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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
Mobile phones are such a tiny market, no room for appealing to different needs.
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