They’re designed that way to get you to buy $50 cases injection molded from a few cents worth of plastic.
LOL unfortunately optics don’t scale.
But they could make the phone thicker.
I feel like this is another well planned marketing campain to have people talk about the new iphone etc.
Does this really sell phones? Why don’t you make it match the camera bump, even just a little bit and give us back the aux and maybe more battery life.
Of course they won’t do that because then they wouldn’t have an excuse to force us to buy their expensive bluetooth earbuds.
My new phone that I got as a gift doesn’t have a jack. I’m so petty and frugal about it that rather than ordering a wireless earbud set, I instead ordered the cheapest jack to usb-c dongle I found that wasn’t on Temu. It works a charm. I will NEVER buy wireless headphones.
I honestly wouldn’t mind a thick phone if it also included aux port and larger battery.
IS IT SO MUCH TO ASK FOR A PHONE THAT CAN BE MAINTAINED AND SURVIVE LIFE!?
sorry to yell. i just feel like i’m going crazy
Yep, it’s practically way too much to ask from manufacturers who want to sell you a new phone every year or two.
Fairphone is the closest we have. It’s trivial to replace battery and other components.
It doesn’t have 3.5mm jack.
FP3 does
Just let it go.
swear to god, it can’t cost as much to add a headphone jack as big e-waste is trying to convince us it does. i won’t outright dismiss a phone because it doesn’t have a headphone jack, but it’s crazy to me that budget phones still have them and “nice” phones don’t
Never. Ever. There’s dozens of us that use it all the time.
I’d love to have a fairphone, but none of their phones seem to have a home button, and they also have that stupid thing where the selfie camera is on the screen…
Honestly would spend thousands on a modern phone with a 16:9 display and no selfie cam notch
I just want a modern day equivalent to an iPhone 5s. That phone was peak smartphone.
Is the home button the middle round button on Android? Do you mean a physical button like on Iphone?
Physical button like on older Iphones, of course.
so long as the corners are sloped/rounded, phones can be like 1cm thick no problem, and i truly do not understand the obsession with thinner phones
our hands are curved, why do people want a bunch of empty space between the palm and the phone? might as well fill that space with battery.
That was basically how the pre-lenovo Motorola phones were all built. Take the Nexus 6 for example, the edges were really thin, only a few mm, but the back curved so at the middle it was nearly a cm thick.
That phone was a goddamn tank I dropped my Nexus 6 down a flight of concrete stairs without a case and by some miracle only the plastic on one corner was scratched. I stopped at HTC One down those exact same stairs and it disintegrated before it hit stair 3.
I still have mine its amazing and will outlive me.
objectively superior design
Its honestly all making me think I should build a palmtop and shove a 5g module in it. Screw text messaging (matrix), screw phone service (I’ll just set up VoIP), who needs a play store when ive got apt repos.
I don’t care if it feels like 2007 in my pocket. I’ll stick an 18650 or two in there and swap it when I need to. I can even be more ridiculous and make the keyboard mechanical.
To answer your question before its asked, yes, there is plenty wrong with me. Still though.
If you get around to making two, I’ll buy the second one off of you.
(Sent from my GPD Win Max 2…)
I just want a modern phone in the body of an iPhone 5S (with an edge-to-edge display instead of the home button)
I live in an area with low violent crime but a lot of pickpocketing. The iPhone 5 fit in my pocket snugly and securely. All the new models stick out the top as if to say “steal me”. I’ll probably get the small foldable razr next.
I don’t even know what I’d use an aux port for at this point
Better headphones than Bluetooth ones, at a fraction of the price, and without a built in death date due to the batteries (permanently) dying?
Bone conduction bluetooth headphones has me. I have some audio processing issues, and being able to hear people on the phone… I’ll never go back
I’m no audiophile and honestly can just grab my old ipod and wired headphones if I really wanna jam, or usbc-aux dongle with my phone. But my use case tends to be more forgiving than some
Bluetooth in-ear buds can get fucked. Never found an earpiece that stays in… they’re just not for me. Wired or bone conduction for me
Same here. $90 for my shockz and I wear them 98% of my waking hours.
Im a wired headphones person and even I think that battery death is a bullshit reason.
The jack jack has a finite number of uses, as does the flexibility of the wire, many other components also aren’t indestructible.
I still have an old Archos Jukebox that runs off weird green Double As and a hard drive. Everything else, including the screen, needed replacing before the aux jack had even an inkling of a problem.
My wired cheap phones that I used almost daily for online meetings and calls is 11 yo, and still works normally. I doubt a cheap wireless would be close to last that much. I don’t even treat it with obsessive care or anything.
