Apple iPhone Air review

Understandably, design is the crux of the iPhone Air experience and its biggest selling point. The obvious standout is the 5.6mm thickness for much of the frame of the phone, which is noticeable both when looking and holding the iPhone Air. This also makes for a visible lack of bulk, which keeps the weight of the iPhone Air down to a comfortable 165g. It’s great to hold and barely feels like anything in your hands or pocket, slotting in alongside a wallet with ease. Apple sticks to the established idea that Air means light and slim but not necessarily small, at least for the first one.

This isn’t a large iPhone, but it isn’t the smallest one either - the 6.5-inch screen is larger than the 6.3-inch screens on the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro, but a fair bit smaller than the 6.9-inch screen on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The OLED display is sharp and detailed, and there’s finally 120Hz refresh rate too.

There is one device that compares rather closely with the Apple iPhone Air - the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. The Air is just a bit slimmer at the frame and smaller in overall size given that the S25 Edge has a larger 6.7-inch screen, but the weights for the two are almost the same. Close enough, so this one is really down to your own brand and OS preferences.

ALSO SEE: Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge review

The Apple iPhone Air comes in four reasonably subtle colour options - Sky Blue, Light Gold, Cloud White, and Space Black. Storage variants include 256GB (Rs. 1,19,900), 512GB (Rs. 1,39,900), and 1TB (Rs. 1,59,900); 256GB should be fine for most, but feel free to go maximum if you need it. The review unit Apple sent us is the cloud white with 512GB storage; looks classic, but with plenty of room for apps and data.

 

 

 

 

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You get the full range of buttons on the Apple iPhone Air - power, volume, camera control, and the customisable action button - and the bottom has the USB Type-C port for charging and connectivity. However, the design comes with a couple of rather important drawbacks; there’s just a single speaker at the top which doubles up as the earpiece, and there’s no SIM tray.

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That’s right, the iPhone Air lacks a physical SIM tray everywhere, including in India. You will have to use eSIM with this, so make sure your mobile network service provider supports this before making the purchase. The eSIM system on the iPhone Air supports saving eight profiles at once, and you can use two eSIM profiles simultaneously as you would in a conventional dual-SIM device. 

It’s not ideal given the obvious inconvenience and additional steps in shifting SIMs between devices, as well as the more complicated processes to follow in case of loss or theft. However, the initial setup for me (shifting from a physical SIM to eSIM on Jio) was fairly easily and took just a few minutes when switching from an older iPhone.

This is where things get a bit polarising. The Apple iPhone Air has a single 48-megapixel Fusion camera at the back. While buyers might be a bit more understanding about that on the Rs. 59,900 iPhone 16e, it’s a bit harder to stomach on an iPhone that costs twice as much.

Understandably, just one camera means that there aren’t as many capabilities. You can of course take perfectly good point-and-shoot images, but there are a few things missing that you’d take for granted on most phones these days. No extra cameras means no ultra-wide mode and no telephoto for optical zoom, although the Fusion camera system does still deliver respectable portrait shots using just the one camera to do twice as much work. Notably it also now works on objects, unlike on the 16e which only worked on peoples’ faces.

Simple math also enables 2x “optical quality” zoom, which is just a clever way to say that the iPhone Air shoots 24-megapixel shots at 1x and up to 48-megapixel shots cropped into the specific part of the frame as you climb up to 2x. This uses more pixels to retain quality unlike typical digital zoom which loses out of detail. The custom lens also lets you choose between 26mm, 28mm, and 35mm focal lengths for a bit more flexibility in framing the shot.

If you’re a frequent photographer, the lack of capabilities might be a major concern and the iPhone Air really isn’t for you. However, if you’re just an occasional photographer and tend to stick to the basics, the camera gets the core experience right and works with smaller image sizes to overcome most challenges. Video recording at up to 4K resolution at 60fps is also possible, as is slow-motion video recording at up to 240fps.

Point-and-shoot photography, low-light shots, simple 2x zoom, and portrait shots are decent enough, and video recording. The 18-megapixel front camera is on par with other iPhone devices, so you won’t find yourself losing out there. The iPhone Air is for those who primarily intend to use the front camera and occasionally need the one at the back - look at the Pro if you need a more detailed camera system.

Apple has a ‘basic’ and ‘pro’ approach to even its chipsets, with more affordable devices such as the iPhone 17 or iPhone 16e using the core chipset of that generation. Fortunately for iPhone Air buyers, it’s the Pro option that’s also seen on the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max. That said, the framework on the Air’s A19 Pro is a bit different with a five-core GPU and the C1X cellular modem - small differences which you may not really feel in day-to-day use.

 

 

 

 

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This means you get the full-fat, flagship iPhone experience on the Air, complete with iOS 26 in its latest and greatest form. Understandably, there’s nothing really holding you back in terms of performance and usability.That said, I did occasionally have situations where mobile network on the iPhone Air would drop to LTE or calls would drop, while another smartphone on the same network seemed to work fine. This didn’t happen frequently though.

Battery life on the Apple iPhone Air is an important topic, given that the size and dimensions make for reduce battery capacity. Despite this, battery life is decent enough with the smartphone running for a full day (sometimes a bit more) with light to moderate use. Heavy use such as gaming or long phone calls will drain it faster, but you should definitely be able to go from when you wake up to when you sleep with some juice to spare. Of course, this is when the phone is new and has 100 percent battery health; long-term effects and battery life are a different story which I can’t really comment on right now.

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No charger in the box is fairly obvious as this point but it’s still a bother. Charging itself is fairly quick despite the 20W wired and 30W MagSafe ratings, and you can go from 20 percent to 80 percent in about 35-40 minutes. This obviously has to do with the fact that there’s a relatively small battery to charge, so it’s not a bother and should charge quickly with any decent charging adapter you have lying around at home. 

Oh, it’s also worth pointing out that standard or older MagSafe battery packs won’t work with the iPhone Air; you need a very specific model made for the Air, which is priced at Rs. 11,900. Regular MagSafe chargers and most accessories will work fine, though.

The Apple iPhone Air isn’t a tech accessory, really. It’s a full-fledged iPhone that ticks a lot of boxes, and feels great in your pocket while doing all of that. However, this isn’t the iPhone for everyone, especially if you use the camera a lot. That single-camera setup is fine for the occasional shot and will do a decent job in different lighting conditions, but the lack of tricks and capabilities will hold you back.

Battery life is workable too, but it hinges on how you use the iPhone Air. It sort of helps that you may not be using the camera as much which will keep battery use down, and moderate use without anything heavy (gaming, for example) will keep you going for a full day. This is a ‘lifestyle’ iPhone to that extent, but it’s an entirely usable and capable one at that. You’ll appreciate the form factor and how easy it is to handle while you’re at it.