The iPhone Air is a technical and design marvel, but it raises a simple question: how much are you willing to give up for a lightweight, ultra-slender phone? It is one of the thinnest handsets ever made, yet achieving that profile meant stripping away rear cameras, shrinking the battery, removing stereo speakers and maximising the screen. What remains is an impressive sliver of titanium and glass.
Priced from £999 in the UK, the Air sits between the standard iPhone 17 at £799 and the 17 Pro at £1,099. Its 5.64mm frame feels even thinner thanks to soft edges, and it weighs 12g less than the already light iPhone 17. The 6.5in display is smooth, bright and fantastic, though the single earpiece speaker is the only audio output – there is no stereo sound when watching videos.
The two biggest concessions are battery and camera. Despite most of the body being dedicated to the battery, capacity is smaller than other iPhones. In lighter use, with five hours of screen time over a day, it lasted around 40 hours between charges. On heavier days with 5G, navigation and video, it managed about 30 hours, ending the day with roughly 25% left. The single 48-megapixel rear camera matches the regular iPhone 17, not the 17 Pro's larger sensor, and performs well in good light, though it can look soft in dim conditions. A 2x crop zoom is decent, but beyond that digital zoom loses detail.
Performance is rapid for daily tasks, powered by the A19 Pro chip with one fewer GPU core than the 17 Pro, making it slightly less capable for graphics-intensive work. The phone runs iOS 26 with all the usual features, including Face ID and satellite connectivity. One notable difference is the lack of a nano SIM tray – the Air relies entirely on eSim. In the UK most major networks support eSim, but budget providers may not, and switching between phones can be awkward.
Durability looks solid, with iFixit awarding a repairability score of seven out of ten. Battery replacement costs £109 and out-of-warranty screen repairs £349. The Air contains more than 35% recycled material, and Apple offers trade-in and free recycling schemes. While the Air is a marvel of engineering, the trade-offs in battery, camera and audio may be too hard to ignore for most buyers.
