Apple CEO Tim Cook reached back to Steve Jobs for inspiration on Tuesday, quoting his late predecessor as he introduced the company’s slimmest handset yet—the iPhone Air. “For us, design goes beyond just how something looks or feels. Design is also how it works,” Cook said as he held up a phone just 5.6 millimeters thick.

Cook later joked that the device “does seem like it’s going to fly away when you’re holding it,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

But the Air isn’t just another iPhone. For Apple, it’s a statement about the future.

“We dreamed about this for a long time,” Molly Anderson, Apple’s vice president of industrial design, told the Wall Street Journal. “To make just an incredibly, shockingly thin iPhone.” She described the Air less like a piece of hardware and more like an idea Apple had been chasing: a phone that feels impossibly light, almost disappearing into the hand.

The obsession with thinness has long defined Apple’s hardware design—from the MacBook Air to the iPad Pro. But with the iPhone Air, executives are positioning it as something more personal, more expressive. “We’re saying this product is so personal that it needs to reflect you,” Cook said in the WSJ interview. “And you are the best person to decide what that means.”

Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of human interface design, framed the Air as another step toward Apple’s old dream of “a singular piece of glass.” That language harks back to Steve Jobs’ early vision for the iPhone: a seamless slab where technology vanishes into form.

What’s inside the thinnest iPhone ever

Despite its wafer-thin profile, the Air is built on a titanium frame with ceramic shield glass—tech Apple claims makes it more durable than any previous model. It features the A19 Pro chipset, a step up from the A19 in the base iPhone 17, along with two custom communications chips. Apple says the circuitry has been shrunk to the size of postage stamps to preserve “all-day battery life”.

The Air’s 6.5-inch display makes it slightly larger than the base iPhone 17. Sitting between the standard and Pro models, it effectively replaces last year’s iPhone Plus at a higher price point.

Analysts split on Apple’s bet

Many on Wall Street had predicted a muted response ahead of the event, but the Air—Apple’s first major design shift since the iPhone X in 2017—gave analysts reason to revise their expectations.

Morgan Stanley called the Air “more impressive than expected” and said it could drive upgrade rates over the next 12 months, though they cautioned that the eSIM-only model may face challenges in China, according to Reuters. IDC’s Nabila Popal said Apple’s pricing strategy—$100 below Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge—could make the Air “a strong seller,” adding: “Apple’s late, but when they do it, they do it bigger or louder or better than anyone.”

Bank of America’s Wamsi Mohan raised his price target, citing “increased confidence in growth” from Apple’s use of in-house silicon to bolster its AI strategy, CNBC reported. Goldman Sachs highlighted Apple’s elimination of the 128GB storage option as an “implicit $100 price increase” that could support average selling price growth.

Citi’s Atif Malik said the Air could lay the groundwork for a foldable iPhone as soon as next year, while Evercore ISI’s Amit Daryanani called it “the start of a multi-year iPhone roadmap.” Still, JPMorgan’s Samik Chatterjee cautioned that investor expectations of a blockbuster redesign cycle may be tempered by Apple’s decision to hold prices steady.

Fans cheer, investors hesitate

For fans, the device landed with more excitement than skeptics predicted. “I heard loud claps the moment it was announced,” YouTuber Gaurav Chaudhary, who has 24 million followers, told Reuters. He praised the titanium frame and ceramic shield but added that Apple’s “all-day battery” claim would need real-world testing.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said the Air had enough dazzle to convince people with older iPhones to finally upgrade. “It’s exciting enough to get some people in older model phones to buy a new device,” he said.

But investors weren’t as convinced. Apple shares fell more than 3% on Wednesday, reflecting concerns over stagnant prices, shrinking margins, and the $1.1 billion in tariff expenses the company warned it faces this quarter. “Apple’s not really innovating … they’re still behind the eight ball on AI,” Thomas Hayes of Great Hill Capital told Reuters.

A balancing act between power and poise

The Air has fewer cameras than its siblings—just one rear lens compared with two on the iPhone 17 and three on the Pro models—and a smaller battery. For Anderson, those trade-offs are the point. “I like that it’s a hard choice,” she told the Journal.

Apple is betting that, for many users, thinness and style will matter more than brute functionality. Or, as Cook quipped about his own choice of device: it may come down to “whether I want to float through the air.”

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