I love my iPhone Air (and hate tech reviews)

Some people need a car. Some people need a truck. Others need a motorcycle. The iPhone Air is a motorcycle in a world that demands cars and trucks. This is less a review and more a rant about the annoyances of living with modern consumerism.

The iPhone Air is the iPhone that 99% of people need. When you watch/read the reviews you would never hear that. Reviewers are so blind to how the average person uses their phones that it is almost deceptive how they push consumers into other "safer" options that are over-specced for their needs. They give mixed reviews which shapes the market and results in no opportunity to ever buy anything unique.

It seems that what happens with phone purchases in particular is that people are looking for the best phone they can possibly afford. I respect the desire to make your money stretch on something that you'll be using everyday. But why! People are buying so much more phone than they actually need.

Instead this seems to be this weird ghost of a dead tech culture where we used to treat smart phones as luxury items to flex. Nobody cares anymore if you have an iPhone or Android. Nobody cares anymore if your phone is 1 week old or 5 years old. Buy the phone that works best for your needs!

Time to address the grievances reviewers have.

Camera

The big elephant in the room that every reviewer calls out is the loss of the second camera. Again, how often does the average person need some kind of significant zoom? Ultrawide?

These are all pictures I casually took on the Air walking around town one day. Who needs more than this in their pocket? They aren't even zoomed in which means that if I had a typical iPhone I would still not be engaging the second (or third!) camera that I'm supposedly lacking.

Single speaker

The loss of the bottom speaker is listed as a sacrifice. Maybe I'm in the dark here but how often are you using phone speakers? Is it really that big deal?

The single speaker experience is fine. Yes it is slightly quieter experience than other phone speakers. There hasn't been a speakerphone or music listening experience where it has been a big deal. In those situations I'm going for convenience, not the best experience.

Battery

In order to make this phone so thin a smaller capacity battery had to be used. I went in to the office one day which translates to ~12 hours of Maps, music and fairly heavy phone use. By the time I got home at 7PM I had around 20% battery capacity left.

That's an all-day battery life if I've ever seen it. On typical days where I'm not using my phone as much I can easily get 2 days of battery life.

Heat

One of the criticisms of the Air is that it gets hot due to how there isn't much in the way of cooling.

The only time in my experience it has gotten hot is when for 30ish minutes it was transferring files from my old iPhone wirelessly. That's an extremely unique usecase.

Outside of that I've seen no problem. I've played games, videos, and more and never once has it gotten warm.

Why I bought the Air

I just want small phones again. That's it.

I want a phone that isn't heavy in my pocket. I want a phone that I can easily reach across the screen in any position with my thumb. What I really want is a modern version of the iPhone 13 Mini but I bought the Air which scratches the itch. I'm not sure the market reasons why the Mini sold so poorly but I'll mourn it forever.

It is thin and feels great in the hand. If I had to have a complaint of any kind is that it is scary thin. I've already tested to see if it would fall through my backyard deck and it would with no resistance, even with the camera bump. I'm not looking forward to the inevitable army crawl through 20ft of dirt in order to get under my deck to retrieve my phone.

The durability of the Air has been widely praised by reviewers and Apple themselves claim it is the most durable phone they have ever made. Throwing caution to the wind, for the first time in 10+ years I'm using the phone without a case or screen protector. So far it has survived every drop without incident but we'll see what time will tell there.

Reports say that the Air's sales have been poor which makes me fear that we may not see another one. This will probably end up like the Mini. I'm going to become a phone hoarder if the market continues to push out gigantic phones with super computers inside them.

Apple, please, give me an Air with a screen the size of the Mini and I'll give you all my money.