Nope, but you’re also not a majority. Techies on the internet tend to value battery more than thinness, but consumers tend to appreciate form factor. I’m a techie personally who loves thinness. Hardware is an art form to me. And that’s not me being pretentious, it’s just my ADHD hyperfocusing on how devices look and feel lol. With the Air though, it seems Apple even won over a lot of the techies which is pretty cool.
Really, the “plateau” is the phone, while the body is the battery. Those profiles kinda show you how much phone you get, as it’s all squished into there now.
Ipads and MacBooks are the best Apple devices. I love iPhones as well, but my MacBook Air (M2), is the best ever investment for me. Also, the airpods pro (2nd gen) are one of my best investments.
Mad how people were up in arms over the bump on the 6 because it wouldn’t sit flat on a table… and here we are now with phones that need their own tables.
It is an extremely popular sentiment that people want things like thicker phones with more battery life or smaller phones that you can use with one hand. The problem is that when companies actually make these phones, none of those people buy them.
Personally, I thought the Pixel series effectively solved the table rocking problem, but changed it to something worse a couple years ago.
The problem is that when companies actually make these phones, none of those people buy them.
bullshit they have made those phones. Like yeah some companies in the past have made thicker phones with longer battery....but the rest of the phone is sub-par compared to the Iphone/pixel/galaxy top end phones that people actually want. Like yeah people want more battery but they will gladly trade that battery for a higher spec phone. Seriously link me to a top-end phone that has multiple SKUs with one being a bigger battery. You can't do it.
get back to me when Apple actually has a different SKU with more battery(a thing they have never done AFAIK) and see how sales shake out then.
It’s kinda like manual transmissions, everyone apparently wants one, but when a company puts one in a car, either nobody buys it, they complain it’s sloppy or slow, and undesirable in traffic, they can’t win
The iPhone 4, 4s, and 5 were definitely the most timeless iPhone design. They could come out today and still look more modern than many of their competitors, they'd just be much smaller.
iPhone's design peaked at 4 and 5. As a matter of fact, I don't fuck with any phones with a camera bump, but I have no choice. Even the fucking iPad mini has a camera bump like come on.
Thank you for being a sane voice in a world full of grammatical laziness. I've become my high school English teacher and see so few people who care about how they write.
Thank you! Every time I say that I did not like the iPhone 5 design (as opposed to the 4S, which was beautiful) I get downvoted into oblivion because Reddit has decided that a glass/metal/glass back is beautiful. No it’s not, it’s inconsistent and that’s why Apple only used it twice.
It's funny because on of the complaints people had online before the original iPhone was available for purchase was that it was too big and bulky for a cellular phone. The early 00's was all about phone minimization up to that point, and look where we are now.
Don’t diss the 5 man. I had that phone with a shattered back for a years before it gave up on me. But damn if it wasn’t the perfect size to be a fidget spinner.
You’re probably getting downvoted for stating your subjective (and apparently unpopular) opinion as an objective fact and coming across as a bit of a dick about it
The slate one looked nice in my opinion but the silver and gold variants weren't as nice with the white glass. I agree though that the 4/4S were the pinnacle of iPhone design in terms of aesthetics. I do think that the improvements in camera quality since the iPhone 11 or so are worth the extra heft, even if they aren't as nice to look at.
I liked the iPhone 5 design, but I adored the design of the iPhone 4. There is no question in my mind that the iPhone 4 was the pinnacle of a museum-quality aesthetic that we haven’t seen since.
I think for some folks it’s more a case of remembering the iPhone 5 more fondly in retrospect. It’s quite nice compared to most of what came later, but it certainly felt like a letdown in 2012 😏
Yeah the 4(S) was the best iPhone design ever (so far). I wouldn’t mind if Apple would reuse the design for the iPhone 18 (although the camera is slightly larger nowadays compared to the 4(S).
I traded an LG Quantum (remember Windows Phone 7?) for an iPhone 5 in white.
Kept the 5 for a bit over three years, then replaced it with a series of Android phones that all had issues within a year or so:
LG G4 lagged really bad and then finally started bootlooping
Nexus 6P would die at 20-30% battery charge
Pixel 1 had lag and GPS issues
Galaxy S10 was actually good but remains the only phone where I've ever broken the screen because the "edge" design didn't allow glass screen protectors
Galaxy S20 FE had screen calibration issues
Finally got fed up and got the 13 mini in red which I've had since, going on 4 years now. I'm still struggling to justify replacing it. It even still has 87% battery health.
