The iPhone Air is our Phone of the Year because it's the only phone that everybody is talking about

This was a great year for phones, but in five years, when we look back at 2025, it will be the Apple iPhone Air that stands out as the trendsetter that changed the phone world forever. It’s the phone that every other phone maker will inevitably copy. Just as it did with the MacBook Air (and iPod nano), Apple has changed the game with the iPhone Air and shown us why we were wrong about everything we thought we knew.

If you’d asked me before I used the iPhone Air what I wanted in a new iPhone I would have begged for the opposite of what the Air offers – and I would have been wrong. I thought I wanted more battery life, more cameras, and more features. I don’t want any of that. I just want Air. And that's why it's the Phone of the Year at the TechRadar Choice Awards 2025.

You can’t understand the Air until you hold it in your own hand and give it a twirl. Here’s why: you didn’t realize your fingers were so tired. Your heavy iPhone 16 Pro Max or Galaxy S25 Ultra is causing knuckle fatigue and stretching your pockets. You’ve been so happy with everything these heavy bricks can do, you forgave the bulk.

The first time you pick up the iPhone Air, it will feel new and surprising and fun. Once it makes you smile, consider yourself hooked. How often does picking up a phone make you smile? Did you even know that a phone can do that? If you want that smile in your life, go check out the iPhone Air.

The iPhone Air doesn't compromise, it changes expectations

What about the compromises?! Pshaw, I say! The iPhone Air doesn’t compromise, it only delights. The small battery on the iPhone Air isn’t a compromise; weighing down phones with a big heavy cell, that’s the compromise. We compromise comfort to have a few more hours of screen time. The iPhone Air rejects that deal.

Actually, the iPhone Air gets pretty good battery life, and it’s easy to charge your phone throughout the day now that Apple uses the same USB-C charging port as your laptop, earbuds, and everything else.

Is the lone camera a compromise? Let’s be real – smartphone cameras are good but even the best camera phones haven’t replaced a dedicated camera with a big sensor and long lens. The iPhone Air takes very good photos that will be perfect for everything you do on your phone. If you want to hang pics on your wall, get a Fujifilm.

The iPhone Air was the most unpredictable phone of 2025

The iPhone Air wasn’t our first thought for phone of the year. Most of my fellow editors mentioned the Galaxy Z Fold 7 as the best phone of 2025. That’s another phone you have to hold and see to believe.

Like the iPhone Air, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 seems impossibly thin and light. When closed, it’s easily mistaken for a normal flat phone. In your hand, it feels so light that you may even forget that it can open into a tablet that is as big as an iPad mini.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 refuses to compromise on its cameras or battery. It has the same 200MP camera sensor as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, a major feat on a phone that is much thinner than the iPhone Air when open. It also offers great battery life thanks to its dual-battery design and the incredibly efficient Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset inside.

Still, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 seems… inevitable. As amazing as it may be, it isn’t much different from the Galaxy Z Fold 6. Every year, Samsung phones get a little thinner and offer a little more. The Fold 7 doesn’t feel like a whole new thing, it feels like a better version of last year’s thing. Next year’s thing will be even better.

Phones are going to get thinner and thinner

The iPhone Air is a whole new thing. It is a pleasure to hold and it relieves pain points you hadn’t realized were bothering you. It’s the phone that every other phone maker will soon be copying – if they aren’t already – and it’s easy to imagine a future filled with smartphones that prioritize being thin and light versus being powerful and robust.

I doubt we’ll see a new iPhone Air in 2026; I think it will take another year for Apple to shear another millimeter off its frame. I also doubt that years from now we’ll have any iPhone Air at all. Phones will all be thinner, and the iPhone Air will have succeeded at its mission.