Apple’s 2025 report card - iPhone

This is the first in a series of posts reviewing Apple’s 2025 across their major product lines (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, and wearables). You can also read iPhone 2024 and 2023 report cards.

iPhone 17 Pro

I know this new Pro model isn't universally adored, but I think it's great. I would agree with the critics that it's not as beautiful as the previous Pro models, but I do think it has a unique charm and is a very practical device (shout out to everyone who demanded a more opinionated design, and when they got it, complained that it wasn’t universally adored). Add on to that the fact that battery life has improved to the point where I was able to purchase the smaller Pro phone this year and be completely happy with it in terms of battery life. That hasn't been the case since maybe the iPhone 13 Pro.

From a technical perspective, I think these are really strong updates across the board as well. The A19 Pro is incredibly performant, as you might expect. The new telephoto camera is a step in the right direction, and it fills out the camera system to feel pretty great across the board. Add onto this the front-facing camera, which is now a square sensor that lets you take landscape or portrait selfies with the phone in whatever orientation you prefer. Genuinely awesome stuff.

We're still early days on this phone, but I think it is shaping up to be one of the best Pro generations we've ever had.

iPhone Air

Also relatively divisive, the iPhone Air came onto the scene with a mix of desire and confusion. As I've said a few times, the passionless, objective pitch for this phone is pretty rough: "would you like to pay $200 more for less battery life, fewer cameras, and worse speakers than your current iPhone? No? Really???"

But of course, the draw of the Air is not that it's a worse phone on the metrics we've long used to judge phones, it's that it's really fucking thin. I'll be the first to admit that it is striking how thin and light it is in hand, to the point where even though I personally get more value from the Pro model, I find myself using the Air now and again because it is so cool. I'm lucky enough to be at a point in my life where I have my pick of the best phones and I can just use what I like the most, and I think it says something that this phone has a draw on me even though it's objectively worse on several metrics.

Also, I can't say this enough, this is a different sort of new phone than the iPhone X was in 2017. Check out the Apple compare page to see how the iPhone X was an upgrade in every single way over the other iPhones on the market at the time. It wasn't paying more to get a cooler design with compromises, it was paying more to get a cooler design and better specs across the board.

Finally, one real draw for this phone for me is that the screen size is in a really happy medium between the Pro and Pro Max models. 6.5" in a fatter screen is really nice for me, and the iPhone Air gets me that.

iPhone 17

The absolute glow up of the year, the iPhone 17 is a real banger, and it all comes down to the screen in my opinion. All three flagship iPhones got the same ProMotion display, and I can't stress how much this makes the lineup feel more premium this year. Add onto that a 36% YoY battery life jump (that's huge), the same square selfie camera as the Pro and Air, 48MP ultra-wide camera, doubled 256GB base storage, smaller bezels, and all this without a price increase, which many of us were expecting. Great "standard" iPhone this year, even if the Pro models continue to be the best-selling model line.

iPhone 16e

The red-haired step-child of the iPhone released this year, the iPhone 16e has been razzed all year long, but I stand by my initial assessment that it's a very strong base iPhone for people who want an iPhone that will last for a long time, but don't want to spend top dollar. Did you know the iPhone 16e was the 4th best-selling smartphone in the world in Q3 2025? Yup, bigger than every single Android phone made by anyone.

That said, I do understand why it felt a little too stripped-down for the price. The lack of MagSafe is the one that puts it over the edge in my opinion, and rumors of that coming back to the 17e is encouraging. That said, compared to buying an older iPhone 15 or 14 Pro for similar prices come with some upgrades such as cameras and displays (at least on the 14 Pro), but those also come with trade-offs (2 generations worse performance, less battery life, Lightning on the 14 Pro, weight, no Apple Intelligence) as well.

All that said, it's not the best phone, and it's not the phone for me, but it's the first time in many years that I've been able to look at the "SE" phone in Apple's lineup and actually say it's a reasonable purchase.

