With the iPhone 17 lineup, Apple has discontinued the Plus model in favor of the new iPhone Air. But how do these models compare to each other?
Physical size and thinness
Of course, the most immediate and striking difference between iPhone Air and iPhone 16 Plus is the difference in design. iPhone Air is significantly thinner and lighter:
- 5.64 mm thick, down from 7.80 mm
- 165 g (5.82 oz), down from 199 g (7.03 oz)
iPhone Air is also shorter and narrower than iPhone 16 Plus:
- 6.15 in (156.2 mm) tall, down from 6.33 in (160.9 mm)
- 2.94 in (74.7 mm) wide, down from 3.06 in (77.8 mm)
The camera plateau on the back is now full-width, unlike iPhone 16 Plus. It is shorter though.
Simpler colors
Part of the new design is a new palette of colors. Compared to iPhone 16 Plus, the iPhone Air’s colors are much simpler. iPhone Air comes in Sky Blue, Light Gold, Cloud White, and Space Black, while iPhone 16 Plus came in Ultramarine, Teal, Pink, White, Black.
iPhone Air has the same Super Retina XDR Display features from the iPhone 17 Pro, including ProMotion! This brings some great new features compared to iPhone 16 Plus:
- Adaptive refresh rate, from as low as 1Hz to as high as 120Hz. This will result in both a more smoother-feeling display and better battery life.
- Always-On display: now, when iPhone Air is asleep, the display can still show the time, Widgets, and notifications.
However, the display is a little smaller, at 6.55″ compared to 6.69″. Specifically, the resolutions are:
- iPhone Air: 2736 × 1260 at 460 ppi
- iPhone 16 Plus: 2796 × 1290 at 460 ppi
iPhone Air also comes with Ceramic Shield 2, which brings a few new features:
Finally, all new iPhone models this year feature 3000 nits of peak display brightness when outdoors, up from 2000 last year. Combined with the new anti-reflective coating, Apple says this will provide 2x better contrast when outdoors.
A19 Chip
The A19 Pro chip will give iPhone Air even better performance than iPhone 16 Plus with A18. The new features are largely focused on increasing AI capabilities: new Neural Accelerators will substantially improve performance for machine learning and artificial intelligence tasks. Apple says it will provide “MacBook Pro-levels” of power. Also, things like gaming will be improved, as Apple says the GPU of A19 Pro features up to “3x the peak GPU compute over the previous generation”.
iPhone Air features 12 GB of RAM, up from 8 GB on iPhone 16 Plus. A19 Pro also features increased memory bandwidth, though Apple hasn’t specified how much it has increased.
Battery life and charging
According to Apple’s tests, iPhone Air will offer about the same battery performance as iPhone 16 Plus (in certain scenarios):
- Up to 27 hours of video playback (downloaded), the same as iPhone 16 Plus
- Up to 22 hours of streamed video playback, down from 24 hours
Apple also offers a special MagSafe Battery accessory. Here are the results when using it:
- Up to 40 hours of video playback (downloaded), up from 27 hours
- Up to 35 hours of streamed video playback, up from 24 hours
iPhone Air also offers slightly faster charging, so you can now get up to 50% charge in 30 minutes instead of 35 minutes when using a 20W adapter or higher.
No Ultra Wide Camera
In order to get iPhone Air so thin, a few compromises had to be made. One of those is the lack of an Ultra Wide camera. It does, however, have the same great 48MP Fusion Wide camera from the rest of the iPhone 17 lineup! The “Fusion” here means that you can get full-resolution 12MP photos at 2x zoom, instead of relying on lower-quality digital zoom. Although this camera is not really new compared to iPhone 16 Plus, it does feature improved processing. You do also keep the same great Portrait mode photos, including being able to take a Portrait photo of any subject. You do, however, lose Cinematic Mode for video recording.
All-new Center Stage front camera
One of the headlining features of the new iPhone lineup is the all-new Center Stage front camera. This camera now uses a square image sensor, meaning that you can switch between portrait photos and landscape photos without having to rotate the phone. The sensor is also now 18MP, so your photos will always be high resolution.
The square sensor and higher resolution enables Center Stage on iPhone for the first time. Like on iPad, this means that the camera will automatically adjust the frame to keep you visible on a FaceTime call or other video call. But Center Stage also works when taking selfies: the camera will automatically adjust the frame and switch between portrait and landscape depending on who is in the frame. When recording a video, it will also be ultra-stabilized, similar to Action Mode on the back camera.
Finally, a new dual capture mode finally allows you to record video on both the front and back cameras at the same time.
New N1 wireless networking chip
With iPhone Air, Apple has introduced its first in-house wireless chip. In addition to improving overall wireless performance and reliability of features that rely on this chip (such as Personal Hotspot and AirDrop), this new chip in iPhone Air now has Bluetooth 6 instead of 5.3.
iPhone Air also now has a precision dual-frequency GPS for more accurate and reliable GPS functionality, and it adds support for NavIC in India.
New Apple-designed C1X cellular modem
iPhone Air is the first iPhone to get Apple’s new C1X modem, an enhancement to the C1 modem from iPhone 16e. C1 already provided faster and better performance than existing Qualcomm modems, and Apple says that C1X is up to 2x faster than C1, all while using 30% less energy than the previous Qualcomm modems.
There is one disadvantage, however: C1X does not support mmWave 5G, so you are limited to sub-6GHz speeds.
Pricing and availability
iPhone Air starts at $999 with 256 GB of storage, the same price as iPhone 16 Plus with 256 GB of storage. However, there is no $899 128 GB option like there was with the 16 Plus. You can get 512 GB for $1,199, which is also the same as the 512 GB iPhone 16 Plus. Finally, there is also now a 1TB option for $1,399.
iPhone Air is available for purchase online and in stores now.
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