I’m currently rocking a 2022 iPhone SE, and for me it’s not so much the size — I wouldn’t mind if it was larger — but the form factor that I like and prefer, particularly the Home button / Touch ID.
The new iPhones get a collective ‘meh’ from me. With the exception of the iPhone Air — or the iPhone Supermodel, as I’m going to call it — it’s mostly interations of last year’s models and those of the year before. I think @ace is right that it’ll be owners of older iPhones who’ll get the most benefit from upgrading, though even then it might me worth checking if a refurbished phone or last year’s model would be a better investment.
My biggest comment about the iPhones 17 is the Ceramic Shield glass on back, as well as the Pro design that minimizes the amount of glass. For me it’s about time. Fragile glass on the back or front of the phone was always a terrible design decision to me. I get that MagSafe charging required a non-metal surface, but a glass cutout like they’ve done on the Pro was always a better idea in my mind.
The A19 Pro shows impressive performance, especially its massive graphics boost vs. A18 Pro. Bodes well for the M5.
The svelte iPhone Air beats the iPhone 16 Pro tank despite fewer cores and thermal throttling. Quite impressive.
I’m curious about differences between A19 Pro and non-Pro, but my usual corners of the internet seem a bit mum on that right now. It’s tempting to think of Pro as more RAM, higher clock (due to vapor chamber thermal envelope), and more GPU cores but then the Air comes with a tighter thermal envelope and fewer GPU cores and yet it has a Pro. And there’s good indication that the non_Pro GPU’ 5 cores actually come with a higher peak clock than the Pro’s 6 GPU cores. So there must be some more going on here. Looking forward to a technical deep dive like the ones AnandTech used to do.
Not really that I care about iPhone CPU/GPU performance, just curious about the hardware. Especially considering the A19 likely tells us quite a bit about the upcoming M5 which I do care about. And not to forget, chances are we might soon see a new MacBook equipped for the first time with an A-series CPU, the A19 perhaps?
What seems to have been glossed over is the fact that the iPhone air does not support 5G mmWave (bands n258, n260 and n261) whereas even my lowly iPhone 13 does. So be prepared to sacrifice speed.
I have an iPhone 13 Pro and typically upgrade every 4 year years. I read over the specs generally, and see that optical zoom is improved from my 3x to 8x. I like using zoom. Macro too, but that’s fine.
Still, my iPhone 13 Pro still works fine, and remains under warranty. So I don’t feel a huge urge to upgrade right away. I understand the later versions support Apple Intelligence, but I still don’t know what that is and what it means for iPhone users.
Anyway, I’m not rushing to place an upgrade order. I will look for a side-by-side comparison of the iPhone 13 Pro and 17 Pro though. I think the “max” is too heavy and large for me.
To me the iPhone Air is the ugliest phone ever designed. I just don’t like camera bumps on phones, which increase their effective thickness. And once you add a case to make it flat so it won’t wobble when laid down on a table it makes no difference anyway. Why not make the whole thing as thick as the camera and use the space for an ultra high capacity battery?
I’m not sure I get the wobble thing – I just put my iPhone 16 down on the table and it’s lying there without wobbling. It would wobble if I typed on it or some such, but I don’t tend to do that. Do people put their phone down and then type on it?
Based on the thickness of the camera “plateau” plus the lenses, that would both be a very thick plus very heavy phone. Batteries are heavy.
I’m not a customer for the Air - I also want great battery life that lasts for at least three years, and I fear that the Air won’t be that - so I’m glad that Apple makes this compromise. With the full-length “plateau” on the Air and Pro, the wobble will not be much of a thing anyway (plus I always get a case anyway.)
I have reached the point where I am TRULY tired of Tim Cook saying every year “This is the best (insert product name) we have ever made.” I’m ALMOST to the point of not watching any more Apple Event keynotes at all. I still prefer the ones Steve Jobs did, although he also used superlatives a lot.
