Apple learned the hard way people prefer battery endurance over thinness.

For many years, Apple was primarily concerned with making their smartphones fashionable at the expense of all else, including battery capacity and robustness. This was especially true in the early-to-mid-2010s, while Android smartphones were "function over form", which I always preferred.

I never cared for a second that early 2010s Samsung phones were made of "cheap" plastic, especially not given that I put a case over it anyway, so it wouldn't make a difference in feeling anyway.

Apple started made "premium designs" popular in 2010. The iPhone 4 and 4s had a rear side made of glass, which made the device fragile if not used with a case. There was also the "antennagate" scandal, where holding the phone a certain way would block the cellular signal.

The iPhone 5 and 5s had roughly half the battery capacity as their Samsung counterparts released at a similar time, the Galaxy Note 2 and 3.

The iPhone 6+ was structurally so weak that it could bend by sitting on it - the bendgate scandal. Thickness strengthens the physical structure of a smartphone.

The iPhone 6s had a battery capacity of 1715 mAh, less than the 1810 mAh of the iPhone 6, which were already poor.

In contrast to this, battery sizes over 3000 mAh are not uncommon on 2020s iPhones! And iPhones have also become thicker than before, accordingly.

This year (2025), Apple created the iPhone Air, for the folks who care about thinness. And sales figures for it were low.

Looks like even Apple realized at last that its users care more about battery capacity than about "fashionable" thinness! They realized a few millimetres of thinness isn't worth it if you need to carry a powerbank brick that is needed for compensating for the iPhone's lack of battery capacity.

Arun Maini said:

How many times do you hear people complaining that their phone's battery dies too fast, versus how many times you hear people complaining that they wish their phone was a millimeter slimmer.

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(source: Your Smartphone is too thin. Here’s why. - Mrwhosetheboss)



[I hereby release this post into the public domain, CC0 1.0, excluding quotes.]

Footnotes​

Reports on iPhone Air selling poorly: