It’s that time of the year when the rumors begin about the next generation of iPhones due out in the Fall, and whether it’s worth upgrading to one of the new models. Let me get right to the point – based on all that’s been reported: No.
As popular as the iPhone is – it’s what I mostly use – it’s no longer on the cutting edge and it continues to fall behind its rivals. Today you can buy a great Android phone for half the cost, with Google Gemini AI that puts Siri to shame, and a battery that lasts much longer. One of my friends, a long time Apple fan, is moving to an Android phone just for the AI and his frustration with Siri.
You can now buy Android phones that fold in half and even in thirds, in models that fold to as small as a flip phone and others that unfold to the size of a tablet. Yet Apple’s first folding phone is still a year or two away.
Apple has fallen way behind incorporating AI, a feature that provides real benefits on Android phones. Siri seems to be getting worse. Even after five years of use, I still have to purposely mispronounce some friends’ names for Siri to recognize them and make a call. Apple promised AI in their iPhone 16 models a year ago, but have failed to deliver and are facing a class action lawsuit as a result. A new report today from Mark Gurman of Bloomberg News describes the mess.
Apple is spending more energy fighting their app developers who want to allow their customers to pay directly and avoid their 30% commission. The greediness is not a good look for Apple.
Each year Apple tries to give us a reason to upgrade. This year they’re using an old formula, since there’s very little else to talk about: “thinner is better.” They’ve emphasized thinness on other devices in the past, such as the MacBookAir, the iPhone 6, and the thin keyboard for iMacs that led to another class-action lawsuit because of its unreliability.
They’ll just roll out the same old story and promote it with millions of dollars in advertising and make all sorts of claims for something that probably required a huge engineering effort, but offers a minor benefit to the customer.
TheiPhone 17 Air, as it’s rumored to be called, will be a tad under 6 mm thick, about 2/3 the thickness of today’s phones. It will be achieved by downgrading some existing features, including using a camera with fewer lenses, a smaller battery, and a stronger alloy frame.
There are two reasons why this seems so foolish. First, it means a shorter battery life, and for many, the iPhone has too short a life now. Second, nearly everyone puts a case on their phone for protection that adds 2 to 4 mm in thickness and negates much of the benefit of a thinner and lighter phone.
Apple has never responded to what most users actually care about based on most surveys since the first iPhone, longer battery life. The real cost of thinness is measured, not in design aesthetics, but in diminished battery capacity, earlier battery replacement – because you charge more often, and the need to carry chargers, cords, and backup batteries to get through a day.
When the iPhone 6 debuted in 2014 it had a thickness of 6.9 mm. Today the iPhone 16 Pro Max is at 8.25 mm, only 20% thicker. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is 8.2 mm, and a new model is expected to be about as thin as the new iPhone. Pixel 9 phones are are 8.5 mm. They’re all nice devices, but no one buys one over the other just because of their thickness.
Looking back at the history of phones, do any of these iconic models stand out because of thickness?
| Phone | Year | Thickness |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone 4 | 2010 | 9.3 mm |
| iPhone 6 | 2014 | 6.9 mm |
| Galaxy S6 | 2015 | 6.8 mm |
| iPhone X | 2017 | 7.7 mm |
| Pixel 6 | 2021 | 8.9 mm |
| iPhone 15 Pro | 2023 | 8.25 mm |
| Galaxy S24 | 2024 | 7.6 mm |
iPhone battery capacity has barely kept pace with all the new things we do with our phones. We have faster 5G cellular, brighter screens, faster video, and always-on displays. We spend hours more scrolling through social media and listening to podcasts and music. Fortunately, the processors have gotten more power efficient, but no iPhone has yet been capable of running for 12 hours with heavy use.
Now imagine an iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel that was 3 or 4 mm thicker but lasted closer to two days before needing to be charged. That alone would be reason for many of us to upgrade.
But the big story here is not so much how thin the new iPhone is, but how boring the iPhones have become and how little imagination is going into new models. While other companies are innovating, Apple has seems to have stalled out.
