iPhone 17 Air vs Samsung Galaxy A36 5G

iPhone 17 Air

The 6.5-inch LTPO Super Retina XDR OLED is identical in spec to the iPhone 17 Pro Max panel — same 1-120Hz ProMotion, same 3,000-nit peak brightness, same anti-reflective coating, same Dolby Vision HDR support, same always-on display. It sits exactly between the 6.3-inch iPhone 17 and the 6.9-inch iPhone 17 Pro Max in size, which most reviewers consider the sweet spot for a one-handable big-screen phone. The Dynamic Island sits slightly lower on the Air to accommodate the camera plateau, and a few apps haven't adapted, but the visual quality itself is universally praised. No reviewer found a real complaint with the display.

• The 6.5-inch OLED screen feels improbable in this thin and light design — bright enough to read in direct sunlight, with a 120Hz refresh rate that finally brings the regular iPhone family up to Android-standard smoothness.
• Peak brightness is 3,000 nits with ProMotion 1-120Hz, and putting a display this good in a body this thin sometimes really does look like a magazine page floating in your hand.
• The iPhone Air screen is glorious — there's not much separating it from the Pro models in screen terms. Both hit 3,000 nits peak and 1 nit minimum, fantastic in bright and dark conditions.
• I have no complaints about the Super Retina XDR display — great viewing angles, the new anti-glare coating actually reduces reflections, and it's as good as a phone screen gets.
• A 6.5-inch screen is the perfect Goldilocks size — big enough to watch Netflix comfortably on the train, but small enough to use in one hand, something I couldn't do with the 6.9-inch Pro Max.
• After a year on the 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro, holding the Air's 6.5-inch panel in a 5.6mm chassis feels like holding the future.
• The screen is wider and taller than the 6.3-inch phones, but a little of that size is wasted on the no-man's-land above the Dynamic Island, which iOS apps can't really use.
• In GSMArena's lab the panel hit 998 nits in auto mode and 780 nits in manual mode, with exceptional sunlight legibility in real-world use.
• The Dynamic Island sits slightly lower on the iPhone Air to accommodate the camera plateau, and some notifications expanding from it haven't been updated to accommodate that change.

Samsung Galaxy A36 5G

The 6.7-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED at 120Hz is the standout reason to buy this phone for the money. Notebookcheck measured peak HDR brightness above 2,000 cd/m² and GSMArena clocked 1,230 nits in auto mode — better than most rivals in this bracket. The catch is a 120Hz/240Hz low-frequency PWM dimming pattern that can bother PWM-sensitive eyes, and the bezels are still wider than the cheapest competition.

• Peak HDR brightness measured over 2,000 cd/m² in lab testing — exceptional for a sub-$400 phone and even brighter than Samsung's claimed 1,900-nit spec.
• The display gets nice and bright for sunny-day use, though colors can look slightly washed out at peak auto brightness.
• GSMArena measured the panel at 430 nits manual and 1,230 nits auto, up from the A35's roughly 1,000 nits, and the adaptive 120Hz dynamically drops to 60Hz to save battery.
• In HDR, Short Circuit's lab not only met Samsung's 1,900-nit claim but exceeded it, making for an excellent HDR viewing experience on an OLED panel.

iPhone 17 Air

Apple put the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone Air rather than the regular A19 — but it's a slightly cut-down variant with five GPU cores instead of the six in the 17 Pro, no ProRes video support, and crucially no vapor chamber cooling. The result is benchmark scores roughly on par with the iPhone 17 (sometimes lower, because of thermal throttling), but with the 12GB of RAM the iPhone Air keeps apps in memory longer than 8GB phones. Day-to-day everything feels snappy. Under sustained gaming or 4K editing the camera-bar area heats up noticeably and frame rates drop — Ars Technica measured aggressive throttling that put the Air's GPU performance closer to last year's A18 than the 17 Pro. The C1X modem (no mmWave) is up to 30% more efficient than the iPhone 16 Pro's Qualcomm chip and tested faster in weak-signal areas.

