► マリウス . Apple iPhone Air
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A review of theApple iPhone (17) Airfrom the perspective of a long-timeGrapheneOSuser who treatsApplehardware as dedicatedspyware devicesfor banking, travel, and various corporatenecessities.
tl;dr:I bought anApple iPhone Air, not because I believe inApple’s
self-congratulatory“privacy is a fundamental human right”marketing, but
because after years ofreplacingGoogle Pixelhardwareroughly every 18
months I have, again, reached the point where I need exactlyonemobile
device that will reliably run the closed-source financial, corporate and
government apps that modern societies insist on. TheAiris a fascinating
piece of engineering, despite the newLiquid GlassiniOSbeing the UI
equivalent of abad car accident, and the device’s raw performance
for things like mobile RAW photo development is, sadly, significantly ahead of
anythingAndroidoffers in 2026. I still do not recommend using aniPhoneas
a primary device, becauseAppleremains a surveillance company.
Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have spent the better part of
the last decade trying to engineer my way out of the surveillance economy. Iswitched awayfromiOSand stockAndroidtoGrapheneOSa long time ago, I run myown
infrastructure,my own cloud,my own mail,my ownLastpass(update),my ownDropbox,my own search,my ownSpotify,my own messenger,
heck, evenmy ownZapier(sort of), and have generally tried to
minimize the surface area that any single vendor has on me.
The fact that I just spent a frankly absurd amount of money on a brand-newApplephone should therefore probably come with an explanation, which is what
this post is. It’s also a review of theiPhone Airitself, and a brief tour of
how badlyiOShas aged on a device that costs roughly the same as a decent
used car in many parts of the world.
Disclosure:I paid for the device with my own money. I have no relationship
withApple, and would honestly prefer not to give them my money in the first
place. The opinions in this post are entirely my own.
Why?
To understand why aGrapheneOSapologist would willingly buy a brand-newiPhone, it helps to know the road that led me here. Thetl;dris that for
the past four years I have run acompartmentalizedmulti-phone setup,
with one primary device onGrapheneOSthat is as clean of corporate spyware as
it gets, and one dedicatedspyware phonethat runs all the
banking, travel, government identity, and other apps that I have to use to
participate inmodern society, but that I refuse to have anywhere near my
actual life. TheiPhone Airis the latest incarnation of that second device.
Before theAirI kept aniPhone 11 Pro Maxaround for almost seven years. Of
every smartphone I have ever owned across the past two decades, the only two
devices that survived such long periods of time without a single hardware-level
fault were theMotorola Razr V3i(yeah, I’mthatold) and theiPhone 11 Pro
Max. And with most of the banking, government, and corporateknow-your-customersoftware that I am forced to interact with
on a regular basis simply refusing to run on ade-Googleddevice, and, more
importantly, being a giganticPITAto recover onto any new phone if the
current one should ever give up, it made sense to keep one rock solid device
around that I could rely on. And becauseiOSis the best-supported target for
specifically these apps, theiPhoneis the only realistic alternative for
someone who refuses to deal withGoogle Play Services. Running this kind of
software on a separate physical device, that is kept in aFaradaybag when not
in active use, is the cleanest way I have found to limit the blast radius of
surveillance capitalism. In other words, theiPhone 11 Pro Maxwas not myphone, but more like myspyware appliance.
TheAir
The decision to specifically go with theiPhone (17) Air, as opposed to a more
mainstreamiPhone 17or even a used predecessor, came down to two things: form
factor, and longevity. I wanted a device that wouldn’t add a ton of weight to mytravel setup, yet was still capable enough to survive (ideally) the
next decade. I intentionally didn’t buy a usediPhone, because I’m planning
for this device to hold up for a very long time, so I wantedApple’s initial
one-year warranty, plus the reassurance that no previous owner had beaten up the
battery, burned in the screen or let the device melt or freeze in their car for
hours.
Form factor
For aspyware phonethat occasionally rides along in a pocket as a
backup, or that travels along in my carry-on, I do not want a brick. TheiPhone
11 Pro Maxthat I am retiring weighed a frankly miserable 226 grams and the
currentiPhone 17 Pro Maxis even heavier at 233g. The non-Maxvariant is
only slightly lighter at 206g, and even the regulariPhone 17, despite having
a .2" smaller screen, is still 12g heavier than theAir.
TheiPhone Air, by contrast, is 5.64mm thin (excluding the camera plateau) and
weighs only 165 grams, all while carrying a 6.5" OLED display. For comparison,
theGoogle Pixel 6a, which for some time had been myspyware deviceand that
theAiris also replacing, is a 6.1" device made predominantly of cheap
plastic and glass, and weighs 178g. That’s 13g more than the larger and sturdieriPhone. TheAiris, by far, the lightest 6.5" flagship I have ever held.
