Last week, Apple unveiled the iPhone 17 Air , its thinnest iPhone ever, while Samsung recently debuted the Galaxy S25 Edge, also a wafer-like sliver of glass and silicon. Both launches drew headlines for their engineering feats. But let's face facts here: this obsession with thinness is a triumph of marketing over common sense.
The modern smartphone is no longer a luxury. It is a camera, computer, wallet, gaming console and health tracker. Shrinking it down further does nothing for functionality - and often undermines it. By chasing millimetres, the world's top phone makers are giving up the very features consumers care about most: longer battery life, better cameras and devices that risk being bent if you sit on them by mistake.
No one should rush out to buy either the iPhone 17 Air or the Galaxy S25 Edge . First-generation designs tend to highlight problems that later iterations eventually smooth out if they ever do. Early adopters paid for the privilege of being beta testers.