I Used the iPhone Air for 100 Days — Here's What Really Happened
A long-term, honest look at Apple's thinnest iPhone ever
Introduction: The Hype Was Real — And It Didn't Die
When Apple first unveiled the iPhone Air, the internet collectively lost its mind. The design was jaw-dropping, the thinness was almost unbelievable, and the promise of something genuinely different from Apple felt exciting in a way we hadn't felt in years. I was among the hyped — and I committed fully. From launch day, the iPhone Air became my daily driver. I traveled the world with it, used it in extreme heat and humidity, even took it underwater. I fully expected the novelty to wear off after a couple of months and to eventually go crawling back to the superior, feature-packed iPhone 17 Pro.
That didn't happen.
After more than 100 days with the iPhone Air, I'm still reaching for it every single morning — and here's a detailed breakdown of everything I experienced.
Design: The Feature That Never Gets Old
Let's start with the obvious — the design is the reason to buy this phone, and after 100 days, it's still the reason I stay.
The iPhone Air weighs just 165 grams and is housed in a titanium frame that feels almost surreal in your hand. Every single time I pick it up, it genuinely feels different. In an era where smartphones have started to feel increasingly samey — generation after generation of incremental updates — the iPhone Air stands apart as something genuinely novel. This is a feeling I was absolutely not expecting to last, but it has.
For context, I also own the iPhone 17 Pro. It's objectively a better phone in almost every measurable way. The iPhone 17 Pro has better cameras, better thermal management, superior battery life, and features that the Air simply doesn't have. And yet, every time I pick up the 17 Pro, I feel... nothing special. It's an exceptional device that somehow fails to spark joy the way the Air does. That's a strange thing to admit, but it's the honest truth.
Apple has described the Air's design as one of their most ambitious engineering challenges, and holding it in your hand, you believe it. The bezels are incredibly slim, giving the impression that you're holding a pure sheet of glass rather than a smartphone. For people who care deeply about how their tech feels — not just how it performs — the iPhone Air is genuinely unmatched.
Display: Zero Compromises Here
One area where Apple refused to cut corners on the iPhone Air is the display, and it shows.
You get a gorgeous 6.5-inch OLED ProMotion display running at 120Hz. Scrolling is buttery smooth, colors are vivid and accurate, and the sheer size of the display combined with the phone's ultra-slim bezels makes everything feel immersive. Apps look stunning. Videos feel cinematic. The proportions just work.
The always-on display is present and functioning beautifully, and outdoor brightness peaks at an impressive 3,000 nits — more than enough for even the harshest sunlit conditions. During a trip to a sun-drenched island, the screen remained perfectly visible at all times, which is a real-world test that matters far more than spec-sheet comparisons.
Apple's A19 Pro chip also works in harmony with the display's efficiency modes, ensuring that even at maximum brightness, the phone doesn't overheat or throttle performance. That's a genuinely impressive feat of engineering for such a slim device.
Performance: A19 Pro Is No Joke
Speaking of the chip — performance on the iPhone Air is nothing short of excellent.
The A19 Pro handles everything thrown at it with ease. Multitasking between heavy apps, gaming, editing photos, and filming in 4K all feel seamlessly smooth. There's no lag, no stuttering, and no moment where the hardware feels like it's struggling to keep up.
The bigger concern for a phone this slim was always going to be thermal management — can such a thin device handle sustained workloads without throttling? Having used the Air in the intense humidity and heat of Bali, as well as the hot Spanish summer, the answer is: yes, mostly. The phone does get warm — particularly at the top portion of the chassis, where all the internals are housed — but it never became unusable. It never reached a point where a warning appeared or performance noticeably dropped. For a phone this slim, that's genuinely impressive thermal engineering.
Battery Life: The Trade-Off You Actually Have to Reckon With
Alright — here's where things get a little complicated.
The battery life on the iPhone Air is not its strongest suit, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. It is not the best battery life on any iPhone. That title belongs to the iPhone 17 Pro Max. But here's the thing: after 100 days, the battery life has turned out to be comparable to the iPhone 16 Pro — and while that's not a phone famous for its battery endurance, it's been serviceable enough to last through a full day of regular usage.
The key word here is regular. If you're a power user who's constantly on your phone all day long, filming videos, running navigation, and streaming content, you may find yourself reaching for a charger before bedtime. But for most day-to-day usage patterns, the Air holds up.
Apple's MagSafe Battery Pack is something I'd genuinely call part of the iPhone Air experience. When traveling or heading out for a long day, snapping the battery pack onto the back of the Air gives you that extra juice while still maintaining an impressively slim profile. It's a smart ecosystem accessory that turns a weakness into something manageable.
The Single Speaker: A Minor but Real Weakness
This is a sacrifice that you'll notice occasionally but won't think about most of the time.
The iPhone Air ships with a single speaker, compared to the stereo setup on the iPhone 17 Pro. In head-to-head comparisons, the difference is stark — the Pro's audio is fuller, more immersive, and louder. For media consumption or casual music listening in a quiet room, the Air's single speaker does the job adequately. But in noisy outdoor environments — trying to catch a voice memo on a busy street, for instance — the single speaker can feel limiting.
That said, in 100 days of daily use, this was never a dealbreaker. It was a minor inconvenience in specific situations, not a daily frustration.
Camera System: The Biggest Sacrifice — And the Most Honest Part of This Review
Let's not dance around it. The cameras are where the iPhone Air makes its most significant compromise, and it's a real one.
The Air ships with a single 48-megapixel main camera. There is no ultrawide. There is no telephoto beyond a 2x optical zoom. Compare that to the iPhone 17 Pro, which offers an ultrawide and an 8x telephoto zoom, and the gap becomes very clear in practice.
Does it matter day-to-day? Somewhat. The main camera is genuinely excellent — photo consistency is outstanding, low-light performance is reliable, and video quality with stabilization is top-tier. New features like the Center Stage camera (which lets you shoot horizontally while holding your phone vertically) and Dual Capture video (which films both your surroundings and you simultaneously) add creative value that I found myself using regularly.
But missing the ultrawide and telephoto does sting in certain situations. At a football match, trying to capture players on the far end of the pitch, the 2x zoom felt inadequate compared to the 8x reach of the Pro. Architectural photography, landscape shots, and anything requiring creative framing suffers from the lack of an ultrawide lens. These are real limitations that real photographers will notice.
If there's one thing I'd ask Apple to change in the next generation of the iPhone Air, it's this: give it a more versatile camera system. The body design is already perfected. Now give us the glass to match.
The Verdict: 100 Days Later, I'm Not Switching Back
Here's the bottom line, and it surprised even me.
After 100 days with the iPhone Air, I have not gone back to the iPhone 17 Pro. I fully expected to. I planned to. I thought the novelty of thinness would fade, the compromises would accumulate, and the practical superiority of the Pro would eventually win out. It didn't.
The iPhone Air is not for everyone. If you want the best battery life, the most versatile camera system, and the most advanced features Apple offers, the iPhone 17 Pro is your phone — no question. But if you're someone who values design as an experience, who wants to feel genuinely excited every time you pick up your phone, who appreciates a device that feels like a piece of the future rather than just another iteration — the iPhone Air delivers that in a way nothing else currently does.
It's been years since a phone made me feel this way. The battery life is acceptable. The performance is exceptional. The display is gorgeous. And the design? It might genuinely be one of Apple's greatest achievements.
For me, the iPhone Air won. And honestly? I didn't see that coming.
Have you made the switch to iPhone Air, or are you holding out for a more feature-complete version? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
