iPhone 17 Air vs Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold | TechTalkTown
iPhone 17 Air vs Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold
iPhone 17 Air
Apple
7.1
Beautiful, but compromised
Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold
Samsung
7.1
Engineering marvel, software footnote
iPhone 17 Air
What Reviewers Agree On
At 5.64mm thick and 165g the iPhone Air's hand-feel is the most genuinely new thing about any 2025 iPhone — almost every reviewer says you have to hold it to understand why people pay the premium.
The titanium grade-5 frame plus Ceramic Shield 2 makes it the most durable iPhone yet, surviving 130-pound Apple bend tests and JerryRig-style torture without bending or cracking.
The 6.5-inch ProMotion OLED with 3,000-nit peak brightness, anti-reflective coating and always-on display is identical in quality to the 17 Pro panel and gets praised across the board.
The A19 Pro chip with 12GB of RAM delivers Pro-tier performance in normal use — Geekbench multi-core lands around 9,600-9,800 and apps stay in memory noticeably longer than 8GB phones.
The new 18MP square Center Stage front camera is the year's standout iPhone feature — you can shoot landscape selfies while holding the phone vertically without rotating, and group shots auto-frame.
Pros & Cons
iPhone 17 Air
Pros
At 5.64mm thick and 165g the iPhone Air's hand-feel is the most genuinely new thing about any 2025 iPhone — almost every reviewer says you have to hold it to understand why people pay the premium.
The titanium grade-5 frame plus Ceramic Shield 2 makes it the most durable iPhone yet, surviving 130-pound Apple bend tests and JerryRig-style torture without bending or cracking.
The 6.5-inch ProMotion OLED with 3,000-nit peak brightness, anti-reflective coating and always-on display is identical in quality to the 17 Pro panel and gets praised across the board.
The A19 Pro chip with 12GB of RAM delivers Pro-tier performance in normal use — Geekbench multi-core lands around 9,600-9,800 and apps stay in memory noticeably longer than 8GB phones.
Detailed Comparison
Design & Build
iPhone 17 Air
The iPhone Air is the most physically distinctive new iPhone in years — 5.64mm thick (down from 7.95mm on the iPhone 17), 165g (12g lighter than the iPhone 17, 41g lighter than the 17 Pro), grade-5 titanium frame with polished mirror-finish sides, and a horizontal 'plateau' across the top that houses the A19 Pro, single camera and speakers because the rest of the body is occupied by the battery. Apple says it's the most durable iPhone ever (Ceramic Shield 2 front, Ceramic Shield back, 130-pound bend test) and so far real-world durability tests agree — no bendgate 2.0. The polish does come with one consistent caveat: it's slippery and feels precarious without a case, and the optional case partly defeats the thinness.
It's 5.64mm thick versus 7.95mm for the iPhone 17 — challenge anyone to pick it up without being surprised at how much lighter it feels.
Initially the lighter weight makes the Air seem 'cheap', but that notion quickly disappears — the phone feels strong, durable, and rigid thanks to the titanium frame.
Apple is setting new highs for mobile design with the iPhone Air — it's a 'sci-fi space pebble' that's a marvel of engineering you really have to hold to appreciate.
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Battery life is better than the rumours suggested before launch — most reviewers can scrape through a normal day on the 3,149 mAh cell, though heavy travel days will need a top-up.
Deal Breakers
Single 48MP rear camera with no ultrawide, no telephoto and no macro is the most-cited compromise — even reviewers who like the phone admit they consistently miss the second lens, and Reddit owners flag it as the one regret six months in.
Mono speaker in the earpiece (no bottom speaker) sounds thin and bass-light for movies, music and podcasts — multiple reviewers and Reddit users call it the deal-breaker that ruled the phone out for them.
Battery life trails every other phone in the iPhone 17 lineup — 27h Apple video rating, 6h 43m in The Tech Chap's real-world battery test (12 minutes behind the iPhone 17, 76 minutes behind the 17 Pro Max), and heavy users hit 20% before dinner.
