From every angle, the iPhone Air is gorgeous, yet for some reason, it never caught on – why not?

Apple’s iPhone Air has almost sunk without a trace.

That much is a simple fact, but why it’s been such a huge flop, I don’t really get.

I bought mine on the day it was released last September, and even I have hardly used it. I can’t put my finger on why, but most of the time my iPhone Air sits in the far corner of my desk, untouched from week to week.

What an awful shame that is!

We’re a fickle bunch. We moan and grumble at Apple for not innovating and for losing its touch, but the moment they take a chance and give us something totally new, fresh, and exciting, we turn our backs on it.

I mean, put yourself in their place – why would you bother to invest and push the limits of design and engineering, when it’s quite obvious all we want is more of the same. It’s hard for me to say I feel for them, but I kind of do.

At this point, we’re pretty sure that the next iPhone Air won’t be with us until the spring of 2027, as Apple looks to be shifting to a split launch strategy of its phones. It now seems that at the September iPhone event, we’ll only get the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, and the new iPhone Ultra, Fold, or whatever it’s going to be called. The annual autumn event is now earmarked to be the premium iPhone event.

That means that the iPhone 18, 18e and iPhone Air 2 will now be released together at a spring event – possibly just via press releases, I guess?

The good news for the iPhone Air lovers out there, and yes, there are some, is that it gives Apple a bit of wiggle room to tinker with the iPhone Air and try to make the next iteration more tempting to more people.

What went wrong for the iPhone Air?

The first nail in the Air’s coffin was actually delivered by Apple itself at last year’s launch event.

When the soon-to-be new CEO of Apple, John Ternus, wandered on set at last year’s September iPhone event and announced that a battery pack was on sale exclusively for the iPhone Air, it was as if they were standing on a mountain top shouting that the iPhone Air had a battery life problem.

They clearly expected the worst.

For a company that prides itself on slick marketing, how they could not have spotted that own goal is beyond me. It was giving the doubters and haters all the ammunition they needed on a silver platter.

I can tell you, though, from hands-on experience, that when I do use the iPhone Air, its battery is not an issue. Ok, it’s not the match of the mighty 17e, but it’s every inch the rival of my 17 Pro Max.

The trouble is, though, that Apple made it an issue. Other obvious issues hindered the Air’s chance of success, and the first of those was the price.

This is a premium device, and they priced it as such. Starting at £1000 means people rightly need to feel they’re getting a phone that marries gorgeous design with a practical phone that’s packed with premium features.

But when you start going through the spec sheet, it quickly falls apart. A single 48-megapixel Fusion rear camera and a single, mono speaker didn’t help its cause either.

Again, when you actually use the phone, none of those issues poses any user problems. Most of the time, I would bet that we use AirPods with our iPhones, so the single speaker isn’t a huge issue. And on the times you do prop it up in the bathroom and use the speaker, it’s perfectly ok. Apple has always excelled with audio, and the speaker they’ve put in here has clearly been well developed. It sounds fine to my ears at least.

To a large degree, the same is also true for the camera. Whilst you may only get a single camera, the 48MP camera is actually rather good. Although the Air won’t do as well in low-light conditions as the Pros due to its smaller sensor, you can get some amazing results with the Air’s single-camera setup nonetheless.

There has been a lot written about the missing ultra-wide camera, and at the price point of the iPhone Air, I can understand why. A single camera is a tough pill to swallow, particularly when Samsung’s Edge gives you two cameras and stereo speakers.

The Air’s future

The good news is that Apple seems invested in the future of the iPhone Air. It’s not going to be a one-and-done.

And the fact that we’re getting those extra few months before the iPhone Air 2 lands with us hopefully means Apple can get on top of these shortcomings.

The thing is, when you use the Air, it’s hypnotic. It’s gorgeous from every single angle. It’s so improbably thin that it still feels like something from a sci-fi movie. It’s a piece of art. It is a design that’s timeless and must be one of the most beautiful phones that Apple has ever made.

If the iPhone Air only ever came to life in the first place as a testbed for being half of the foldable iPhone, I don’t care. If Apple’s sole purpose was to gather thin-screen data for the Ultra, hell, I’ll take it.

What they came up with is a thing of sheer beauty, and we should, by rights, be applauding it.

But all that said, the figures speak for themselves. It garnered less than 7% of the sales of the 2025/2026 iPhone market so far, and due to those sales figures, production of it has been slashed by over 80%.

I know Apple has not been alone in struggling to make thin phones a success, but the thing is, this phone should be a success. Those figures I’ve just mentioned play out too – I haven’t seen a single iPhone Air being used in London or the US.

They are literally nowhere to be seen. So what can Apple do to halt the slide in the Air’s sales and make it the success it should always have been?

iPhone Air 2 – what next?

The most obvious cosmetic change, and one that should win over a much bigger slice of the £1000 phone market, is that the Air 2 will almost certainly get a second camera.

In all likelihood, the next Air will have a 48MP ultra-wide camera sitting next to that 48MP Fusion camera, with the 18MP front-facing camera remaining unchanged.

The battery may well be a bigger 4500-5000mAh unit, and to help even further with battery life, it seems the Air 2 might even get a vapour chamber too. As I’ve already said, I don’t think that the Air suffered from poor battery performance in the first place, but I’ll always take a spec bump in the battery department.

The display is likely to be even better.

It could use Samsung’s latest CoE (Colour Filter on Encapsulation technology), which means it will be both thinner and brighter with better light transmission.

And not that any of these phone chips are slow, but the iPhone Air 2 will probably end up using the A20 Pro chip, the C1X modem and N1 wireless chip. With all this optimisation and a bigger battery, things are looking good.

I’m sure the other remaining bug-bear will also be addressed, as well – the single speaker. The simple, obvious fix is just to pop in a second speaker, but I hope that they go a different route and continue to make the Air their cutting-edge phone.

Apple is rumoured to be thinking of using vibration-based speaker technology on the iPad mini later this year, and if they do, I’d love to see that carried over to the next-gen iPhone Air – you have to admit it would be cool!

Assuming the Apple audio boffins can make it sound good, this technology would have another big bonus, as it would be more waterproof, with there obviously being fewer points of water ingress.

Although not new technology for phones, LG used it as far back as 2019; it would be a first for Apple, and I’d imagine it’s something they’d be keen to roll out across their entire range eventually.

The Air of our dreams

If all these new features come to the iPhone Air 2 next spring, I hope it gives it the new lease of life it deserves.

This far out, your guess is as good as mine as to whether they can hold the prices. The storage cost situation is very real and could heavily impact all phone prices. We shall have to sit tight and wait to see about that aspect, I guess.

Design like this should be celebrated and admired. It’s what separated Apple from the rest for so long. It’s what made them unique and desirable. It’s great to hear that Apple won’t be walking away from the Air, but rather hunkering down and making the next iPhone Air a phone that simply can’t be ignored.

I adore beautiful design, and Apple’s iPhone Air is about as beautiful a phone design as can be.

iPhone Air 2 – I’m here waiting for ya. Come and get me.