While its footprint is significantly larger than I had expected from photos, and
it is definitely not a one-handed device for people with small- to medium-sized
hands, if you, like myself, are coming from aPro Max, you will probably feel
like you are holding a piece of cardboard, and I mean that in a positive sense.
With most of the mobile phone industry having converged on the sameslab-of-glass-with-a-camera-bumptemplate, and the differentiators usually
being marketing language rather than actual engineering, theiPhone Airis
somewhat of an exception.
The frame isTi-6Al-4V, which is supposedly made with80% recycled titanium. And whileApplehas used titanium onPro-lineiPhonessince, I believe, the15 Pro, theAirclearly pushes
the thickness budget to a different level. The closest competitor in the realm
of well-established premium smartphones, which I believe is theSamsung Galaxy
S25 Edge, is slightly thicker and is shown in many reviews to have
build-quality compromises.
Because theAiris too thin to fit a conventional stamped USB-C connector,Apple’s engineers3D-printed the metal connector frameout of
titanium powder, fused with a laser, and machined to spec. Asreported byEngadget,Apple’s justification is that at this
thickness, there is no other way to fit a standard-compliant USB-C connector. I
am skeptical of the claim that this was theonlyoption (a redesigned stamped
part would presumably also work), but the fact that they shipped a 3D-printed
titanium structural component in a consumer phone is an interesting engineering
choice.
Another interesting engineering choice is thecamera plateau. Rather than the
widespread cameratrypophobiabumps, theAirhas a raised horizontalrailat the top of the back, under which sit theA19 Pro SoC, the newC1Xmodem, the networking silicon, and the single 48MPFusioncamera. This
concentration of components in a thicker strip is what makes the rest of the
chassis flat. From a thermal perspective it makes total sense, as it
concentrates the device’s heat generation in a region that is the easiest to
keep away from the user’s hand. This is one thing that always bugged me about
the11 Pro Max, which is that the moment the device is under load (which
is pretty much all the time when running a recentiOSversion) the backside
area, where your fingers naturally rest when holding the phone, will get
uncomfortably hot. On theAiryou need to actively move your fingers
underneath theplateauto feel the heat.
However, because theAirdoes not have thevapor chamberthat
theProline introduced this generation, it throttles more aggressively under
sustained load than the17 Pro. For my use case (banking apps, occasional
photo editing, very occasional video) this is irrelevant, but for someone trying
to play a demanding game for two hours straight, it probably isn’t.
Speaking of heat, theAirpacks quite a lot of it with its 6-core CPU with
5-core GPU and theNeural Accelerators, which in benchmarks scores 9,497
points inGeekbench 6multi-core. For comparison, thePixel 10 Pro’sTensor
G5, in the same benchmark, sits atroughly two thirds of that number.
TheC1Xmodem, which isApple’s second-generation in-house cellular modem,
is also an interesting piece of engineering. It has replaced theQualcommsilicon that has been in everyiPhonesince the12and inreal-world testingtheC1Xappears to be noticeably more
power-efficient than both theQualcommmodem in the16 Proand theSamsung
Exynos 5300modem that has beenmaking thePixelfamily miserablefor the past several
generations. For a device whose battery is a comparatively modest3,149 mAh, that efficiency gain is what makes theAir’s
battery life usable at all.
One big difference from literally every phone that I have ever owned is the fact
that theAirhas no physical SIM tray. If I were planning to use this phone as
my primary phone, this would be a hugePITAfortravel. Pre-paid SIMs in
many countries are usually not available as eSIM, or when they are, they’re
significantly more expensive and privacy-invasive due to KYC measures. I have
written before about why Istrongly prefer physical SIMsfor both
privacy and practical-travel reasons, andApple’s decision here is a real
downside for anyfull-time traveller. The reason for the lack of a physical
SIM tray appears to be thatAppleneeded the volume for the already small
enough battery, which makes sense. It is nevertheless a regression.
Another engineering decision that somewhat made me question the whole thing is
the USB port. In 2026 the world’s most valuable company decided that, on a
flagship-priced device, you still only getUSB 2.0transfer speeds out of the
USB-C port. For whatever reason,ApplereservesUSB 3speeds for theProline. This means that transferring 50MB RAW files off an SD card via a USB-C
card reader is not exactlyslow, but it is also notfast, and it is
straightforwardly insulting on a device as expensive as theiPhone Air. Plus,
the wholeUSBdesign choice also leads to absurd incompatibility issues with
plenty of built-in USB controllers within SSDs, making a good number of external
drives simply unusable with theAir.
