There’s a marketing practice called Anchoring, where a mediocre product is offered at a similar price to the one the manufacturer actually wants to sell. Sure, you can buy the base model but the next model up, for just $50 more, offers so much more that buying the cheaper one feels like a bad deal. Apple is no stranger to this practice, but I do think that the iPhone Air is a fairly extreme example of it.
Apple’s iPhone strategy has, in recent years, centered on four models: That year’s model, its Pro sibling, and then larger-screened variants of both. This year, the Plus size version of the base model was ditched in favor of the iPhone Air. It’s a dramatically thinner phone, coming in at 5.64mm deep compared to the regular iPhone 17’s 7.95mm. It has a more powerful chip, packing Apple’s flagship A19 Pro compared to the regular iPhone 17’s A19. Oh, and it has a 6.5-inch display, slightly bigger than the 17’s 6.3-inch panel. But those are its only advantages.
Phones have been getting larger and larger for well over a decade and every time, consumers have bought them. The demise of the iPhone SE killed the idea a large number of people were clamoring for a handset smaller than five inches. But I’ve never heard anyone grouse about the thickness of their handset, given these objects also need to be held comfortably in the hand. Consequently, the Air’s main reason for existing is, fundamentally, one that offers a bunch of compromises to reach a target no-one asked it to.
In fact, it becomes embarrassing when you put the Air in a side-by-side comparison with the base model iPhone 17. The handset has a slightly smaller screen and is “only” using the regular A19 chip but, in every other metric, it’s a far better phone. It has a bigger battery and a longer promised runtime, dual 48-megapixel cameras over the Air’s single lens. But while the Air retails from $999, you can pick up an iPhone 17 for $799 with 256GB storage, which I think is a steal. In any logical world, the iPhone Air wouldn’t even get a second glance with 99 percent of buyers.
Of course, much like the MacBook Air this is going to be the shape of iPhones to come. You can already see Apple’s desire to slim down the form factor and ditch legacy technologies like physical SIM cards. It won’t be long before these changes come across to the rest of the iPhone line as users acquiesce to Apple’s desire to trim things down. It’s doubly obvious the Air is laying the groundwork for any planned Apple foldable, too, given that Samsung and Honor are releasing foldables that measure 9mm thick when closed.
But I’d urge everyone else to restrain the desire to spend $999 of their hard-earned to be a beta tester for Apple’s hardware roadmap. Sure, I’ll probably buy the iPhone Air 5 (or 22) but probably only because I don’t have any other choice.
