iPhone Air Review: Apple’s Slimmest iPhone Is A Design Triumph With Tradeoffs

	Apple iPhone Air (starts at $999, as reviewed $1,199) The iPhone Air is Apple’s new ultra thin smartphone and despite making compromises in camera versatility and battery life, this phone is a design masterpiece that’s simply greater than the sum of its parts.
	Ultra slick design Gorgeous display Excellent cameras Solid performance MagSafe built-in  Polished software	No ultrawide or telephoto shooters Mono speaker eSIM only worldwide Middling battery life

Then again, Apple’s design chops, tight vertical integration, rich ecosystem, and polished software cannot be overstated. So, is the iPhone Air simply another example of form over function, or is there more meat to this skinny phone? The answer is complicated. Read our full review to find out.

iPhone Air Hardware And Design: A New Level Of Sleek

Imagine holding a display in your hand – a perfectly balanced, 6.5-inch diagonal, 5.6mm thick, 165g piece of metal and glass with perfectly chamfered edges and perfectly rounded corners. There is no smartphone; there is only display. That’s what holding the iPhone Air feels like, and it’s sublime. Like with Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge, it’s hard to describe in words how thin and light this handset feels in hand, but Apple's iPhone Air cranks this concept up to eleven.
Do yourself a favor. Visit your nearest Apple store to experience this handset for yourself. Photos and videos simply don't do the iPhone Air justice. It’s ultra slick. What you get is an ultra-durable (and surprisingly repairable) glass and titanium sandwich with a horizontal bar along the top edge of the matte back panel. This backside “plateau”, as Apple calls it, houses the single rear camera, LED flash, a microphone, and parts of the iPhone Air’s motherboard.
It’s similar to the visor on Google’s Pixel phones, but also reminiscent of the camera bar on Google’s Nexus 6P, and it rises seamlessly from the rear glass, like a mesa. The 48MP rear shooter is surrounded by a metal ring that matches the polished titanium frame, and that’s basically it. Since the single camera protrudes from the plateau, the iPhone Air wobbles slightly when placed on a flat surface. That’s the only design criticism I have.
The iPhone Air is available in Space Black, Cloud White (with a silver frame), Light Gold (eggshell with a gold frame, like our review unit), and Sky Blue (white with just a hint of blue and a silver frame). It’s rated IP68 for dust and water resistance, and features Apple’s Ceramic Shield glass (Ceramic Shield 2 in front). What you won’t find anywhere on the iPhone Air is a SIM tray. For better or for worse, it’s eSIM only worldwide.
As you’d expect, the iPhone Air’s port and control layout is pretty much identical to the eSIM-only iPhone 17 models. The power / lock key and Camera Control button are located on the right side, and the volume rocker and Action button are mounted on the left. Along the bottom, you’ll find a pair of small grilles flanking the USB Type-C port (USB 2.0 only) that conceal a mic and the mono speaker. There’s nothing on the top edge.

iPhone Air Specs And Features

Processor & 5G Platform	Apple A19 Pro SoC (5 GPU cores), Apple C1x 5G Modem, Apple N1 Networking Chip
Display	6.5-inch 1.5k LTPO OLED (Super Retina XDR), 2736x1260 resolution, 1-120Hz
Memory	12GB
Storage	256GB/512GB/1TB
Rear-Facing Cameras	48MP 1/1.56” f/1.6 PDAF, sensor-shift OIS
Front-Facing Cameras	24MP 1/3.6" f/1.9 PDAF 1:1 aspect ratio (Center Stage)
Video Recording	Up to 4K @ 60fps, 1080p @ 60fps, 1080p slow-mo
Battery	3149mAh, 20W wired charging, 20W wireless charging (with MagSafe magnets)
OS	iOS 26
Dimensions	156.2 x 74.7 x 5.6mm
Weight	165g
Connectivity	802.11be Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, NFC, UWB, Thread, USB-C 2.0, LTE, 5G (sub-6GHz)
Colors	Space Black, Cloud White, Light Gold, Sky Blue
Pricing	Starting At $999 - Find It At Walmart And Best Buy

