Everything about iPhone Air is baseline acceptable, except one feature.

The new iPhone 17 series and iPhone Air are finally available in stores, so I had a chance to check them out.

The first thing that struck me about the iPhone Air wasn’t how thin and light it is, but the expansive screen. At 6.5”, it’s bigger than any iPhone I’ve ever used (I’ve never owned an iPhone Plus or Pro Max). The display looks 110% Apple quality—bright and crisp.

When I focused more on thickness and weight, I could feel how light and thin the iPhone Air is. Still, it wasn’t an “Aha” moment for me. As a small phone lover, my iPhone 13 mini—24 grams lighter (almost 15%)—felt more like a gem when I bought it almost four years ago.

Holding the iPhone Air longer, I tried to balance the bigger screen against its thinner profile, but I wasn’t impressed. Hardware-engineering-wise, maybe it’s a miracle. Consumer-experience-wise, it didn’t move me that much.

Then I shifted attention to what had worried me during the keynote: the single main camera. Based on Apple’s own logic—claiming the iPhone 17 Pro has 8 lenses with only 3 cameras—they could’ve said the iPhone Air has 4 lenses, instead of repeating that the single camera “works like two.” Both approaches are just upselling, but the inconsistency doesn’t feel Apple-style to me.

Missing an Ultrawide (and macro) lens isn’t the end of the world, though. The iPhone 16e has the same limitation. Taking a few steps back for an ultrawide shot, or using 2x telephoto for a close-up, isn’t unacceptable.

Then it hit me—something I’m so used to that I almost forgot it existed: stereo speakers.

Apple never mentions this in the official materials or even in their comparison tool. Maybe the web team assumed Apple would never release another mono-speaker iPhone after the iPhone 7 in 2016. The only place you see it is the detailed specs page.

The only place to confirm speaker quantity of iPhone Air is in the middle of specs page: https://www.apple.com/iphone-air/specs/

I thought maybe it wasn’t that important—sadly, I was wrong. 

I played some content, and immediately thought: “Something’s wrong with this phone.” The mono speaker is weak—so weak I could barely hear it in the noisy Apple Store. Worse, in horizontal mode, sound only comes from one side. The only time it might pass is for TikTok videos.

Stereo speakers have been standard in personal electronics for years. Phones, laptops, tablets—99% of them have it. Even $100 phones do.

Now imagine someone buying the iPhone Air without knowing this. At home, streaming content or watching a family video, they’d feel something was off. “Did I just lose hearing in one ear?” they might think. After 30 minutes of frustration, they’d learn their $1,000 smartphone only has one/single/mono/uno speaker. That would be devastating.

Yes, AirPods sell millions, and Bluetooth speakers are cheaper than ever. But to me, it’s still almost unacceptable for a 2025 smartphone to lack stereo speakers.