It’s the time of the year when the rumors begin about the new generations of iPhones due out in the Fall and whether it’s worth upgrading to a new model. Let me get to the point. Absolutely not.
The iPhone is falling behind in incorporating AI and even some of my friends are considering moving to an Android phone. To make matters worse, Apple is falling back on all the past reasons to upgrade: a better screen, a better camera, a faster processor, or another button.
This year Apple is going back to their old default when there’s nothing else to talk about: making their product thinner. They’ve done this with other devices in the past, such as the MacBookAir, so they are just rolling out the same old story and promoting it with millions of dollars in advertising. They will turn on their their marketing machine to make all sorts of claims for something that likely required a huge engineering effort, but is really quite minor for the customer.
The new featured premium 2017 model will be the thinnest iPhone ever. The iPhone 17 Air, as it’s rumored to be called, will be about 6 mm thick, about 2/3 the thickness of today’s phones. It will be achieved by reducing some features, including shedding a camera lens, using a smaller battery, and utilizing a stronger alloy frame.
There are two big reasons why this is so foolish. First, it will have 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 effort. And you can bet there will be a rash of extra heavy cases promoted to protect the phone’s perceived greater fragility, regardless of what Apple says about it being made of some exotic new alloy.
Apple seems to have forgotten what most users actually care about isn’t thickness. In numerous surveys, year after year, they ask for better battery life. And paradoxically battery life and thickness go together. The real cost of thinness is measured not in new design aesthetics, but in diminished battery capacity, earlier battery failures (because you charge more often), and the need to carry chargers, cords, and backup batteries to get through a day.
So, just what are they talking about when they promote thickness? 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, less than 20% thicker. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is 8.2mm. And all Pixel 9 phones are are 8.5 mm. They’re all nice devices, but no one buys one more than other because of its thickness.
Manufacturers could use that same space to add much more battery capacity, which would drastically improve user satisfaction and phone life. Looking back at the history of phones, none of these stand apart 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 |
Batteries just haven’t kept pace with the needs of all the new things we do with our phones. We now have faster 5G cellular, brighter screens, faster video, and always-on displays. Fortunately, new processors have reduced power consumption, but no iPhone has yet proved capable of running 12 hours for a moderate to heavy user.
Now imagine an iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel that was 2mm thicker but lasted two full days on a single charge. That’s a device people many would upgrade to.