Hacker News Reader

Comment by ziml77 | Hacker News Reader

I think it's funny how expectation defying the Air is. Most people were assuming that being so thin would mean it's super easy to bend by hand. Zack certainly isn't a weak man and he was unable to easily bend it by hand. People have also been assuming the battery must be terribly small, but its capacity is larger than the iPhone 15 battery was and only 100 mAh smaller than the iPhone 16 battery was.

Apple has seriously good engineers to be able to make that happen in a device that's so thin.

View on HN

They do have good engineers. But they’re chasing wrong goals set my management. I don’t know many people who said “man, I wish iPhone was x mm thinner”. But I do know many who say “man, I wish iPhone battery was much larger”.

And what did Apple do? Build thinner phone with an external battery pack.

These improvements could be laying the groundwork for future products. Engineering wins in this regard are almost never useless - that’s a short sighted take imo.

But I agree this iphone air as a product is kind of weird. Similar to the original macbook air maybe? Ahead of its time but a bit limited by today’s tech. A peek at the future…

It's simply utterly pointless as things stand due to the camera. They claim it's thin, but the camera makes it far thicker.

They did make the batteries bigger in the iPhone 17 phones … so they are indeed chasing the right goals.

Other users want a lighter phone (decent amount of iPhone mini fans) and that’s what the air achieves.

And what else did Apple do? Build two “Pro” phones with even bigger batteries for these folks. Come on, let a thousand flowers bloom!

(Yeah that phrase has unfortunate Mao-era baggage, but personally I really just want the mini series back—which many also consider to have too little battery capacity—so I feel encouraged by Apple broadening the iPhone lineup.)

Seriously, it's bizarre to see this argument from people that Apple isn't caring about what people want in terms of battery life. Apple in their keynote called out that they made the Pro models slightly thicker for the sake of a larger battery! Like, why ignore the standard models of iPhone and only focus on the Air when making complaints?

> I do know many who say “man, I wish iPhone battery was much larger”

This group is adequately served with an external battery pack.

A good product is judged on how well it sells. The question is less "is this fragile" and more "is this worth paying extra for" when the target audience gets it in their hands.

The batteries aren't their tech, though. See what Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi have been doing with Silicon Carbon.

Silicon Carbon sucks, it's longevity is pretty bad, and most people I know keep their iPhones for a long time and expect the battery to remain high enough quality for years.

Battery life is rated in charge cycle. Having higher capacity means lower charger cycle in the same period of time.

I'm not saying they're engineering the batteries. But they did have to engineer the whole phone to fit in a very small space without making serious spec compromises. And my statement about their engineers isn't comparative to other companies. They can all have excellent engineering teams at the same time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com