Joe Maring / Android Authority
The rumors about the iPhone Air were true. Just a few months after Samsung launched the Galaxy S25 Edge, Apple has thrown its hat in the ring with its own ultra-thin iPhone.
At first glance, the iPhone Air does look impressive. The 5.6mm body is shockingly thin, the display looks great, and having the latest A19 Pro chip is quite the achievement. However, there was one aspect more than anything else that I was curious to hear about: battery life.
The Galaxy S25 Edge proved that super-slim phones come with serious battery compromises, and I was looking forward to hearing what Apple’s solution to this would be. I like the idea of an ultra-thin and light phone, but only if there’s a real way to avoid mediocre battery life.
This is what I was hoping Apple would figure out with the iPhone Air, but it’s plainly obvious that the company failed to do so.
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Let’s talk about battery life
During the iPhone Air segment of yesterday’s Apple event, Apple’s SVP of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, had a dedicated section to talk about the phone’s battery life (which begins at the 51:28 mark in the video above). It started promising enough, with Ternus saying that Apple had “innovated in both hardware and software to deliver great battery life for iPhone Air.”
Cool! That sounds promising. So, what kind of innovations are we talking about? A silicon carbide battery? Some kind of new power-efficient display or chipset design? Not exactly.
The first solution Apple mentioned is iOS 26’s Adaptive Power Mode — a type of battery-saver mode that makes “performance adjustment” throughout the day to help give you longer battery life. This can include lowering your screen brightness, increasing loading times for some activities, etc. In other words, to get good battery life on the iPhone Air, you won’t be able to use the phone at its full capacity.
Apple says this helps the iPhone Air get “all-day battery life,” which, according to Apple’s website, equals up to 27 hours of video playback — three hours less than the iPhone 17 and 12 hours less than the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Joe Maring / Android Authority
But don’t you worry. Throttling performance with a power-saver mode isn’t Apple’s only solution for combating poor battery life on the iPhone Air. The company’s second answer to this problem is … a new MagSafe battery pack.
What’s fascinating is that this isn’t just another battery pack for Apple’s entire iPhone portfolio. The battery pack is explicitly called “iPhone Air MagSafe Battery” and is labeled as being “created exclusively for iPhone Air.” Furthermore, Apple’s website lists the battery pack as only being compatible with the iPhone Air.
Joe Maring / Android Authority
Even more interesting is that if you look at the iPhone comparison tool on Apple’s site, there’s a dedicated line in the battery section for “Video playback with iPhone Air MagSafe Battery.” It’s the first time an iPhone spec sheet has ever listed battery life estimates for the phone and the phone with an optional battery pack, seeming to suggest that Apple expects a lot of people to buy this thing. Not necessarily because they want to, but because they’ll have to.
Oh, and that battery will cost an extra $99 on top of the $999 iPhone Air.
None of this sounds promising
I think there is a future (maybe in a different reality) where phones like the Galaxy S25 Edge and iPhone Air are amazing. As someone who really enjoys using a lightweight phone for the ergonomics, there is something appealing about having a larger display in a smartphone body that’s so thin and lightweight.
However, the Galaxy S25 Edge made it clear that Samsung didn’t have a definitive answer to the battery life conundrum, and the iPhone Air proves that Apple doesn’t know what to do about it either. If anything, the company’s “solutions” of throttling performance and buying a $100 battery pack have me worried the iPhone Air could have even worse battery life than the low bar set by the Galaxy S25 Edge.
To make matters worse, this is to say nothing of the iPhone Air’s other compromises — whether that’s the single rear camera, one external earpiece speaker, or 20W wired charging. There’s also a big question around the iPhone Air’s thermal performance, which, if the Galaxy S25 Edge is any indication, could be concerning.
As a fan of cool and unique smartphones — whether they run Android or iOS — I was hoping Apple would address my concerns around the iPhone Air and show me a device that I may want to carry alongside my go-to Android phone. But after seeing the company’s full pitch for the iPhone Air, that didn’t happen.
I am interested in seeing how the iPhone Air performs in the real world, and I’d love to be proved wrong and to see this phone’s battery hold up better than expected. But from where I’m sitting right now, it sure doesn’t look good.
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