Apple did something wild at its big annual new iPhone event on Tuesday: It announced a phone that's actually new. It's called the iPhone Air, and it's thin — "the thinnest iPhone ever" — light, and eye-catching. Also its battery life sort of stinks.
You might not want a super thin phone with crappy battery life, but that's probably not why Apple built the iPhone Air.
Apple built the iPhone Air after years of releasing iPhones that looked and worked the same as the previous year's iPhones, each new model only slightly better than the last. But its competitors have been getting creative, releasing phones that fold in half or unfold to create bigger phones. Several industry analysts believe that the iPhone Air is just a test run for Apple's own folding phone: If you attach two iPhone Airs with a hinge and a little extra screen to create one seamless display, and boom, there's your folding iPhone.
In a sense, the iPhone Air is just Apple showing off. "Apple as a technology company, you know, their ability to miniaturize is almost unmatched, and so I think it very much is, 'Look at what we can do,'" Tom Mainelli, head of device and consumer research at the market intelligence firm IDC, told me Tuesday from the iPhone event in Cupertino, California.
As impractical as a super thin, very fragile-looking iPhone with crappy battery life may be, plenty of people will pay a lot of money to have it as a status symbol. In the meantime, Apple gets to see what works with this design and apply it to the next completely new iPhone, which analysts expect will come out next year and the year after that. Overall, iPhone sales have slowed recently, but with this new push, Apple might be able to spark the kind of upgrade cycle that helped make the iPhone a cultural phenomenon. Plus, carriers are offering $1,000 or more in subsidies to help make it happen (fine print very much included).
So what does it mean to actually get your hands on this impossibly skinny phone? Is it worth it, or is there a better way to think about updating your phone and its plan?
Let's bring the iPhone Air down to Earth
More than one analyst I spoke with told me they don't necessarily expect the iPhone Air to be a huge seller. It's flashy, but again, that thinness comes at the cost of good battery life. The phone's guts are stuffed into the new elongated camera bump, which Apple referred to as a "plateau," and the rest of the phone's body is filled with battery. Still, Apple says the $1,000 iPhone Air gets three fewer hours of video playback than the $800 standard iPhone 17, which was also announced on Tuesday. The new iPhone 17 Pro gets a dozen hours more video playback than the iPhone Air and costs only $100 more. The iPhone Air's pared-down camera is also meaningfully inferior to the Pro model's, and fans keep spotting more tiny downgrades in the fine print.
Who knows, though: The iPhone Air could be a blockbuster. All those iPhone owners who have been bored having the same-looking iPhone as everyone else can finally express themselves by buying the same all-new iPhone Air. By the way, if you think the iPhone Air looks super breakable, Apple insists it is not.
"Apple bragged it is its most durable iPhone ever," said Jeff Fieldhack, research director at Counterpoint, a technology market research firm, who was also at the iPhone event. "It sports a unibody design, which likely sets the stage for its foldable." And how does it feel to hold? "Impressive."
Obviously, Apple wants you to buy an iPhone Air or an iPhone 17 Pro or even a humble iPhone 17. But phone carriers are desperate to sell you one directly at a steep discount, and even more so than in the past, they're pushing jaw-dropping yet logistically complex offers in order to get you a new device and a new contract. Verizon is offering a free iPhone 17 Pro if you trade in a device in any condition— a deal worth up to $1,100 — or a free iPhone 17 with no trade-in required. Both AT&T and T-Mobile are matching those deals. (Meanwhile, Apple is offering 0 percent interest loans if you buy the device with its credit card.)
These deals come with strings attached. That $1,100 offer also is not cash or a free iPhone outright. You get the discount on the device in the form of bill credits spread out over the course of 24 or even 36 months. If you switch carriers before the device is paid off, you're on the hook to pay the remaining balance. Carriers also can and do raise fees on you once you've committed to one of these deals, and they'll probably bug you to add lines or sign up for additional benefits, like streaming services. If you're already a customer, carriers will typically want you to sign up for a new premium plan, which includes features you may not want and whose price may increase over time, despite advertised "price locks."
Does your phone plan need an upgrade even more than your phone?
Which, now that we're really getting into the nitty gritty, it's possible you're already paying too much for your phone bill. Whether you want a new phone or not, now is a great time to take a second look at the specifics of your phone plan, as the wireless market has been getting more competitive and prices for basic service have actually been going down.
A number of increasingly popular mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are offering service plans that offer access to the major carriers' infrastructure at a fraction of the cost. Several of these companies stand out for their links to celebrities, like Mint Mobile and Ryan Reynolds or Trump Mobile and the president. Others have nontraditional business plans, including Helium Mobile, which offers free service in exchange for your location data. Some of them are even owned by major carriers: Verizon owns Visible, and AT&T owns Cricket, for instance. They're all cheap compared to the major carriers.
Many of these MVNOs have been around for years as a bargain basement alternative to major carriers. They each come with their own sets of inconveniences, including limited customer support, data caps, and confusing prepaid plans. But they also start at around $15 a month for unlimited plans.
You should also expect to get slower speeds on these budget networks for a couple of reasons. One is deprioritization, which means data from major carriers, like Verizon and AT&T, gets priority over budget carrier traffic during periods of heavy network congestion. (This is why major carriers may advertise their "premium data" offerings.) The other is throttling, which is what happens when you hit your data allowance and the network slows down your speeds, sometimes to the point that the connection is unusable. The data is still technically unlimited, but that's not much use if webpages won't load.
Nevertheless, the sticker price of a new smartphone is not what most people should be paying attention to at a time like this. Your monthly bill quickly adds up to more than $1,000, and it's probably on auto-pay, which is why you probably don't think about where that money is going. There's more than one way to save money on your bill, too. If you're someone who spends most of their time connected to wifi and not needing customer support, these cheap phone plans make a lot of sense. You could use a phone plan comparison site, like Navi, to help you negotiate with your current carrier for a better deal.
Once you've locked in a lower monthly overhead, celebrate! Use all that money you saved on your monthly bill to pay for your new iPhone Air. Or wait another year and get something even more eye-catching from Apple. It's coming.
—Adam Clark Estes, senior correspondent