I’m afraid the problem will remain (if not made worse) because the camera lenses themselves stick out significantly beyond the plateau/bar itself on the Air and Pro, unfortunately. It’s a missed opportunity to make this part of the device flush. Just like, totally bizarre to me, Apple’s cases often added a lip around the bump area making sure even with a case on the device still cannot sit flush.
Perhaps a bit of a saving grace here is that the wobble is worst when tapping toward the top of the iPhone, but most of the typing is done toward the bottom of the device where iOS default puts the KB.
…because they designed them that way. They could have designed them like a Sony DSC-T1. The lens doesn’t extend out, because the extension is inside the camera, sideways. The optical path uses a prism to take 90 degree turn.
That I believe is how Apple engineered the telephoto lens on the 15 Pro Max. Not that that prevented its lens from sticking out beyond its already bulky camera bump.
Yes, I noticed that too. I was going to write about how I didn’t really notice any issues with my iPhone 16 Pro, and while I haven’t had any thermal warnings, I backed off on that comment when I remembered that it’s not uncommon to put it in my pocket (where it’s sitting full-face against my leg) and think, “Huh. It’s a little warm. I wonder why.” Usually, it was just charging or using GPS or something, but it does happen often enough that it triggered a neuron.
I’ve only seen thermal shutdown warnings when the phone is on the dashboard of my car on a hot day. I don’t do that anymore.
But that having been said:
On a sunny day, even if the air is cool, the extra-bright screen will generate a lot of heat. After about 15 minutes or so, the screen drops down to very low brightness (thermal throttling?) until the phone cools off.
I have often seen the “not charging due to temperature” warning, especially if I’m using it as a passenger in a car on a sunny day. (When I use it for navigation, it’s usually on a vent-mount so the car’s AC keeps it cool).
This might be because I have my phone in a case, which probably interferes with heat dissipation.
I’m afraid the case alone cannot explain it as I have no case at all on my 15 and I routinely see both behaviors you describe during the warmer times of the year.
The screen overheat is particularly annoying — the screen dims down precisely when you most need it to be bright, in direct sunshine. I’ll also note, this is in Berkeley, which is usually quite a bit cooler than Apple HQ down the road. It’s mind boggling to me that Apple engineers, sitting in one of the sunniest and warmest populated places on the planet, don’t see how this defies the entire use case. And that’s before we even consider what it’s like for folks in super hot areas like Phoenix, at any rate by now metro #5 in the US so you’d think the issue would carry some weight.
Why? I’ve been replacing my phone every 3 years, but to save money, buying the previous year’s model after the new model is released. I get 256 MB of storage.
The baseline for the iPhone 17 is 256 MB. Yay!
But, Apple just removed the 256 MB iPhone 16 from the store; you can only get it with 128 MB.
Which means, if this was my iPhone purchase year, I would be forced to buy the iPhone 17 for $100 more.
Fortunately, I hope, when I buy an iPhone 18 in 2027, there won’t be this problem since the minimum storage would be at least 256 MB.
But the price for the 16 with 128G is only $100 less than the price of a 17. If you could still get a 16 with 256G, it would have the same price as the 17 with 256G.
So what is the real complaint? If you want a phone, buy the base model 17 for the same price you would have paid for a 256G 16.
Since you were apparently willing to spend that much on a 16, why is paying the same price for a 17 with the same storage a problem?
Would it, though? Normally they lower the price on the prior year phones. Did they not do that this year?
For example, last year after the iPhone 16 came out, an iPhone 16 with 256 MB cost $929. The iPhone 15 with 256 MB cost $829.
The whole point of buying the previous year is to avoid the OLED tax. The price for the iPhone jumped dramatically with the iPhone X – ostensibly because OLED displays were supply constrained – and never went down.
On top of this is the 5G tax. The price for iPhones went up again with 5G. People who buy their iPhone from a major carrier (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) can get a discount equal to the 5G tax, but not people like me who buy their phones unlocked.
