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Every fall, I find myself hoping that this is going to be the new iPhone or

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the new iOS that's going to inspire me to switch back to Apple. And yet, every

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fall, they seem to autumn short. But, while it used to be by a lot, this

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last round of updates has me this close to jumping into their walled garden with

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both feet. So, I did it. I spent most of the last

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couple of months daily driving this iPhone Air. The sex appeal of this

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device is undeniable, and it's different enough from their past models that I

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really wanted to give it a fair shake. Then, I spent the last couple of weeks

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with the iPhone 17 and the 17 Pro Max to

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see what I was missing out on by going with the skinny one.

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There ended up being a lot for me to like about all of them, actually. But,

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as you would expect, I also managed to run into my fair share of

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"Only Linus could break an iPhone this horribly" issues, as well.

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And, as you would expect, this segues to our sponsor,

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dbrand. I bet you didn't know that robots could be charitable, too. Well,

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stick around to the end of the video to learn how you can win it.

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Just like last time, my switch from Android got off to a pretty rocky start.

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Apple's Move to iOS app is, to put it bluntly, utterly useless. Almost as

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useless as Apple Support, whose only advice to fix the issue was,

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"I don't know, just try it again." So, after several failed attempts, I

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settled for what little it managed to copy over for me, and then I manually

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set up the rest. These issues might become a thing of the past, by the way.

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9to5Mac recently reported that Apple and Google are apparently working together

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on making platform migrations more streamlined. But, I'll believe it when I

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see it at this point. Overall, my opinion of iOS hasn't changed much since

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my iPhone 16 review last year. The liquid glass interface looks pretty, but

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it's not what I would have liked Apple to be working on, with my main gripe

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still being iOS's meme-worthy autocorrect and complete ducking lack of

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meaningful keyboard customization, even with third-party keyboards that work

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great for me on Android. I type on my phone a lot. Texts, emails, Teams chats,

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editing video titles, and updating our tracker sheet, and much of what I do

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requires frequent use of special characters and non-normie vocab. And if

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I can't text efficiently, then I can't operate efficiently. But, you've heard

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all that before. Let's talk about new stuff. My first impression of the iPhone

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Air was absolutely outstanding. I mean, it's just it's so sleek. It's so light,

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which I really appreciate now that Apple's flagship phones have gotten so

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brick-like. But, here's the rub. No, like, right here is

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the rub. Once you actually hold the Air and use it day-to-day, the narrow frame

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creates kind of a pressure point on the pinky right here. And also, because of

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the camera bump and the compute being up here, the weight balance is not great.

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Of course, you can fix all of that with a case, but I mean, what is the point of the Air at

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that point? It's like ordering a diet Coke with your baconator. Another

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ergonomic challenge is picking up or holding the phone without mashing the

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camera control button here. Now, to be fair, this can be tuned in

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Apple's favorite hiding place for useful features that should be obvious, the

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accessibility settings menu, but the default experience is noticeably worse

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than other members of the iPhone 17 family, where there's a little bit of

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solid ground on either side. The same goes for battery life. It's mostly fine,

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simply because Apple's idle battery management is so good. But, I did have a

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couple of days where I was traveling for factory tours, and I needed to hotspot

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off of my phone. I ended up running out of battery as early as 6:00 p.m., which simply

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wouldn't happen on my Pixel 9A or on one of the chunkier iPhones.

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Once again, Apple does offer a solution for that, a MagSafe power bank, but

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baconator. You get the point. And the Air also

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charges slower than the other 17 models, which

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actually, look, I I don't want to spend the rest of our time together dunking on this thing. So, let's get through the

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rest of this quickly so I can talk about the iPhone that I actually liked. The

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mono speaker is atrocious for watching landscape content. The single

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48-megapixel camera feels extremely limiting, even for someone who only uses

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it casually to snap pictures of his kids and cats. I had on-again, off-again

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reception issues both with Wi-Fi and cellular. And while I initially

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appreciated its heroin chic figure, the novelty of the form factor wore off

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pretty quickly. Now, there has been some speculation that the main reason that

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Apple put the iPhone on a diet was to aid the development of a future foldable

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phone. I can't speak to that, but what I can say is that, like so many of Apple's

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first-generation products, the Air feels like an expensive niche device for early

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adopters. And if the reports of slow sales of the Air are anything to go by,

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I'm not the only one who feels this way. And I didn't miss it even a little after

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switching to the iPhone 17, which resolved pretty much every issue that I

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had with the Air. To be clear, there are things that are great about the Air.