iPhone Air Display Quality

The iPhone Air boasts a 6.5-inch 1.5k (2736 x 1,260 pixels, 460dpi) LTPO OLED panel with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, a 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, plus HDR10 and Dolby Vision support. Apple calls this a Super Retina XDR display, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, with punchy colors, inky blacks, and excellent viewing angles. It also gets super bright, topping out a 1,000 nits (max) and 3,000 nits (peak).
Bezels are ultra-thin and perfectly even, and the iPhone Air’s screen features the same pill-shaped Dynamic Island cutout found on most other recent iPhones. It’s home to Apple’s new 24MP Center Stage selfie camera alongside the dot projector and IR sensor used for Face ID.

iPhone Air Camera Imaging Quality: Lack Of Ultra-Wide But It Still Performs

The iPhone Air only packs a single rear shooter. And frankly, that’s a major compromise, especially for a phone that costs $999. I understand that space inside the iPhone Air is at a premium, but ultrawide cameras are standard on any handset costing $300 or more these days. Plus, if Samsung can put two rear shooters into the Galaxy S25 Edge, which is only 0.2mm thicker, I’d expect Apple’s mighty engineers to figure it out.
Fortunately, the iPhone Air’s 48MP main camera is up to Apple’s usual high standards. It uses the same 1/1.56-inch 1.0-micron sensor and 26mm f/1.6 lens with PDAF and sensor-shift OIS as the iPhone 17. Like other iPhones with 48MP sensors, the iPhone Air supports in-sensor cropping for “optical-quality” 2x zoom alongside pixel binning, which combines four 1.0-micron pixels into one 2.0-micron pixel for better low-light performance.
By default, the main shooter captures 24MP photos which blend multiple pixel-binned 12MP images for dynamic range with a 48MP shot for detail. You also have the option to shoot at 48MP or 12MP, but night mode and zoomed pictures are always 12MP. Apple’s Photonic Engine (computational photography imaging pipeline), enables features like Deep Fusion (neural image processing), and the latest version of Photographic Styles.
The iPhone Air also boasts Apple's clever new 24MP Center Stage selfie camera. It consists of a square (1:1) 1/3.6-inch 1.0-micron sensor with PDAF paired with a 23mm f/1.9 lens. This lets you take 18MP selfies in any orientation (portrait or landscape) regardless of how you hold the phone. Center Stage automatically keeps you centered in the frame, and intelligently rotates and zooms out to fit more people into a shot.

Photo modes include night, portrait, and panorama (rear only). Night mode is automatic, and can be disabled. Apple’s Next-generation Portrait mode lets you adjust focus and depth after the fact, and features six Portrait Lighting effects. Panorama mode takes ultra-high resolution images (up to an impressive 63MP). Without an ultrawide, the iPhone Air lacks a dedicated macro mode, but pulling back and zooming in achieves excellent results.
Both shooters can record stabilized video at up to 4k 60fps and support Dolby Vision (HDR). Video modes include 24fps (4k), 25fps (4k and 1080p), slow motion (up to 1080p, 120/240fps), time lapse, Action (up to 2.8k), and Dual Capture (up to 4k 30fps). Cinematic and Spatial modes require dual rear cameras, and are missing here. Audio is captured in mono, stereo, or 3D (Spatial Audio), with audio zoom and optional wind noise reduction.

The iPhone Air takes beautiful pictures no matter the conditions, and it delivers the kind of imaging consistency we’ve come to expect from Apple. Exposure is accurate, colors are natural, and dynamic range is great. Low-light performance is solid, and zooming is pretty clean up to about 4-5x (max zoom is 10x for photos, 6x for videos). Plus, the iPhone Air leaves most Android phones in the dust when it comes to video recording.
In all, photos and videos shot with the iPhone Air match those captured with the iPhone 17, and that’s good news. But it’s really no surprise, considering both handsets have identical main and selfie cameras. So basically – lack of ultrawide and telephoto aside – I’m happy with the iPhone Air’s shooters, and I’m pretty confident that the vast majority of folks will feel the same way. If you want more, there’s always the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max.