I’ve had the same Bluetooth headphones for about as long though wouldn’t call them cheap
I know what you mean, but just in case anyone has a pair of these I feel obligated to mention it’s relatively trivial to replace the battery packs inside, so maybe don’t just throw them away.
Or do, whatever, more free electronics for me ;)
Im a wired headphones person and even I think that battery death is a bullshit reason.
The jack jack has a finite number of uses, as does the flexibility of the wire, many other components also aren’t indestructible.
i mean sure, but the problem is that you then have a wire to worry about. I feel like bluetooth has been standard for so long that everyone has forgotten how incredibly annoying wired headphones are…
Still using wired headphones here. They’re great. Have to use the fucking USBC adapter, but it’s worth it.
Does cord noise bother you? The last few times I’ve tried to use wired headphones, I was incredibly annoyed by the sounds created by the cord touching stuff.
You can buy non-microphonic cables for pretty cheap. Bought a 7€ hama cable for an old pair of Philips 2xhr headphones and it was completely silent.
IEM/earbud cables are a little trickier, but there are plenty of sub 20€ cables online that are good. Microphonics is only really a problem with carelessly designed or very cheaply made cables.
Are you using a smooth / rubber cord or one of those rough, braided cords? I usually use modified KOSS headphones and some Verisonix cups. They’ve all got smooth cords, so I almost never notice if it touches things, but I’m mostly wearing on-ear / open backed headphones that wouldn’t likely transmit that too much.
deleted by creator
i have been an Android user through and through. Don’t want to give an enny to the giant oligopoly spearhead if i can help it…
Anyways, my colleague had bought an iPhone 6 an year after it was released. I remember to this day vividly, we were in the elevator, we were talking about it. He took it out, I held his iPhone 6 in my hand, and it was the most surreal experience I have had with technology up until that point.
It just felt Unbelievable, Unreal, to see a phone so lightweight, so thin, so compact, and not be a toy/downscaled dummy unit. Even the curved sides, which were aesthetically unappealing at first in photos, just clicked when I actually held the phone in my own hand.
It’s been almost a decade, and still I feel like I have never seen a smartphone that had such a perfect in hand feeling.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t buy it because Android just had too much going for it and for my preference and use case, iOS never was going to be a consideration. But for a fleeting moment, I really envied my colleague for having one of the best feeling smartphones at the time.
Apple is great when it comes to design and aesthetics. Jobs was known for being great at conveying a feeling in his presentations, and their products were always aimed at a “it just works, don’t worry about how” crowd. It’s no wonder they were copied left and right (slide to unlock, round corners etc., as ridiculous as some of those patents are).
That said, I feel like Android and iOS have come ever closer to equality. Google is locking down their walled garden, both app stores have basically become useless - apps are just custom browsers to webpages now and games suuuuck - with the exception that Apple’s walled garden enables compilation and therefore better battery efficiency, which in turn makes phones lighter.
As someone who just updated from an iPhone SE2020, the same body as the iPhone 6, I waited for the iPhone Air, no other iPhone had interest because of weight. This is the new standard.
People keep forgetting how stupid heavy carrying so much battery all the time.
iPhone Air charges from 25% -> 80% in 30min or less.
Camera is excellent and beyond my expectations.
Until you put a protective case on it and it feels just like every other phone in a case.
Though amusing, I feel it’s worth noting this image had to go back over a decade—eleven years—to find an iPhone without a camera bump of some kind, and would have to go back 6 years to get a pro-level camera without a plateau of some kind.
I agree that a dual measurement should be included, body thickness and camera plateau, but it never has been, so here we are.
And to give credit where it’s due, I have no desire to own an iPhone Air, but it IS a bit of astonishing engineering. They’ve used the plateau to provide a place for the logic board, and turned basically the entire body into a battery to preserve decent battery life. Love 'em or hate 'em, Apple has a world-class engineering team.
It’s not really astonishing, that’s Apple’s marketing speaking. Phones have been thinner than this and the tech that Apple are using now already exists in many phones. Apple are great at selling something as new and innovative, their marketing is what is astonishing.
Please name the modern phones with performance levels matching the air that are thinner. I will wait
Edit: spoiler, there are none
Please name phones that are identical to this one. If just a single measurement is off, spoiler: I’m right!
“Phones have been thinner than this and the tech that Apple are using now already exists in many phones”
fails to provide even a single example
If you follow the phone market, then there’s lots of phones that have new technologies before Apple. That’s always been the case.
If you want a thin flagship example that you couldn’t find yourself, then the Galaxy S25 Edge, is 5.8mm, with a smaller camera bump, better main camera, plus an ultrawide, is lighter, has more SIM support, higher resolution and brighter display, USB 3, bigger battery and faster charging.