One big letdown at this price point for many people seems to be the single 48MP
rear camera. Coming from aniPhone 11 Pro Max, or even the cheaperPixel 6a,
both of which had multi-camera arrays, I understand that the average user might
perceive this as a step down for photography. However, personally, I don’t care
too much as I take essentially all of my photos ondedicated camerasanyway.GSMArena’s reviewcalls the single rear camera the
device’s“big pain point”, and I think that is fair at this price.
Taken together, theAiris probably the mostopinionatedphoneApplehas
shipped in a long time. The company was willing to sacrifice camera count, port
performance, and thermal headroom to deliver a piece of hardware that is as thin
and light as it is, and that is built around in-house silicon. Whether this
approach turns out to be a good idea, history will tell. As a piece of
standalone consumer electronics, however, it is pretty impressive, and I say
that as someone who, inalmost every other domain, finds modern consumer
hardwareprofoundly depressing.
Software
And then there is the software.
iOS 26ships withLiquid Glass,Apple’s new design language, which applies
a translucent, light-refracting,glass-likeaesthetic to basically every
system surface, from the lock screen to the notifications, Control Center, app
icons, menus, and even system alerts.Apple’s clearly high af marketing
department describes it as“a new material that combines the optical qualities
of glass with a fluid, responsive feel that brings depth and dynamism to every
interaction”… whatever that is supposed to mean.
What it actually feels like, in daily use, is sadlylessflowery, and theuser backlashandperformance issueshave beencovered extensively. The
kindest thing I can say aboutLiquid Glassis that, despite it being theFerrari Luceof UIs, the engineering underneath it is impressive.
The amount of real-time blur, refraction, and material simulationAppleis
pulling off on theA19 Proat 120Hz is a graphics feat that theAndroidsystem can only dream about. Having said that, however, I don’t think
that any of that engineering would be truly necessary if somebody atApplehad
asked the question“does this design language actually make the device easier
to use?”before shipping it on a billion devices.
Banking, travel, andparticipation in modern society
The primary purpose of theAirfor me, as with its predecessors, is to host
all of the closed-source corporatespywarethat I refuse to put on my primaryGrapheneOSdevice. This includes:
On theAir, all of thisjust works. Apps launch instantly, attestation
succeeds, and the device does not get anywhere near as hot as the averagePixelphone doing any of it. After four years of fighting withGoogle’s
hardware andAndroid’s gradual decay, I am, embarrassingly, enjoying the
boring reliability ofiOS.
Mobile RAW photo development
The thing I did not expect, and the thing that has surprised me about theAir,
is how good it is at mobile RAW photo development.
For a long time I had been doing all of myphotography workflowon
aPixel TabletrunningGrapheneOS, usingLightroom Mobile. The arrangement
worked, but it didn’t work well.Lightroom Mobileon theTensor G2-poweredPixel Tablethasincreasingly become a sluggish, crash-prone
mess, with editing operations that take noticeable seconds to
render preview updates, occasional import failures, and a battery life under
heavy editing that is less than three hours.
On theiPhone Air, the same workflow (using a USB-C SD card reader, plus the
freeSnapseedapp) isvastlyfaster. Importing a card full of
50MB RAW files from myFujiis bottlenecked by the USB 2.0 port
rather than the phone. Edit operations on RAW files are essentially
instantaneous, even with multiple layered adjustments. Exporting to JPEG happens
in well under two seconds per image.
Obviously theAir’sA19 ProSoC was released several years after theTensor
G2, and it is orders of magnitude faster on graphics workloads, but thePixel
Tabletis nevertheless a 2023 product thatGoogleis still selling new in 2026. The
fact that an in-pocket, 5.6mm-thiniPhoneruns circles around it on the same
workload is, frankly, embarrassing forGoogle.
The mobile content-creation software ecosystem oniOSis also significantly
better than what is available onAndroid, and not just because the hardware is
faster.Lightroom MobileoniOSis more polished than theAndroidversion,
and evenSnapseed, an appbyGoogle, runs noticeably more smoothly oniOSthan it does onAndroid. Even free, ad-supported photo apps tend to be
visibly better oniOSthan anything onAndroid. Some of this is because
developers prioritizeiOSfor revenue reasons, because literally every littlesh.t apponiOSthese days can seemingly charge a price or, worse, a
subscription fee. However, some of it is also becauseMetalandCore Imageare better-integrated graphics and imaging stacks than whatAndroidexposes to
third-party developers. Whatever the reason, in the specific category of mobile
RAW photo development,iOSis not just ahead, but it is literally pullingAndroid’s pants downandslapping itsBaklava.
General responsiveness
Even setting RAW editing aside, the device feels noticeably snappier than anyAndroidphone I have used, including thePixel 8. App launches are faster,
animations are smoother, and background apps stay in memory longer.Apple’s
memory management oniOS, even with comparatively modest RAM (theAirhas
12GB), is more aggressive about keeping apps warm thanAndroid’s.