• The A19 Pro has 12GB of RAM and benchmarks 15% faster in CPU and GPU than the A18 Pro — though we'd expect the Air's performance over time to be worse than the Pro's because of thermal throttling.
• Geekbench multi-core hits 9,630 and 3D Mark Wild Life 3,626 — great in short bursts, but it falls off compared to the iPhone 17 Pro in longer tests because of the missing cooling chamber.
• Without a vapor chamber, performing intensive tasks heats the area around the camera module noticeably — I measured 115°F on the Air after an hour of Assassin's Creed Mirage versus 110°F on the iPhone 17, and the extra heat throttled performance.
• Flipping between apps is essentially instantaneous and demanding titles like Destiny: Rising kept stable frame rates — but watch out, the Air can get a bit warm on the camera bump during prolonged high-performance tasks.
• Apps stay in memory longer on the iPhone Air than my iPhone 16 Pro thanks to the 12GB of RAM — Reminders stayed alive across three different grocery store trips with Apple Maps in between.
• Apple's new C1X modem benchmarks around 15-20% faster than the iPhone 16 Pro's Qualcomm chip in weak-signal areas, using 30% less energy — but it doesn't support mmWave 5G.
• Gaming on the iPhone Air is slightly worse than 17 Pro Max — testing Genshin Impact maxed out, the Air experiences a lot more lags despite the phone being in normal temps.
• The A19 Pro is FAST — trades blows with the iMac Pro, RX 570, and even the M4 chip. Apps launch faster than the iPhone 14 Pro and browsing feels app-like rather than web-like.
• Ars Technica's graphics tests showed aggressive thermal throttling on the iPhone Air — the GPU sometimes performs more like the A18 from last year's iPhone 16.

Samsung Galaxy A36 5G

The A36's Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 is the phone's most consistent weak point. Notebookcheck found it benchmarks roughly the same as the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 from 2022, and in many tests the older Exynos 1380 in last year's A35 was actually faster. Wired's review went further: the carrier-locked A36 actually felt slower in daily use than the $100-cheaper Galaxy A26 sitting next to it. Reviewers agree it's still fast enough for everyday browsing, social, and light gaming, but anyone who games heavily should look elsewhere.

• The carrier-locked AT&T A36 produced visible stutters and felt sluggish out of the box, with the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 actually scoring lower in benchmarks than the Exynos 1380 in the $100-cheaper A26.
• Aside from slightly higher clock rates, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 is functionally the same chipset as 2022's Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, and the Nothing Phone (3a)'s Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is roughly 10-15% ahead in Geekbench.
• Benchmarks on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 are roughly the same as last year's A35, with only a minor boost in raw graphics — overall performance is adequate for daily tasks and light gaming.
• Geekbench 6 results land at roughly 1,019 single-core and 2,947 multi-core after a year of updates — clearly on the lower end of the $400 bracket compared to phones like the Galaxy S25 FE.

iPhone 17 Air

This is the iPhone Air's single most polarizing area. There is exactly one rear camera — a 48MP f/1.6 Fusion Main with sensor-shift OIS, the same sensor as the iPhone 17's main camera. There's no ultrawide, no telephoto, no macro, no ProRAW, no ProRes, and no spatial photos. The phone offers 'optical-quality' digital crops at 28mm, 35mm and 52mm (2x), then digital zoom up to 10x. Photo quality from the main camera is excellent — vibrant, sharp, strong low-light performance — and the new 18MP square-sensor Center Stage selfie camera is broadly considered the best new iPhone camera feature in years. But the missing lenses come up in nearly every review as something owners notice. Reviewers split sharply on whether the absence is a deal-breaker or a manageable trade-off, with the telephoto loss flagged more often than the ultrawide.

• The single 48MP rear camera feels like a real concession on a $1,000 phone — even Samsung managed to fit an ultrawide on the similarly thin Galaxy S25 Edge. Some shots just call for the drama of a 13mm view.
• The single 48-MP camera felt extremely limiting — even Samsung managed to fit an ultrawide on the similarly thin Galaxy S25 Edge, and in some low-light shots the iPhone 17's main camera delivered sharper images than the Air.
• Despite only having a single rear camera, the Air still takes portrait photos that look practically as good as iPhones with two — Apple reengineered the portrait pipeline to work without stereo cameras.
• After six months the one thing I genuinely miss is the telephoto camera — at a function trying to capture a candid moment or shooting landscape photos, the lack of a dedicated telephoto lens is a real limitation.
• The iPhone Air feels like jumping back a decade in iPhone camera versatility — having a £999/$999 phone with one camera on the back will be an instant turn-off for many looking for the best camera phone.
• The 2x advantage fades quickly once you go beyond it — even the 3x telephoto on the iPhone 15 Pro is clearer and more detailed than the iPhone Air's 2x shot digitally zoomed to 3x, and the gap grows ridiculously wide at 8x.
• The new 18MP square-sensor Center Stage selfie camera might be the next big photo revolution other companies will copy — it switches between portrait and landscape orientations without rotating the phone, and auto-frames groups.
• Center Stage is the best new iPhone camera feature in years — selfies look so much better because your eyes align closer to the centre of the screen instead of off to the side.
• After 10 days in Crete photographing a family vacation on a single rear camera, I realised I'd only twice missed the 0.5x ultrawide — the iPhone Air's main camera at times outperformed my iPhone 15 Pro Max.
• Video quality on the iPhone Air remains excellent — comparison clips against the Pixel 10 Pro XL and Galaxy S25 Edge consistently came out on top with better stabilization and brighter, sharper footage.
• iPhone Air owners flag the missing telephoto as the regret they keep coming back to — 'rumours suggest the next iPhone Air will include a secondary camera. I genuinely hope it's a telephoto and not an ultrawide.'
• Apple says the iPhone Air has the equivalent of four lenses — clever marketing speak for 1x Main, 1.1x Custom Main, 1.4x Custom Main, and 2x Telephoto. Prepare to have serious Telephoto FOMO.

