See? I told you the iPhone Air was a better phone than the Plus models

The iPhone Air has received very mixed reviews since its launch last year alongside the iPhone 17 series. For many people, the general consensus remains that no one actually wanted a super slim iPhone with a smaller battery and worse cameras.

It’s also no secret that the iPhone Air did not sell that well compared to the base model iPhone 17 and the iPhone 17 Pro phones. Apple actually had to wind down production for the phone some time back due to weak sales numbers.

But all that isn’t to say that the iPhone Air has flopped entirely. On the contrary, the iPhone Air is twice as popular as the Plus models, at least in some regions. I was always of the belief that the iPhone Air was a better replacement for the iPhone Plus, though I thought that it would take a couple of years for it to really find its feet.

Glad to see I was wrong, and I’m quite excited for the future of this model for one major reason.

I think Apple wants to make it the default

From how Apple has approached the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro models, I think that the company wants to make the Air the go-to iPhone for the average consumer.

Think about it, Apple didn’t even provide the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max in black, which remains the most popular choice of color for smartphones worldwide. In addition, the iPhone 17 Pro saw a major redesign that was very divisive at launch, alongside a thicker chassis even though Samsung is continuing to slim down its own flagships.

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I think that this is because Apple is focusing on making the Pro models the most professional pieces of kit that it can for the price, no matter how they have to look or feel. If you just want a standard smartphone from Apple, you should instead go for the iPhone Air.

Give the iPhone Air time

First came the iPhone mini and there wasn’t much that Apple could do with it after the first generation. It was a more compact phone with the same flagship hardware, but many people don’t want a tiny phone, and so it saw poor sales.

Then came the iPhone Plus, which was the exact same thing except bigger. As it turned out, people didn’t care about paying extra for base-level performance in a bigger form. If you were going to pay a little more, you might as well cough up enough to buy a Pro model that has better specs.

Now we’re at the iPhone Air: flagship performance, flagship price tag, but with the new gimmick being that it’s all packaged in a much slimmer form factor. And, to me personally, this feels like a much more compelling change, and the customer base seems to agree.



In some regions, the iPhone Air has sold twice as much in the same time that the iPhone Plus had sold before it. This is despite the very small battery and only a single camera on the rear. I think it would have fared much better against the base iPhone 17 as well if Apple hadn’t made that such a compelling option this time around.

But you know the best part about the Air compared to the previous Plus models? Apple can actually improve upon it with future iterations. The phone is lacking compared to the Pro and even the base models, but given time, the company will be able to incorporate batteries with more capacities as well as more cameras as well.

There are already reports of the next iPhone Air model featuring two cameras on the rear. All we need now is for Apple to adopt silicon-carbon batteries. Slimness in smartphones has always been a major marketing point, so the iPhone Air truly has the potential to overtake the iPhone Pro and achieve the popularity levels of the MacBook Air.