$999 price is widely flagged as the single biggest problem — for $200 less you get a more-versatile iPhone 17 (two cameras, stereo speakers, longer battery), and for only $100 more an iPhone 17 Pro with vapor chamber, three cameras and 4x/8x optical zoom.
USB-C port is limited to USB 2 (480 Mbps) data transfer speeds and there's no mmWave 5G support — odd corner-cuts on a $999 phone in 2025.
Aggressive thermal throttling under sustained GPU load — the lack of a vapor chamber means Genshin Impact and similar games measurably slow down within an hour, and the camera-bar plateau heats up noticeably.
Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold
What Reviewers Agree On
The 10-inch 4:3 inner display fundamentally changes what a foldable can be — 16:9 video plays roughly 50–84% bigger than on the Z Fold 7, and apps actually reformat for tablet density instead of stretching.
At 3.9–4.2 mm per panel unfolded, the TriFold is the thinnest phone Samsung has ever shipped — the USB-C port is the same thickness as the entire chassis, which reviewers across the board call genuinely impressive engineering.
The dual Armor FlexHinge mechanism is solid, snappy, locks completely flat when fully open, and ships with a haptic-plus-vibration warning that yells at you when you try to fold the camera-side first.
Folded, the TriFold can pass for a chunky phone — 12.9 mm thick is only fractionally chunkier than a Z Fold 6 despite carrying a third more screen.
Battery life beats the Z Fold 7 in real-world testing — multiple reviewers landed at 7–9 hours of screen-on time, and a video loop pushed past 12 hours.
Samsung's U-shape design protects the inner screen completely when folded, unlike Huawei's Mate XT where one soft panel rides face-out and is exposed to keys and lint.
On-device Samsung DeX runs natively without needing an external display — it's the only Samsung phone that can do this, turning the trifold into a credible laptop-replacement experiment.
Deal Breakers
The 10-inch main display peaks at just 1,600 nits — lower than the three-year-old Galaxy Z Fold 5 and well below the 2,600 nits on the Fold 7, S25 Ultra, and the TriFold's own cover screen, and Snazzy Labs found sustained brightness drops further after 40 seconds outdoors.
JerryRigEverything's durability test failed the TriFold catastrophically — the right hinge snapped and pixels tore under a routine bend, and dust audibly grinds into the hinges almost immediately despite the IP48 rating; 9to5Google called it a 'horrific defeat.'
The inner flexible screen and its non-replaceable factory protector are soft enough to be gouged by a fingernail — Mrwhosetheboss left deep gouges just by leaning the phone against a vase, and the top-voted comment on 9to5Google's durability writeup called the soft screen 'an absolute dealbreaker.'
Unlike the Huawei Mate XT's accordion fold, the Z TriFold is all-or-nothing — you cannot use it half-unfolded as a 7.9-inch in-between size, so the trifold experience is either single-panel phone or full tablet with no middle ground.
The chip is the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, not the newer Elite Gen 5 already shipping in the S26 Ultra, so the most expensive phone Samsung sells is lagging behind a $1,300 Ultra from launch.
The new 18MP square Center Stage front camera is the year's standout iPhone feature — you can shoot landscape selfies while holding the phone vertically without rotating, and group shots auto-frame.
Battery life is better than the rumours suggested before launch — most reviewers can scrape through a normal day on the 3,149 mAh cell, though heavy travel days will need a top-up.
Cons
Single 48MP rear camera with no ultrawide, no telephoto and no macro is the most-cited compromise — even reviewers who like the phone admit they consistently miss the second lens, and Reddit owners flag it as the one regret six months in.
Mono speaker in the earpiece (no bottom speaker) sounds thin and bass-light for movies, music and podcasts — multiple reviewers and Reddit users call it the deal-breaker that ruled the phone out for them.
Battery life trails every other phone in the iPhone 17 lineup — 27h Apple video rating, 6h 43m in The Tech Chap's real-world battery test (12 minutes behind the iPhone 17, 76 minutes behind the 17 Pro Max), and heavy users hit 20% before dinner.
