Apple iPhone Air

A stunningly thin design, impactful display and the latest A19 Pro chip, but there are inevitable sacrifices

- MARK SPOONAUER

The is the boldest new iPhone design in years. It replaces the iPhone 16 Plus in Apple's lineup - but rather than going big, this model goes thin, with a claimed thickness of only 5.6mm. It's a striking innovation, and one that comes with compromises, but depending on your priorities it could be your perfect iPhone.

Slimmer by design

Clearly, the point of the iPhone Air is its thinness, but when Apple says it's 5.6mm thick, it somehow omits to mention the camera bump (which also contains many of the core components). This gives the phone a maximum thickness of 11.3mm - thicker than a regular iPhone 17 - but because it's all up at the top of the body, the phone still feels thin in the hand and even slips nicely into a shirt pocket. What's more, because the bump (Apple calls it the "plateau") runs all the way across the body, the phone doesn't wobble on a table when you set it down.

The Air comes in Sky Blue, Cloud White, Light Gold and Black; in my view the Black finish makes the design look cheap, but the Sky Blue nicely shows off the Air's thin profile. You might worry about the durability of a phone this thin, but I've seen a demo in which the iPhone Air happily survived a bend with 60kg of force. The screen is protected by a Ceramic Shield 2 display, while the Ceramic Shield back is purportedly four times more crack-resistant than glass.

The display measures 6.5in across the diagonal, with slim bezels that make for a pocket-friendly size. It's a good screen, too, with an OLED panel for rich colours and contrast, a dynamic refresh rate that scales from 1-120Hz and a rated maximum brightness of 3,000cd/m². Partnered with Apple's own anti-reflective coating, that makes the iPhone Air great to watch outdoors.