In defense of the silly phones no one seems to want

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes, 9 seconds. Contains 1233 words.

Not 17 Air, just Air

So, it's September 13th, 2025, and Apple just announced the iPhone 17 line on the 9th. Good upgrades, nice Pro model, and another ad telling you that you'll die without the Apple Watch. Normal Apple. The one truly different announcement was a new family member: the iPhone Air. Not 17 Air, just Air.

It is, without a doubt, the one people wanted to comment on the most, and for good reason, while we can all say that Apple removed the fun colors of the base model, or that the Pro's strange back camera bump and shielded back combo is weird, the Air something else, good? That's a different question, but it's different, and for me, that's something to celebrate.

Before continuing this, I want to remember that I don't own Apple devices, I never had an iPhone, and I dislike how they make their ecosystem a walled garden. I also do not own the other device you'll see in this post, the Galaxy S25 Edge, by Samsung. I'm a normal person who has just one phone, unless one of those companies wants to give me another, I'll take it. This is, then, not a review, but my take on this new trend, because I kind of like it.

Please, something different

If you've read the first post on this blog¹, you know I despise modern smartphone design. Slabs are too good, unfortunately, and making phones is really expensive. So there is not really a reason to try something else. There's no space for an enthusiast device, at least not beyond foldables, which I do love, as you known from that same blog post.

Still, most people don't complain. We comment "huh, same as last year" and move on. We upgrade every 3 or 4 years, when the screen cracks or the battery is too degraded, and most of us don't spend over a thousand dollars on a smartphone. So, when Samsung announced that black sheep of the S25 line, the Edge, some of us got intrigued. The device came out, reviewers were almost universally not very impressed. Sure, looks fine, but battery life is not great, the cameras are compromised due to the thinness, and by that price you could likely buy a S25+. An overall better phone.

I do think no one has really thought about the Edge since, not until the Air was announced. Same philosophy: thin, light, compromises. And the comments? Roughly the same as the Edge, I promise you the reviews will also have the same arguments, buy the base iPhone, or the Pro. Those are, after all, better phones.

This is when I'll slam my fist on the table, and tell everyone to shut up. I really, really hate what smartphone reviews have become. They are all about numbers, benchmarks, and camera tests. So you can pixel peep and argue that your Xiaomi 15 Ultra is, I don't know, better at low light photography than the S25 Ultra, see that dynamic range? Only to upload it to Instagram which will compress it to hell and back. Or maybe see that Geekbench score, 15% higher! Now go browse your social media feed of choice. Wonderful.

Thing is, I like design, and I like different. Sure, we are really pushing the definition of "different" here (R.I.P. LG Wing, truly a different phone), but specially for the Air, you have to agree it doesn't look like the other phones, specially not other iPhones. It is a phone that is giving a different proposition. Instead of giving you raw numbers, and urging you to conclude that those numbers do equate with the price it is asking, it is giving you a different experience, and asking you to decide, subjectively, if that experience is worth it.

Yes, I sound like a person from the marketing department, but it's because I have been convinced by this. This notion that design is part of the product, hell, the main selling point of the product. Not by the Edge, and of course not by the Air, since it's not out (and I'm not buying it), but by my Z Fold 7. See? It always comes back to foldables.

Design is part of the product

I think phones have, in more ways than one, become computers. Not as in literally, they are, after all, computers, but as in how we treat them. When we buy a laptop, we look at the numbers, how good the CPU, the GPU is, memory, storage, battery life. Numbers. They're all the same anyway, why care about anything else? Even desktop PC parts kind of suffer with this, sure you can have a glass side panel on your pretty Chun-Li themed case, but a lot of people don't even leave the case on the desk. No, we leave design for what we see all the time. A keyboard and mouse, a monitor, maybe you decorate your desk a bit. Because you actually look at those things.

Phones, however, are different. We look and touch them a lot. We carry them around, people look at them, we take mirror selfies that show the back or the case. I feel there is a lot more space to care about design here. Just the touch experience alone is a lot more important than on a laptop, and I think that is something that has been lost in the last years. But not completely.

There have been a select few that have tried to do something different. I must mention Nothing, they're slabs, but they definitely look different, different enough that it's divisive, which is a good sign in my book. The Edge and the Air are also divisive, the most common comment is "Who is this phone for?" and I get it, I truly do. If we are, once again, looking at value propositions, it is hard to justify the price of these phones for what they offer. But you're missing the point: the value is not on the numbers, it's on the design.

How it looks, how it feels, yes, how thin it is. This is cool. I only truly got this on my aforementioned Z Fold 7. I have a review of it in the oven, but in essence, I first found the decision to focus on thin and light ridiculous, it ruined things I liked. Then I held and used one, and it clicked. It is a different experience, sure, foldable, but the design, holding that thing in your hands, I realized there can be more to a phone than raw specs. There's nothing wrong with raw specs, but I am happy we are seeing more design focused phones. I just wish there were more options, more variety. And that Samsung copies that curved camera island, please.

Go give Apple money /j

I hope it's clear the title is a joke. I know that I looked like a major shill for those two companies in here. Because I'm focusing on a thing I liked. While the S25 Edge wasn't a major failure, it sold fine, it recently got to a million units sold², it's far from a huge success that will spawn a new era. Maybe Apple is the right company for this, maybe their costumers are willing to pay a premium for design. Or maybe the Air will fail so hard there will never be an Air 2. I'll be watching for reviews and later sales numbers, it will, at least, be interesting.

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