On a sidenote, youtuber jerryrigseverything tested the iPhone air and was pretty shocked at the durability of the titanium frame. Something like 170kg of pressure on the middle line of the screen was required to break the glass panel. The LCD and touchscreen were still working. I too expected the thing to break with two thumbs only.
I think it's funny how expectation defying the Air is. Most people were assuming that being so thin would mean it's super easy to bend by hand. Zack certainly isn't a weak man and he was unable to easily bend it by hand. People have also been assuming the battery must be terribly small, but its capacity is larger than the iPhone 15 battery was and only 100 mAh smaller than the iPhone 16 battery was.
Apple has seriously good engineers to be able to make that happen in a device that's so thin.
They do have good engineers. But they’re chasing wrong goals set my management. I don’t know many people who said “man, I wish iPhone was x mm thinner”. But I do know many who say “man, I wish iPhone battery was much larger”.
And what did Apple do? Build thinner phone with an external battery pack.
These improvements could be laying the groundwork for future products. Engineering wins in this regard are almost never useless - that’s a short sighted take imo.
But I agree this iphone air as a product is kind of weird. Similar to the original macbook air maybe? Ahead of its time but a bit limited by today’s tech. A peek at the future…
And what else did Apple do? Build two “Pro” phones with even bigger batteries for these folks. Come on, let a thousand flowers bloom!
(Yeah that phrase has unfortunate Mao-era baggage, but personally I really just want the mini series back—which many also consider to have too little battery capacity—so I feel encouraged by Apple broadening the iPhone lineup.)
Seriously, it's bizarre to see this argument from people that Apple isn't caring about what people want in terms of battery life. Apple in their keynote called out that they made the Pro models slightly thicker for the sake of a larger battery! Like, why ignore the standard models of iPhone and only focus on the Air when making complaints?
A good product is judged on how well it sells. The question is less "is this fragile" and more "is this worth paying extra for" when the target audience gets it in their hands.
Silicon Carbon sucks, it's longevity is pretty bad, and most people I know keep their iPhones for a long time and expect the battery to remain high enough quality for years.
I'm not saying they're engineering the batteries. But they did have to engineer the whole phone to fit in a very small space without making serious spec compromises. And my statement about their engineers isn't comparative to other companies. They can all have excellent engineering teams at the same time.