$999 price is widely flagged as the single biggest problem — for $200 less you get a more-versatile iPhone 17 (two cameras, stereo speakers, longer battery), and for only $100 more an iPhone 17 Pro with vapor chamber, three cameras and 4x/8x optical zoom.
USB-C port is limited to USB 2 (480 Mbps) data transfer speeds and there's no mmWave 5G support — odd corner-cuts on a $999 phone in 2025.
Aggressive thermal throttling under sustained GPU load — the lack of a vapor chamber means Genshin Impact and similar games measurably slow down within an hour, and the camera-bar plateau heats up noticeably.
Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold
Pros
The 10-inch 4:3 inner display fundamentally changes what a foldable can be — 16:9 video plays roughly 50–84% bigger than on the Z Fold 7, and apps actually reformat for tablet density instead of stretching.
At 3.9–4.2 mm per panel unfolded, the TriFold is the thinnest phone Samsung has ever shipped — the USB-C port is the same thickness as the entire chassis, which reviewers across the board call genuinely impressive engineering.
The dual Armor FlexHinge mechanism is solid, snappy, locks completely flat when fully open, and ships with a haptic-plus-vibration warning that yells at you when you try to fold the camera-side first.
Folded, the TriFold can pass for a chunky phone — 12.9 mm thick is only fractionally chunkier than a Z Fold 6 despite carrying a third more screen.
Battery life beats the Z Fold 7 in real-world testing — multiple reviewers landed at 7–9 hours of screen-on time, and a video loop pushed past 12 hours.
Samsung's U-shape design protects the inner screen completely when folded, unlike Huawei's Mate XT where one soft panel rides face-out and is exposed to keys and lint.
On-device Samsung DeX runs natively without needing an external display — it's the only Samsung phone that can do this, turning the trifold into a credible laptop-replacement experiment.
Cons
The 10-inch main display peaks at just 1,600 nits — lower than the three-year-old Galaxy Z Fold 5 and well below the 2,600 nits on the Fold 7, S25 Ultra, and the TriFold's own cover screen, and Snazzy Labs found sustained brightness drops further after 40 seconds outdoors.
JerryRigEverything's durability test failed the TriFold catastrophically — the right hinge snapped and pixels tore under a routine bend, and dust audibly grinds into the hinges almost immediately despite the IP48 rating; 9to5Google called it a 'horrific defeat.'
The inner flexible screen and its non-replaceable factory protector are soft enough to be gouged by a fingernail — Mrwhosetheboss left deep gouges just by leaning the phone against a vase, and the top-voted comment on 9to5Google's durability writeup called the soft screen 'an absolute dealbreaker.'
Unlike the Huawei Mate XT's accordion fold, the Z TriFold is all-or-nothing — you cannot use it half-unfolded as a 7.9-inch in-between size, so the trifold experience is either single-panel phone or full tablet with no middle ground.
The iPhone Air is the radical redesign of the iPhone I have been wanting for years — perfectly balanced at 165g and the most fun I've had with an iPhone since the iPhone X.
Apple performed a bend test with 130 pounds of force and the iPhone Air showed no damage at all — Ceramic Shield 2 on the front and Ceramic Shield on the back make this the most durable iPhone yet.
The thinness is genuinely impressive, but the polished titanium edges are slippery — without a case I felt the phone could fly out of my hands, and it did once during testing.
The thin profile makes it harder to feel like you have a good grip on the phone, and holding it can feel precarious — adding a case helps but partly defeats the thin-and-light effect.
At 165g it's the lightest full-screen iPhone Apple has made, but it's still heavier than the iPhone 12 mini (135g) and 13 mini (141g) — so 'lightest ever' has caveats.
The frosted glass back resists fingerprints, isn't slippery once you adjust, and looks even better without a case — though it's still all-glass so AppleCare+ is recommended.
It's been five months and I still love the design — comfortable to pick up, hold, and use for long periods. Up there with the iPhone 7 and iPhone 12 mini as one of my favourite iPhones ever.
I'm disabled with a progressive illness and as my hands weaken, the Air has been a game changer — so light and easy for me to hold one-handed now.