Tom’s Guide’sreal-world performance testingshowsiPhonesconsistently lappingAndroidflagships on workloads like video transcoding,
where theiPhone 17 Promodels complete a standard test in 22 seconds, while
everySamsung Galaxy S25variant takes over twice as long. On purely syntheticGeekbench 6multi-core, theSnapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5does
outperform theA19 Pro, but theSnapdragon’s lead in synthetic CPU
benchmarks does not translate consistently into real-world responsiveness,
becauseAndroidas an operating system still carries a significant amount of
overhead that even the fastest silicon cannot entirely paper over. On theiOSside, theA19 Pro’s single-core performance (around 3,871 points inGeekbench
6) is still the highest of any shipping mobile SoC.
A heuristic that I have used for years, and that has consistently held up, is
that aniPhonefrom yearNtends to feel as snappy in everyday use as anAndroidflagship from yearN+1orN+2, and I’m certain that theiPhone
Airis no exception to that rule. This is a generic OS observation rather than
a comment on theAirspecifically, but it is a real observation, and it is one
of the reasons whyiOSdevices keep getting recommended even by people who
would much rather be using something else.
Bonus: Accessories
Besides the superior hardware ofApple’s phones over specifically theGoogle
Pixeldevices, theecosystemof accessories that are intentionally designed
to fit theiPhonelineup is another thing thatGoogle, as well as most otherAndroidmanufacturers (with the exception ofSamsungandXiaomi), has
failed to establish. In recent years,Applemanaged to further increase their
ecosystem’s lead with theirMagSafequick-attach feature, for which you can
find literally everything, from snap-on card holders through powerbanks all the
way to actual stands.
Because I was curious to give theMagSafesystem a try, I decided to pick up a
powerbank that unintentionally fits the“Space Black”iPhone Airbetter thanApple’s own, plain whiteiPhone Air MagSafe Battery. I chose theXiaomi
UltraThin Magnetic Power Bank 5000not only because its design was clearly
targeted atiPhone Airusers, but also because it is the thinnest (6mm) and
lightest (98g) 5000 mAh power bank on the market, thanks to its relatively newhigh-energy-density silicon-carbonbattery. When attached to the back of theAirit brings up the device’s weight to 263g in total, which is noticeably
heavier than most other smartphones, but it also almost doubles the phone’s
battery life.
While theXiaomipower bank can deliver 22.5W, it only does so via USB-C, and
because it is notMagSafe-certified, it drops to 7.5W when charging the phone
wirelessly (by snapping it on usingMagSafe), rather than the 15W thatQi2phones get out of it. With theAirlocked and inactive it takes about two to
three hours to charge it to around 92%. It never reaches 100%, despite the power
bank carrying considerably more capacity than the phone’s integrated battery,
due to theinefficiency of wireless charging.
Note:I’m aware thatGoogleintroducedMagSafecompatibility into itsPixelline with theGoogle Pixel 10, however, there is no dedicated
ecosystemtargeting specifically thePixeland itshardware design.
Summary
For the narrow use case that I have personally been struggling to solve, which
is“I need a single, lightweight, and highly reliable device to host all the
closed-source corporate spyware I am forced to interact with, and I already have
a primaryGrapheneOSdevicefor my actual life”, theiPhone Airseems like a very good option, at least ignoring the absurd price tag. It is
light enough to carry in aFaradaybag inside mycabin luggagewith
me and it’s flat enough to occasionally bring it alongside aPixelwithout
making my pockets look like I pack big data. It appears to be reliable enough
that I do not expect to repeat this exercise for at least another five to seven
years, and it runs every attestation-dependent banking, travel, and near-future
dystopian government app I might need it to run. On top of that, the mobile
content-creation software story oniOSis, sadly, lightyears ahead ofAndroid, as well asWindowsandLinux.
For anybody whose use case is“I want this device to be the primary,
always-with-me phone that handles mynudesphotography, mymanifestosnotes, my4chaningweb-browsing, and mydoomscrollingactual life”, I
cannot in good conscience recommend theAir, or any otheriPhone, for
exactly the same reasons I have been writing about for thepastyears.Appleis, with all due respect to its marketing
department, asurveillance company. The fact that it chooses
to surveil its users somewhat more politely thanGoogledoes is not, by
itself, a reason to grant it custody of your private life. You cannot audit the
OS, you cannot disable any hidden surveillance subsystem, and you most certainly
cannot install a hardened replacement.
TheiPhone Airis a fascinating piece of engineering and a perfectly competentspyware appliance. It is however not, and will never be, my primary phone.
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