iPhone Air sets the stage for the future
It's a cool phone today, but it's really about what's next
The iPhone Air is a show-stopper. It’s thin. It’s beautiful. But it’s still very much an iPhone.
The iPhone Air achieves its thinness by placing everything in the camera module on the back that Apple is calling the plateau. This is where the innovation is. The rest of the iPhone Air is a neat parlor trick, but keep your eye on what this can enable moving forward.
For a slab phone, this means you can make the rest of the phone very thin. It makes a nice conversation piece. It fits in pockets better.
It’s not a revolutionary device. But revolutions often start with little things that people don’t notice, because at its heart, revolutionary product design is about stacking iterations and insights on top of one another, setting the stage for delivering experiences that truly push things forward.
Take a look at this small camera module bump. It packs an entire smartphone’s worth of power and connectivity in a very tiny space that looks like it just houses a camera and a flash. Don’t forget that the A19 Pro in the iPhone Air is a very powerful chip that packs more power than many people have in their laptops.
There are at least two broad categories of devices that would benefit greatly from this ability to put all of the guts of a cell phone in a small place:
A foldable phone/tablet
AR glasses that don’t require a phone
Apple is clearly stalking the foldable phone/tablet market. They’ll release one when the tech is right and the screens aren’t janky. The iPhone Air shows us that we are almost there.
Apple’s foldable will have a small camera bump with all of its guts and then two thin slabs that are just filled with battery. It’ll be the thinnest, lightest foldable on the market. In terms of thickness, it’ll probably be somewhere around the thickness of a regular iPhone.
Apple also harped on all the new ceramic shield technology they packed into the new iPhones to make them harder to break and scratch. Both of which will be critical for a successful foldable, and a major weakness of current foldables.
On the AR glasses front, look at how close Apple is to being able to stick this module on the side of a pair of glasses. Remove the camera lens and sensor, and this plateau could be even smaller today. With a die shrink and another generation or two, Apple will be there. They can balance the weight of the module and the visuals by sticking the battery on the other side of the glasses.
Meta just announced some pretty interesting AR glasses. But they require a phone, and they will be limited to the kinds of data and interactions you can get over Bluetooth.
They are closer to a fancy Apple Watch (can show you notifications, directions, change music, send text messages, etc.) than anything really revolutionary (and they lack all the fitness and health benefits of an Apple Watch). The only way AR glasses become revolutionary is to be able to function complexly on their own without a phone and without worrying about the limitations of a Bluetooth connection.
AR glasses have to become their own computers. This is how all computing devices take a leap forward. AR glasses are not powerful today, but so were personal computers and smartphones when they first launched. As they became more powerful and didn’t need to rely on bigger legacy computing devices, they really took off.
Smartwatches function on their own, and they’ve become very useful and powerful because of it. Smartphones are powerful enough to be the main computer for many people.
AR glasses need to cross that Rubicon where they exist on their own and aren’t tethered to the limitations of tethering. When they become something closer to the power of Apple Vision Pro, but in smart glasses form, imagine the possibilities. The iPhone Air plateau is getting us close.
Apple and other manufacturers will also need to combine these advances with advances in battery tech to get there. Meta’s Ray-Ban Display is a very cool demo. Some people might really take to them. But when you get right down to it, they aren’t capable of being that useful because they require your phone to tether, and your phone has way more capabilities today (not to mention it is one more thing to charge and carry).
I know many people are being blown away by using the Meta glasses for the first time, but I strongly caution using a new device like this for a week or even a month. Many people are blown away by using VR for the first time.
And VR does have some great uses, but the initial experience using VR is often your most transcendent, and after that, reality sets in. VR has a lot of limitations and things it doesn’t do that well. The things it does well — certain game and fitness experiences, as well as immersive video — are impressive, but they are limited. There are only so many video games that are better in VR, and the amount of immersive video is really small. You’ll soon find yourself pulling out your VR headset a few times a month.
The real innovation, new use cases, and software only hit when a computing device can stand on its own. We are just a few years away from AR glasses being able to stand on their own.
So, when you hear people saying, “Who asked for this?” in regards to the iPhone Air, tell them it’s all part of the process. Product development and even revolutionary change are iterative at their heart. Apple’s ability to pack a CPU, GPU, 12 GB of RAM, cellular chips, a camera, and more into that tiny little camera hump is a huge deal.
Enjoy the iPhone Air today if you want a thin, pocketable phone, but get ready for the future. It’ll be here soon enough.