Hi, I'm technology editor Dave Snelling, and after a massive week of news in the technology world, I'm here with Apple's John Ternus to talk about all the latest updates from the firm, including I think one of the biggest changes to the iPhone in a very long time. So, let's start with that, I guess. John, we have to talk about it. It's been the star of last week's keynote: the iPhone Air. I just wondered if you could tell us a bit more about it, and why you think now—obviously we've seen big phones, plus phones, mini phones—kind of why Apple thinks now is the time for what I guess you could call a skinny phone.
Yeah, I think the iPhone Air is something that we've been thinking about for a while. We wanted to build a product like this, but to do it, we wanted to make sure that it was a great iPhone, like a great premium, kind of pro-quality iPhone, which means great battery life, great performance, great cameras—all the things you'd expect from an iPhone. And it's taken a while to kind of develop the technologies that could make that happen. And so some of the key technology that enabled it, first and foremost, is Apple silicon. We have our A19 processor, but now we also have C1X, a cellular modem, which is an Apple-designed modem, and we introduced N1, which is our Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip. So having all that silicon in-house, our silicon team—they're so amazing in what they do, and they're always focused on efficiency, power efficiency. And so by making incredibly efficient silicon, the system just takes less power, which is great for battery life, which obviously is a challenge when you're dealing with a thin phone. The other thing we've been working on for years, and you see the work of it in the Apple Watch and in AirPods, is just miniaturization in general. And the iPhone Air has the most densely packed main logic board that we've ever had in an iPhone. And so what that allowed us to do is really cram all of that electronics up here in the plateau area. And so if you look at a shot of the inside of the phone, it's almost all battery for the rest of the phone. So that's enabled it to be really thin and have great battery life. But then, of course, if you're going to build something this thin, it also has to be really durable. And so the work that we've been doing over years in materials has enabled that. So we have this titanium frame which is incredibly strong. We have for the first time Ceramic Shield on the back of the phone, which is incredibly durable and helps to the overall kind of strength and toughness of the phone. And then we have Ceramic Shield 2 on the front, which gives us three times better scratch resistance than our previous Ceramic Shield. So altogether, despite the fact that this phone is so light and so thin, it's actually more durable than any previous iPhone. And so we needed all those pieces to come together so that this could be the year of the iPhone Air. I mean, I think it's one of those things—the pictures and video don't really do it justice. I think you've got to see it in the flesh before you kind of believe it, really.
And I guess on that, what has been for the engineers at Apple the biggest challenge of creating the iPhone Air?
I think it's everything I just walked through. It's building—there were so many different technologies that had to come together to make this happen. And if you were missing one of them, you wouldn't be able to do it. It's the materials, it's the efficiency of Apple silicon, it's the processing design. And the Ceramic Shield, the plateau here is very different than anything we've done in the past in that we're actually milling out the inside of it. So, this is a cavity in here where we can put much of the electronics. So, having the ability to kind of take the Ceramic Shield and shape it in that way and mill it in that way all required a bunch of innovation. So, it was really all of those pieces coming together to make it possible.
I mean, you spoke about durability. I was lucky enough to see the bend test you guys do, which is again very impressive. I mean, that's obviously been something that's been at the forefront of your minds to make sure that when people have it in their back pocket, it doesn't bend when they sit on it. So again, that's taken I assume some time to get the technology and the titanium frame strong enough.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, from the beginning, we do so much testing on our phones before we ship them. I mean, before we ship any particular iPhone, we've tested over 10,000 of them, and broken many, many thousands of them in that testing to find the weak points and figure out how to make them better. And our test suite is really broad and is based on real-world usage. So, we see what happens in the field and we build tests around that. And so, we have a spec for bending based on years of shipping phones and knowing how strong they need to be. And the iPhone Air actually exceeds that spec.
One thing we heard a lot about is eSIM. I mean, I feel like in the UK, US obviously you guys have been on eSIM for a while with all your phones for a couple years. I feel like in the UK we're a little bit behind and I think people may be a little bit frightened by it. I've been on eSIM for a couple years and it's fine. It's actually brilliant. Better than a SIM card to be honest. But I just wonder if you could maybe explain a little bit about why this phone's gone to eSIM and also just why it's a much better option than having a physical SIM card.
Totally. So, we've been pushing on eSIM for a long time. In fact, that's how an Apple Watch works, and iPads use eSIM, and we've been doing it in phones for quite some time now as well. And I mean, as an engineer designing these products, the SIM actually is just very painful to me because it's a large piece of plastic that doesn't need to be that big and it takes up a massive amount of space in the product. And so as we were designing this product, there was just no way we could afford to have that wasted space. And so we said this has to be eSIM, completely. That's the way we're going to do it. We're going to continue to push eSIM because we think it's the right technology. And in parallel with all this, we've been working over the years—it sounds like you've experienced it—working with all the carriers throughout the world to really optimize the systems, getting up and running. And I think the experience is actually really, really good. It's super easy for travel. You can get your SIM before you even leave on your trip. It's all upside and we just need to kind of continue rolling it out.
I know you don't talk about future products, but do you kind of hope, as I hope, this is the—everybody moves to eSIM in the future because it is way better than...
It's the right thing and we'll continue to be pushing hard on the standard.
One thing I did feel a bit sad about this year was the iPhone 17, because I think that's an unsung hero of the keynote last week. I feel sad about it because it got kind of overshadowed by all the—we'll talk about Cosmic Orange in a minute—and the iPhone Air, but I think the iPhone 17 is the phone for everybody this year. A fantastic product. I mean, we've been asking for certain things like, you know, ProMotion display and all those things for a while. It's double storage. I just wondered why you guys did it this year in 2025. And yeah, I think it needs to be—I'm sure you will shout about it, but I think it's a great phone. It's probably one of my favorites of the year just because it's got everything that I've asked for.
That's great. Yeah, well, we're happy to make you happy with it. But no, I think we're always pushing the envelope on our pro products, right? And then looking for opportunities to bring the features that kind of resonate with the most people and bring them down to the other products. And so, iPhone 17, it was just a big leap like you said. It got that ProMotion display. It also got Ceramic Shield 2 on the front. And actually, one of the things that we're really proud of and excited about is that Center Stage front camera, which is on all of the new phones, and is an amazing experience for taking selfies. You can hold the phone in portrait the way you naturally want to do it and you can still take landscape pictures. I think people are going to love it and it's great that that's there in the iPhone 17 as well.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's some new colors I guess this year as well and a slightly bigger screen, from 6.1 to 6.3 inches. It seems like a pretty solid drop and no price change, same price in UK as well this year.
Exactly. Yeah. I think this year for us was a really exciting opportunity to just rethink the iPhone lineup. And I think what we have is, as you pointed out, an incredible iPhone 17, something entirely new in iPhone Air. And then by pushing that way on iPhone Air, it allowed us to take the Pros—17 Pro and Pro Max—and make them even more pro, right? And better in performance and battery and all those things. And so it's a really strong lineup.