The iPhone Air is not astonishing at all.
You’ll notice that 5.8 is not in fact thinner than 5.6. I rest my case
The vivo X5Max was 4.8 mm, the Moto Z was 5.19mm thick, also bonus, the S25 Edge is actually 0.7mm thinner than the iPhone Air if you measure at the camera. But why are you being dense? Nobody is arguing the thinness, but that it’s not an astonishing engineering feat.
Yeah this marketing is what makes the iphone 17 probably one of the best phones available atm IMO:
https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/
This probably wipes out 90% of all classes of vulnerabilities that can be exploited on a device. Its crazy engineering. No other phones on earth have this protection.
Android phones have something called MTE that is a basic version of this, but due to performance issues, isnt really feasible to have enabled all the time unlike MIE.
This is an insane fucking blog post considering Apple has been far more vulnerable to “mercenary exploits” than flagship Android devices. Regardless of the actual feature they are describing, the several paragraphs of discussion on this topic frankly reads as unhinged.
Where are you reading that apple has been far more vulnerable to “mercenary exploits” than flagship Android devices?
Pegasus is far more widespread on Apple devices
an amazing engineering achievement for sure, but i just wonder what consumer wanted thinner phones.
I’d buy an iphone immediately if they gave me a chunky phone that lasted a week on a single charge. now THAT would be an engineering achievement lol
Apparently both this one and the Samsung one are selling well, so… Somebody does.
This has come and gone. Feature phones had their thin&light phase, too. And it suits the manufacturers because they’re doing this work to make foldables anyway, so selling the thin candybar is a free side gig. Which is probably needed, because to riff on your point, what consumer wants to spend 2K on a bad tablet with a plastic screen that folds into a mediocre phone?
I’m getting my pixel fold 10 next week 😭
Yeah, see? There is a market for it, just like there is a market for an unnecessarily thin candybar.
Is it a mainstream device that everybody wants? No, but some people do like it.
And hey, I 'm not berating you for it. I like weird tech and I’m willing to overpay for it. At this point the only reason to ever buy a new phone is your old phone broke… or you want something fun and weird and are willing to overpay for it.
A lot of people buy the latest Samsung and Apple just because they’re new and a status symbol to them. I don’t think it’s a good metric for week wants what.
I do think many people want thin for various reasons, just doing think it’s valid proof.
Love 'em or hate 'em, Apple
Sir, this is a Lemmy
And if only if it was just 1 mm thicker, or maybe 2, the battery could have been user replaceable.
I miss replaceable batteries. I replace mine myself but current phones all glue in and do waterproofing so it’s a real pain and it’s never quite the same. Don’t let people blame the form factor or waterproofing, though, a replaceable battery is always technically possible-- there’s just no incentive for companies to do it.
Replaceable battery is always going to have a tradeoff. It’s usually a combination of reduced waterproofing, reduced battery capacity, and reduced durability of the case. Until we invent Star Trek transporters or replicators that can replace the battery without opening the phone, this is always going to be the case.
They can absolutely waterproof all of the working bits separately from the battery. The battery does not need to be in the same enclosure. It could even be attached with the same kind of waterproofing glue to protect the connection but would be easier to remove and replace than taking the entire phone apart.
The reason they don’t do it is because it requires slightly more thickness and makes it feasible for people to replace the battery.
The person I was replying to said “don’t blame the form factor or waterproofing” and my comment assumed identical thickness between replaceable and non-replaceable battery phones.
Once you make the thickness variable then all of the other tradeoffs go out of whack. After all, you could make a phone the size of a brick and have a battery that lasts for months but would anyone but a few niche users actually buy that?
The problem is acting like everything has to be extremes instead of acknowledging that a small change allows for a lot more options. Like why bring up a brick sized phone as a response to ‘slightly thicker’ except to be a contrarian?
Because you can always make the argument “it should be slightly thicker for another x% battery life” on to infinity. But actually drawing a line and saying “it should be exactly this thick because this is the correct amount of battery life” is actually really difficult.
From what I’ve seen, people want replaceable batteries because they go through their battery a lot faster than the average person. That’s always going to be a difficult sell because now you’re talking about less than half of the market.
No it couldn’t have. You’re not getting a user replaceable battery with ipx8 rating in a package that small.
not with that attitude you’re not
Thks is what happens when you let the marketing dept. have even a taste of alcohol.
Don’t think it was alcohol that was involved
Worse, the marketing department.
Argh I hate those bumps. My phone has one and it can’t lay evenly on any surface because of this >:(
A lens (the bottom one that hits the ground first) cracked the first week I got my iPhone 16, setting it down on a glass table.
Its a hairline crack, but still.