The 'sexiest phone ever made' — I smile every time I pick mine up. It's the sexiest phone ever made.
Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold
Two hinges, three panels, and the thinnest chassis Samsung has ever shipped — 3.9 mm at its thinnest point and 12.9 mm folded, with each panel a fractionally different thickness so they nest cleanly. Reviewers near-universally call the engineering exquisite, but the trade-offs are real: 309 g on the official spec sheet (closer to 320 g in practice once you add a case and a SIM), a fiber-reinforced polymer back that picks up fingerprints, and a USB-C port the same thickness as the chassis itself.
Folded thickness is 12.9 mm — just a smidge chunkier than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (12.1 mm) despite carrying a 50% larger main display.
At 3.9 mm at its thinnest point the TriFold is the thinnest phone Samsung has ever made — thinner than even the Fold 7 and 1.5 mm thinner than the iPhone Air's thinnest point.
The USB-C port is the same thickness as the entire device — go any thinner and the phone has to go portless.
It is very, very heavy for a phone — 309 g on Samsung's spec sheet, and a real-world unit measured 320 g with a SIM installed and no case.
The fiber-reinforced polymer back is slightly sticky, very shiny, and persistently picks up fingerprints across all six faces of the device.
Samsung's left and right segments fold inward behind a separate cover screen — Huawei's Mate XT folds in a Z-shape using part of the main screen as the cover.
The right panel is fractionally longer than the others — that protrusion is intentional, giving you a lip to grab when unfolding without digging fingernails into the screen.
The included aramid-fiber case only covers one of three panels when unfolded, and there is no kickstand — Samsung sold a kickstand case in some regions but never in the US.
Performance
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 Z TriFold
The TriFold ships with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy and 16 GB of RAM — fast, but already a generation behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the S26 Ultra. With no vapor chamber and a ~4 mm-thick chassis the thermal headroom is limited, so the trifold actually runs slower than other 8 Elite phones under sustained load. Most reviewers report smooth real-world performance, including high-refresh gaming on the inner display, but flag thermal hot spots on the back during intense sessions.
It runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy with 16 GB of RAM and up to 1 TB of storage — top-shelf, but it's the last-gen 8 Elite, not the newer Gen 5.
Due to thermal constraints the TriFold ran slower than other 8 Elite phones like the S25 Ultra — a chassis this thin has very limited room for any dedicated cooling.
Both foldables don't have the S25 Ultra's peak speed but don't throttle that hard either — they're so thin they may not even need a vapor chamber.
For intense gaming there is a pretty hot hot spot on the back of both foldables — the thinness means heat has nowhere to go.
Gaming at 120 Hz on the inner display is a spectacular experience — Arknights Endfield and similar 3D-heavy games look absolutely amazing.
Camera
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 Z TriFold
The TriFold's cameras are lifted directly from the Z Fold 7 — 200MP main, 12MP ultrawide, 10MP 3x telephoto, plus 10MP selfie cameras on the cover and inner displays. Reviewers agree the system is competent but underwhelming on a $2,900 phone, particularly compared to the S25 Ultra's 50MP 5x telephoto and high-res ultrawide. Foldable-specific tricks include letting subjects see themselves on the cover screen and using rear cameras for higher-quality selfies.
The camera lineup is identical to the Z Fold 7 — a 200MP main, 12MP ultrawide, 10MP 3x telephoto and two 10MP selfies — and the module protrudes meaningfully from the back.
The cameras are fine, but it sure feels like they could be better at this price — a decent 200MP main, middling 3x telephoto and ultrawide.
Compared to the S25 Ultra you're losing the high-res 5x telephoto and the high-res ultrawide — for $2,900 the TriFold should have at least the better ultrawide.
Selfie cameras max out at 10 MP and f/2.2 on both screens — not what buyers expect from one of the most expensive phones money can buy, and Samsung should bump resolution and sensor size next time.