Samsung Galaxy A36 5G

The camera hardware is essentially unchanged from the A35 — 50MP main with OIS, 8MP ultrawide and 5MP macro on the back, with a new 12MP selfie (down from 13MP but with larger pixels). Reviewers agree the new selfie is a genuine improvement; everything else lives or dies by Samsung's image processing and Awesome Intelligence software. Main-camera daylight shots are punchy but sometimes oversaturated, the ultrawide is best avoided in low light, and there's no telephoto — just digital zoom up to 10x.

• Main-camera daylight shots have plenty of detail and a nicely wide dynamic range, but exposure and color rendition can be inconsistent and Samsung's processing brightens shadows too much.
• Colors can be a little off and you need to stay very still in low light to avoid a blurry image — the usual faults of camera phones in this price bracket.
• The new 12MP front camera is a real upgrade over the A35's 13MP unit — selfie image quality has excellent detail and natural skin tones.
• Selfie camera looks great with super-natural skin tones — Short Circuit found the front camera the strongest shooter on the phone.

iPhone 17 Air

Apple's biggest engineering challenge: fitting useful battery life into a 5.64mm chassis. The Air ships with a 3,149 mAh cell (the smallest in the iPhone 17 lineup), rated 27 hours of video playback versus 30/33/39 hours for the 17/17 Pro/17 Pro Max. The Tech Chap's real-world battery test pegged it at 6h 43m — about 12 minutes behind the iPhone 17 and 76 minutes behind the 17 Pro Max. Reviewers split between 'better than I expected, fine for a normal day' and 'this is the lineup's weakest battery and you'll need to top up before dinner on travel days.' Charging tops out at 20W wired (USB-PD 2.0) and 20W MagSafe/Qi2 — slower than the 40W wired and 25W MagSafe on the iPhone 17. Apple sells a $99 dedicated MagSafe battery pack that adds ~65% charge and is sized specifically for the Air; whether you 'need' it depends entirely on usage and routine.

• Battery life is just okay — heavy use brought the battery into the 20s before dinnertime with around five hours of screen-on time, and Apple's recent track record on battery longevity isn't stellar either.
• Battery life is better than I expected — five hours of screen-on time with 18% left by 10:30pm. I didn't feel as battery-anxious as I did with the Galaxy S25 Edge.
• Streaming video rundown lasted 23h 39m — barely an hour less than a base iPhone 17 — and on a day with over seven hours of screen-on time I still had 25% left in the tank.
• After a week I can confidently say I can't make it through a full day on a single charge — on a good day I make it just past dinner, on a bad day I'm on the charger by late afternoon.
• The Tech Chap's real-world battery test had the iPhone Air last 6 hours 43 minutes — 12 minutes behind the iPhone 17 (6h 55m) and 76 minutes behind the 17 Pro Max (7h 59m).
• Six months in, battery life has not been a problem — the iPhone Air consistently delivers around four hours of screen-on time, comfortably covering my daily needs. For mostly-communication usage it lasts a full day without issue.
• Five months on the verdict has stood the test of time — I almost always get through the full day with a 90% charge limit set, typically finishing with over 30% remaining, sometimes 40%.
• The iPhone Air is not an endurance champ. It's also not an endurance also-ran — I'm fairly sure it slept through its alarm and forgot there was a race. I never had a full day off the charger.
• The Air contains a very small 3,149 mAh battery, but the phone can just about squeak by an 11-hour day for me on a single charge — enough for a normal work day, not a full-on all-day-outside type of day.
• Apple's $99 MagSafe Battery is more than erases the size and weight advantage of the Air, spoiling its light weight and thin profile — paying for Apple's particular solution feels sort of silly and only medium-elegant.
• Charging is slower than the iPhone 17 line — 50% in 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes — and the USB-C port is limited to USB 2 speeds (480 Mbps) versus 10 Gbps on the iPhone 17 Pro.
• Real-world battery from an early adopter: 7:10am to 3:42pm before dropping to 4% — 'not an all-day battery but passable if you don't mind the range anxiety.'