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It's just that they also happen to be great about the whole iPhone 17 lineup.

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Like the displays. Good lord, are these things ever

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freaking awesome? Like, seriously, Corning's durable Ceramic Shield 2 glass

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is tough. Like, even in my clumsy hands,

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I managed to make it through months with these things with no scratches. I mean,

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look. Look at this ding in the titanium frame of the Air. That's titanium. I

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dropped this thing on the concrete when I missed my pocket. And like,

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"Where are the scratches on the glass, Jerry?" The Ceramic Shield 2 is

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definitely a massive improvement this year. And that's not even the best part.

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Apple has finally put 120 Hz adaptive

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ProMotion displays on the entire lineup, rather than paywalling smooth scrolling

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behind the Pro tax. Across the lineup, these displays get incredibly bright,

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almost hitting their claimed peak of 1,600 nits in a 1% HDR window during

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Labs testing, not to mention a whopping 3,000 nits when auto brightness kicks

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in. And that's not even the best feature of them. I love being able to drop down

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to just 1 nit when it is time to relax

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before bed. Seriously, it gets so dim that if you forget to turn that feature

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off, it can be hard to turn it back off when you're actually in

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reasonable light. Anyway, so super cool feature. Of course, it's hidden in the

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accessibility menu, so do yourself a favor and add a shortcut to Control

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Center. Now, let's talk a bit more specifically about my favorite iPhone

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right now, the iPhone 17. There's

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not really much to set it apart. But, that's a good thing. It works great

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as a phone with only marginally lower performance than its bigger, more

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professional brother. It's got a solid camera, two, in fact, plus the

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outstanding new square sensor selfie camera that looks great in both portrait

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and landscape. It's got solid video capabilities, not on par with the Pro,

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but better than pretty much anything you'll see on the Android side of the garden wall, and it's got stereo

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speakers with decent options for storage, 256 gigs base and a 512 gig

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option. All told, I think the iPhone 17 is the best-rounded iPhone in years.

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It's a hair shy of the Pro version in every way that matters, but hundreds of

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dollars cheaper. It's so good that I think it's the reason that Apple dropped

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their Plus model. Like, if I could get a bigger screen without springing for the

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Pro Max, that is 100% the route that I would have taken. It isn't perfect. It's

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got USB 2. It wobbles when it's placed screen up. And like any modern iPhone,

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it uses iOS 26, which has felt uncharacteristically unpolished during

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my time with it. Wi-Fi tethering had this weird habit of just kind of

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turning off. And across all the phones I used, I experienced a wide array of just

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buggy behaviors. Finally, let's talk about the Pro Max. I

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didn't really use the 17 Pro since it didn't offer anything over the 17 for

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me, but if you are big into vlogging or

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doing pocket photography, it's probably worth the extra. The extra 48-megapixel

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telephoto lens is a welcome addition. The Pro gets a nice speed bump with the

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USB 3 at up to 10 gigabit per second, which you will need if you want to

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record ProRes 4K at 120 FPS to an external drive. And our Labs team found

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that the Pro Max had the best iPhone battery discharge that we have ever

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tested. Also, the Pro and the Pro Max

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can be equipped with up to a terabyte and 2 terabytes of storage,

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respectively. If you can stomach the $2,000 price tag.

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I don't really need any of that, though. So, if I was going to stick with iPhone this generation, I'd be going for the

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regular 17. But,

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I don't think I can do it. No side-loading, no keyboard

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customizations, crappy default screenshot management, including locking

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scrolling screenshots to only particular apps. Like, why?

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And also, that I can have a software experience that is every bit as buggy as

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Android. I don't know, Apple. Maybe next year.

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Maybe with Apple Hold. Until then, I

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think it's back to Android for me, and back to segwaying

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to our sponsor, dbrand. You probably want to know how to score the Samsung

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their new Sketch 2D designs. Kind of like how whenever I do these sponsor

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reads, I'm manifesting them to stop messing with me all the time.

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Oh, so I guess what they're trying to say is that won't work. Anyway, the sketch 2D designs are kind

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of like dbrand sketched your phone. So, the details are still there like in a

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Not that short. If you guys like this video, why not

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check out the video when the iPhone 17 launched in September? It's a good

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little round up of all the new features and the new hardware.