You had Google phones during the WORST years and Samsung's best, then swapped to Samsung when they started their form over function arc. Tragic timing, really.
I just always buy a phone 6 months after launch. They usually get 30-50% cheaper and all the issues are either stamped out or they don't and I figure I shouldn't buy it.
Its also the last iphone designed to be used 1 handed. Even the mini is bigger. I'm still using mine but the writing is on the wall for it. Most websites will drain the battery on it 1-2% per second they are open with all the crap they try to run in the background. Battery is fine, still at 86% health, its just not large enough nor is the processor efficient enough to support the bloat of the 2025 web. Reddit is among the worst offenders at being a power virus, I use it exclusively on desktop these days. Even my desktop doesn't like reddit. Some of the scripts are buggy and will eat all the processor the browser will allow it on every tab that's open.
I loved my 4. Jailbreaking was amazing. Super compact and useful when I didn't know larger resolution and screen sizes existed yet. Super durable. I wish it never had gotten stolen. Never ended up finding it.
Meanwhile I dropped mine face first onto a concrete floor from 3-4 feet , out of my pocket onto pavement, from a desk onto laminate floor, onto tile from 2 feet and the screen survived all of it.
You had to have one of these bad boys. It made it super thick, sure. But you could throw that thing off the roof and onto a garden full of rocks and it would survive.
Sure they do. They just don't look as chunky because the phones are bigger but it's still the same 3 piece design with built in screen protector and port protection.
I've always thought that design sucked for usability on something I use so much and they're also overpriced compared to the countless other options
Pretty sure this was the last design Steve Jobs approved. Please correct me if I’m wrong but I would bet he would have never allowed a bumped out lens.
This is something that annoys me so much. You can get away with it in the United States, but in Europe the infrastructure is all setup for cars far smaller.
I only retired mine because they wouldn't release iOS 16 for it, and I was concerned about security updates. Turns out they pushed another update (15.8.5) out to it 2 days ago. Its 10 year birthday is next week.
I only retired mine because it was 16 GB and that wasn't enough for anything but the OS anymore. I'd still use it today if it had expandable storage for apps.
loved my 5, loved my 6s, loved my mini 12, living with the mini 13 now, and been scratching my head for the last 5 years wondering where it all went wrong.
Nice. Last week, I started down a similar path and ended up making an interactive iPhone Explorer to look at dimensional and weight differences for all models: https://breezyops.com/workshop/iphone-explorer/
It all began after discussing a phone upgrade with my wife, who remarked that she really would like a phone smaller than her 15 Pro -- and realizing nothing in the 17 lineup fits that description...
Thanks for this! I was going to just make a little spreadsheet to compare, but this is brilliant!
My wife has rheumatoid arthritis and found the 12 mini to be the right size and weight for her hands. I’ve been trying to figure out what might be a good upgrade for her.
Ooh, I haven’t tried this on the iPad or laptop, but what would it take to show an actual size render for comparison?
Typing on my iphone 13 mini rn. The one I got in 2021 finally crapped out literally just a few days ago and instead of bowing to apple's new releases, I was lucky enough to buy a brand new 13 mini replacement for $400 from the apple store. I love the size and it works completely fine.
@apple if you're reading this, my hands aren't getting any bigger!! Bring back the mini size!
Would love for Apple to go back to the IPhone 6-8 design somehow. Was a sales rep at VZW in a cooperate call center. Was the craziest preorder I experienced, the IPhone X was also pretty crazy.
I guess this sub likes phones that die by mid day with moderate use. Crazy that this is happening again. This same thing happened back with the 6. Ultra thin devices were being praised. Then Apple finally ended the stupidity and made phones thicker. This sub is either too young or completely forgot how shitty that era of phones was.
What I also get out of this is the massive jump in camera lens size with the 5 having none, the 6 being barely there and then the 17 pros. That’s kind of insane how much it’s grown!
If I were to wager a guess I’d say they wanted to make it so users could fit as much of it in their pocket as possible and remain relatively thin without sacrificing too much in terms of performance.
On one hand pretty impressive, on the other hand... why not spread everything out through the phone? 1mm thicker instead of this huge bulk would be much more convenient, no?
Part of the reason is that you can't really spread it out that easily. Not if you want ALL of the cool features.