Overall score - A

I think you could argue this is a B year for the iPhone because outside maybe the iPhone Air, there wasn't anything exceptionally innovative in the lineup, but in my book, smartphones are past their pure excitement era and are in their "laptop era". Each update is more iterative than before, and that's okay. We're 18 years into the iPhone era, and it honestly would be insane if the hardware and software changed as much year-on-year as it did at the beginning. Obviously we're not at the end of the line and there is innovation to come, but as far as slab-style phones go, we're filing down rough edges and creating change for the sake of change (aluminum is the best! Now steel is the best! No, titanium is the best! J/k, aluminum is the best again!). In that world, the fact we got 4 new iPhones this year and all of them were meaningful upgrades over what came before, is pretty impressive.

Rumors have it that we're going to get a folding iPhone in 2026, and that will surely shake things up, but right now all I can think of is Jony Ive in the iPhone 8 introduction video describing that phone as the final, purest form of the original iPhone design. I feel that way about the latest iPhones for the iPhone X generation of phones. We may be on the cusp of something new, but that just means that we're really freaking good at making the old stuff, so I think any of the iPhones released in 2025 are great buys no matter what iPhone you're coming from or what your budget is.

What I want/expect in 2026

I hope 2026 is the year of new form factors for Apple products, and the folding iPhone would be the biggest move Apple could make in that regard. Now, Samsung has been shipping folding phones to the public since 2019 and I know several people who have used them and loved them for several years, so it's not like Apple is first here, but I'm fascinated to see how they handle the UI on this sort of device. The recent rumors that it's going to be a quite small folding phone also intrigues me, and wonders if the wealthy people who loved the iPhone mini will finally have something that they can enjoy again.

This might be a dangerous assumption, but if we do indeed get a folding iPhone this year, I think the rest of the lineup will be more boring (again, in the laptop era, that's not a terrible thing). Frankly, the updates this year set this up nicely.

The Pro models got a design refresh, so they'll probably stay the same, but get new colors (my money's on a deep purple model as well as the return of a space black model).

The iPhone Air doesn't have a number attached to it, which everyone has assumed meant it would not get annual updates (for now), and I would agree that we won't see a new model in 2026.

Similarly, I agree with the rumors that suggest Apple will split the iPhone 18 and 18 Pro launches, with the Pros coming out in September and the non-Pros coming in early 2027. I'd expect this to lead to the Pro line selling an even higher proportion of the overall lineup as people who can't wait for the spring will just spend a bit more and get the Pro for the first time in a while. I know it’s not quite the same as it once was, but this would mark the first time since 2006 that a “standard iPhone” wasn’t released.

And I would expect the iPhone 17e to be the first iPhone we get in the year, coming in the spring and sporting the A19 processor, MagSafe, and the same design as the current model. Criticisms will remain, the base storage will stay at 128GB, the colors will stay the same, and the $599 price point will be a bit too much for people.

As for the folding phone, all I can do are make guesses, so here's some shots in the dark:

• The name will be iPhone Ultra (or maybe the Folio if they’re feeling wild)
• The phone will fold like a book, not like a flip phone
• The outside display will be the smallest iPhone display since the iPhone 13 mini
• The internal display will allow split view and picture-in-picture (no slide over, no free windows)
• No Apple Pencil support, but there will be a new stylus specifically for the iPhone
• The crease is still visible, but it’s marginally better than the current Samsung standard
• Starting price $1,999
• Storage will start at 256GB
• There will be 2 cameras on the back, wide and ultrawide
• Battery life has 2 advertised numbers from Apple, one for screen open and closed. One of them will be "the best battery life of any iPhone ever"
• Camera Control is here, but lacks sliding gestures (applies to all iPhones going forward)
• Apps run in iPad layouts on the internal display, further blurring the lines between what iPhone, iPad, or Mac apps are

Now, if the folding phone doesn't happen this year, I guess they'll have to spice up the rest of the lineup, but I think this is actually the year of the folding iPhone.