Samsung Galaxy A36 5G

The 5,000 mAh battery is unchanged from the A35 but the bigger story is charging: 45W wired charging (up from 25W) now hits 60-66% in 30 minutes and full in around 68 minutes — faster than the Galaxy S25 itself. Real-world battery life lands around a full day with 20-40% to spare. The catch: no wireless charging, no charger in the box, and you'll need a separate 45W brick with a 5A-rated cable to hit the advertised speeds.

• The 5,000 mAh battery comfortably lasts a day, with Wired regularly ending with 30-40% remaining and occasional heavy-use days dropping to 20% by 11pm.
• Samsung's quoted charging math — 30 minutes to 65% and full in 68 minutes — matches what reviewers measured in practice and is faster than the Galaxy S25 itself.
• Active-use battery score of 11 hours 38 minutes in GSMArena's standardised test is decent for the class, but actually a touch below last year's A35.
• There's no charger in the box, and you'll need a Samsung 45W brick (or compatible USB-PD adapter) with a 5A-rated cable — the 3A cable Samsung ships won't unlock full 45W speed.

iPhone 17 Air

The iPhone Air ships with iOS 26 and Apple's controversial new Liquid Glass UI — a layered, glass-like design that distorts content behind interface elements. Reviewers like the visual refresh but flag readability issues in places and a higher learning curve. Apple Intelligence is the same as on every other iPhone with 8GB+ of RAM and continues to underwhelm versus Google Gemini. The Air specifically uses Apple's new C1X cellular modem (no mmWave) and N1 networking chip (Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread). Reddit threads on r/iphone and r/OnePlus call out iOS 26 as a step backward — some longtime iPhone owners have used iOS 26 + the Air's design as a reason to test-drive OnePlus 15 or other Android flagships.

• The iPhone Air uses the new Liquid Glass interface in iOS 26 — I like the design overall, but for every helpful update I find five more I hate.
• Apple Intelligence – the brand's first AI – isn't even a year old and already feels like an afterthought. It falls so far behind Google's Gemini that it shouldn't have any bearing on whether you buy this phone.
• Liquid Glass has potential to be problematic with readability, but I never ran into a situation where I had trouble reading the screen — the Music app's slide-behind-buttons effect adds nice immersion.
• Liquid Glass has more to do with marketing than usability — shiny visuals help keynote demos pop, but 'a feature called Liquid Glass sounds sexier than refinements to Safari's tab bar.'
• Liquid Glass feels designed specifically for the iPhone Air — you literally just tap on a thin piece of glass with no borders, and the effect lands perfectly on this hardware.
• iOS 26 destroyed the experience — the closed ecosystem gets boring after a while. After using iOS 26 on a 17 Pro Max I'm switching to the OnePlus 15.
• Apple updated iOS 26 with new AI tricks like pointing your camera at an invitation to add it to your calendar, which works — but Siri still stumbles on requests like 'navigate by bike to Wrigley Field' that Gemini gets right from the jump.
• Apple Intelligence still mostly stinks, but that may not be the case starting next year — performance headroom from the A19 Pro could come in clutch when Apple gets its AI plans back on track.

Samsung Galaxy A36 5G

This is the A36's headline strength. Samsung promises six major OS updates and six years of security patches — the longest commitment in the budget Android segment, beating Pixel, iPhone and effectively everything else in this price bracket. The phone ships with Android 15 and One UI 7 (now upgraded to One UI 8 a year in). 'Awesome Intelligence' brings a thoughtful subset of Galaxy AI — Circle to Search, AI Select, Object Eraser, Edit Suggestions, custom filters — without the heavier AI bloat seen on the S25.

• Six major Android upgrades and six years of security patches — effectively undercutting Pixel, iPhone and every rival in this price bracket on long-term software support.
• Awesome Intelligence is a scaled-down version of Galaxy AI — you get Circle to Search, AI Select, Object Eraser and Edit Suggestions, but not Now Brief or the full S25 suite.
• After a year of use the A36 has already been upgraded to One UI 8, confirming Samsung is staying on top of its update promise rather than letting the A-series fall behind.
• The A36 has 'almost none of the AI bloat that has honestly just been more annoying than anything else on the Pixel 9a lately' — basic Circle-to-Search and Object Eraser without the heavier S25 features.