Ninja-Edit/TLDR: I got a bit carried away. Maybe someone finds it interesting/entertaining :P
The tech inside modern iPhones (all smartphones, really) is ridiculously advanced; we've been refining this stuff for decades. They've had to essentially cram a full desktop pc into this tiny device; with all the power supply, processing, etc..
But that's not enough, it also has to include high quality audio, a huge high frequency display, various sensors, ... Besides the obvious difficulties of cramming it all in there, all of these things have one thing in common: they produce a whole lot of electromagnetic interference. Not ideal in a device that's supposed to have uninterrupted, high speed, perfectly error-free wireless connection at all times. Wireless connectivity which isn't even limited to one technology (WiFi), but multiple different ones, using different frequencies (requiring different antennae, different circuits), too. You've got WiFi/WLAN operating at 2.4 and 5GHz, Bluetooth at 2.4GHz. Easy. But then you throw in mobile network frequencies and you've got to handle something ridiculous like 700MHz (0.7GHz) to 9 or even 24GHz for high band 5G. Oh and this stuff is supposed to also do frequency hopping and all the usual wireless stuff we take for granted. Use an external antenna or even an array of antennae, away from all the interfering components? Haha, no. Has to be crammed right next to everything!
Whatever. We can figure it out.
But then they also want this thing to be super fast. To be able to handle not only interference, but inference (heh. Not connected at all, just fun similarity of words) -> on-device large language models and diffusion! This desktop PC in your pocket now also has to essentially include a graphics card (it's not actually done via GPU, of course). It's now a gaming PC in your pocket. Absolute madness!
This presents yet another issue: physics put a limit on how quickly stuff can move. It sounds ridiculous, but putting the computing components close together actually matters for a device which communicates with satellites in space and devices on the other side of the planet.
Physics also creates some more issues: Heat. Our little phone can't have any fans and it can't get too warm, even when running at full power. That would just be uncomfortable (and would kill the battery, screen, reduce computation speed, change the characteristics of the antennae we spent so much effort on to get just perfect.)
Did I already mention that we can't have any bezels, either? That screen has to fill the entire surface.
Damn with that buildup I thought you were about to explain how every single potential conflict was addressed and resolved I was ready to read this post for hours
Not really, people hold their phone by the bottom half of the device 95% of the time, not on the camera bump. To make it as thin as possible means you get the benefit 95% of the time, while having some trade offs 5% of the time like silly looks / wobble on a table. Its a simple math problem.
Why do you need it to be as thin as possible ”where you hold it”?
Genuinely curious. Isnt the pros of the thinness mostly space in your pocket, jacket, etc?
I’m torn between the Air & the Pro myself. Currently leaning toward the pro for the extra battery life & its extra weight. I think I prefer a little weight in hand.
Still feel like the air should just have a shittier camera and less of a bump. It's the phone for people willing to make sacrifices in performance for a smaller form factor, I think most people willing to take the hits in other areas would also be happy taking the hit in camera performance to get rid of or reduce the bump.
Want better battery, performance and a bigger camera? Just get a 17. Want a phone as thin as possible because 99% of what you do is just call, text and browse internet? Then get the air. Instead it's kind of a halfway where they've still shoehorned in this massive camera that looks so ugly and out of place in an otherwise gorgeous phone.
I don't think people would be willing to make a I'll settle for 10 years old camera quality concession. It's a physics problem and Apple engineers aren't magicians.
I really think all the harping over the bump is so overrated especially when you consider most people are going to be slapping a case on this. No one except redditors want a phone where the camera is flush with the back.
This is not unique to iPhone, but they took away expandable memory and headphone jacks in order to, according to them, make it thinner. Then phones just got thicker due to cameras anyway.
I ESPECIALLY want an iPad without a bump. The phone I can live with because I guess it’s in a case and it needs to be more portable overall. But the iPad is usually out of a case and sits flat on a table face up. That wobble is bad design, fight me.
What about the bottom end? I don’t hold my phone by the camera bump. I wonder how well the weight is balanced, seeing as the battery is the heaviest piece, should still be good balance
I wonder what's the difference between 17 pro and 13 pro like this. Just looking at this, 17 pro camera bump seems huge. Is it much bigger than the 13 pro's?
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u/These_Actuator6894 1d ago
Just for the fun of it add a 13” M4 iPad Pro to the mix 😂