use very often. The iPhone Air does have a GPU-binned version of same processor of the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, so it should be faster than the base model — but there is also a clear problem. The higher end Pro models also feature vapor chamber cooling. They do so in order that the A19 Pro processor can run at full speed for longer, without making the iPhone overheat. Unsurprisingly, the narrow iPhone Air does not have room for a vapor chamber. So it won’t be able to match the extended performance that the higher end models will. As the MacBook Air heralded the next two decades of laptops, the iPhone Air represents where all smartphones are headed. Especially now that it’s proven possible, one day it will surely be that all iPhones are this slim.