And it was in a case, but the bump is so freaking big the camera barely sticks out.
Meanwhile my old HTC and Razer phones (and old iPhones) never had this problem… Oh, but I forgot, they were a millimeter thicker and non-rectangles, therefore unusable?
Blame your non-square ass hands!
- apple, probably
I always have used a case because of this shit for the last 10 years when the camera bump bullshit started.
My current phone has a slight camera bump but it has less thickness than the case so that’s no problem for me. The thicker bumps are not acceptable IMO. Although I don’t care quite as much about that as I do about the hole punch in the screen for a selfie cam. My current phone also has a bezel selfie camera like in the civilized old days.
That is kinda what drives me away from the Xiaomi 14/15 Ultra. Amazing camera, but even with a case it sticks out, and I drop phones all the time.
Biblically accurate camera.
My god, what even is this monstrosity
It has a 1" sensor. I’m not unhappy with my S23’s camera, but trying to hold a phone steady for 2-8+ seconds in low-light conditions is pretty awful.
spoiler
It has slimmed down to a gentle flat plane … and due to underground tectonic forces, a small ridge is forming that will grow to become a mountain range in future versions
Who let geologists out of the basement?
Me, the world needs the bedrock support of a grounded geologist
Also,
- iphone air: 156 x 74 x 5.64mm
- iphone 13 mini: 131.5 x 64.2 x 7.65mm
How about bring back the best phone you ever made you cowards.
Meh, whatever, I’ll just not buy a phone then. Should be the best choice for many other reasons too.
I gotta wonder how awesome that camera is, tho. The rest of the phone got a few millimeters thinner, while the lenses on the camera got a bit fatter. Does it have a physical lens zoom instead of just digital zoom?
Half. A millimeter thinner. And then there’s that ridiculous camera bump.
For scale, my Galaxy S10e is 7.9mm thick. Measuring it just now, with a screen protector and a lens protector, it’s 9.5mm thick at the camera bump. And I already sometimes struggle to grip it.
Phones these days use multiple cameras in new lieu of optical zoom. My phone, for example, has a 12 MP 3x telephoto camera, a 200 MP main (wide) camera, and a 12 MP 0.6x ultrawide camera.
When you zoom in, the phone gauges lighting conditions and then decide whether to use a 3x camera, or the 200 MP one then zoom in digitally to make a 12 MP photo. (Both produce great results.) You can always manually choose which camera to use, of course, and even use the full image sensor in the main lens to create massive 200 MP images.
Not sure if doing it this way is actually better than a single camera with an optical zoom lens, but phone manufacturers seem to think so. I’ve even achieved good results going up to 10x digital zoom with the 200 MP camera; beyond that you really start to notice the upscaling artifacts. However, 5x digital zoom looks as good as optical 3x shots to my eyes.
Only 2x for this one, the fatter iPhones do more. They have to do some magic by using the different sensors and lenses for different zoom levels though.
I used to have a Sony Ericsson candybar phone back before smart phones that had an adjustable zoom lens for the camera like an SLR’s. It was really the main reason to get the phone.
I suspect its main purpose is not to be a product in its own right but a tech demo of half the thickness of a folding iPhone when it arrives. Being a niche product for early adopters and fashion victims to be seen with is a secondary purpose.
I still can’t quite believe Apple is going down the folding route, despite all the speculation.
I can’t explain, it feels like such an non-Apple move…I hear you but there are limits for the average user. The worst on a smartphone is already more quality than I need to film a meandering vacation video that no one will ever see or to take a photo of my mom with the end of my index finger
People want good cameras.
Sure and since there is already a bump for the camera making it slightly thicker for more battery or a removable battery isn’t ruining a perfectly flat surface.
I think a bump isn’t great but having the rest of the body slimmer is way different than the entire body the same thickness as the camera.
at this point we’re not talking about good cameras, we’re talking about having fucking telescopes built into the phone.
I have a pixel 6a and the camera is absolutely fine, i have taken perfectly good images on it and that’s with me specifically removing any sort of automatic software enhancements it might have when running the stock OS.
With modern technology even a phone without a camera bump will be so monstrously good 99% of people are never going to make full use of it.
How are you feeling about your 6a these days? Did you do the battery replacement? I don’t really want to but I’m also not super thrilled about the reduced battery life considering that was one of the weakest points of it to start with. And Android 16 is not running as smoothly as previous versions did for me. But I don’t really feel like it’s in such condition that it needs replaced yet.
i bought it second hand and haven’t given a rat’s ass about the battery thing, everything has been working fine for like 3 years now and with me limiting the charge to between 30-70% the battery is still at almost 100% capacity.
I also use lineageos so everything just keeps working smoothly.