Battery & Charging
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 Z TriFold
Samsung split a 5,600 mAh cell into three packs, one per panel, to fit the chassis — that is 27% more capacity than the Z Fold 7 to power 50% more screen, but the lower 1,584×2,160 resolution helps offset the draw. Real-world numbers land between 7 and 9 hours of screen-on time, with a 12h 53m video-loop result in the most exhaustive drain test. Charging is 45 W wired (matching the S25 Ultra) and 15 W wireless — both faster than the Fold 7's, but slower than Huawei's 66 W wired on the Mate XT.
The triple-cell battery system comes out to 5,600 mAh — only a bit larger than batteries in phones with one small screen, so you may not get much use per charge with the TriFold fully unfurled and running multiple apps.
First-battery testing returned nearly 7 hours of screen-on time, including roughly 3.5 hours of YouTube on the inner display and almost 2 hours of gaming at max brightness.
With mixed use, multitasking and video playback, the TriFold averaged about 8 to 9 hours of screen-on time — the Z Fold 7 by comparison lasts around 6 to 7 hours on a charge.
In a looped-video drain test the TriFold lasted 12 hours and 53 minutes — about two hours less than a Z Fold 7 doing the same task, the extra screen real estate eating into the larger battery.
Value & Verdict
iPhone 17 Air
At $999/£999 the iPhone Air is sandwiched in the middle of Apple's lineup in a way no reviewer can comfortably justify on paper — $200 more than the iPhone 17 (which has more cameras, more speakers, longer battery, faster wired transfers) and only $100 less than the iPhone 17 Pro (which adds 4x/8x telephoto, vapor-chamber cooling, ProRes recording, and Apple ProRAW). The value proposition rests entirely on whether you assign meaningful price to thin-and-light design alone. Most reviewers conclude the Air is for a specific shopper, not the typical buyer. Apple's own results back this up: MacRumors reported in February 2026 that sales were so soft Apple delayed the Air 2 model. Reddit threads cite price as the single most common reason buyers chose the iPhone 17 or Pro instead. Owners who do buy it tend to love it disproportionately — phrases like 'best iPhone since the X' and 'best phone I've ever owned' recur in Reddit and MacRumors comments — but the catalogue of compromises (camera, speaker, battery, USB 2, no mmWave) make this hard to recommend for most people.
For most people the iPhone 17 will be a better choice — it has a better balance of power, battery life, and a more versatile camera system. The Air's asking price is too high.
For anyone who puts a premium on style and sleekness, the iPhone Air is without a doubt Apple's coolest handset in years — even if it's not the most affordable iPhone or the one with the most cameras.
For the right person, this iPhone Air is the most enjoyable phone experience I have had in the past decade — but most people are better off with the iPhone 17 ($799) or iPhone 17 Pro ($1,099).
Sales have reportedly been so low that Apple is delaying the next-generation iPhone Air model — the biggest thing wrong with the iPhone Air is its $999 price tag.
Considering the iPhone Air is priced at $999, the standard iPhone 17 starts at $799, and the Pro iPhones at $1,099, I find it very hard to recommend the Air. Get the Pro instead — it's tremendous this year.
There's nothing about the iPhone Air that's objectively better than the cheaper iPhone 17, except the A19 Pro chip — and that's only marginally better here. You're paying for what many will find subjectively way cooler.
If it were closer to the base iPhone 17 on price, or closer to the 17 Pro on features, I'd happily recommend the iPhone Air to anyone. As it is, it's not hugely surprising it is missing the mark for many people.
If you want an iPhone that looks incredible and feels even better in the hand, the iPhone Air is for you. Just know that experience will come with tradeoffs.
Why pay $1,000 for a bad phone when you can either pay an extra $100 or save $200 for a better phone? — the top-voted MacRumors comment captures the dominant value criticism.
The Air's price is the dealbreaker — at $200 more than the base iPhone 17 with LESS to offer (1 camera, 1 speaker, subpar battery), the design and build quality become moot for most buyers. If priced lower than the 17, it'd be a success.
I've had it for a month and I LOVE THIS PHONE — it feels and works way smaller than other iPhones, doesn't take up my entire pocket, doesn't take two hands to use, still has a large screen, and it feels better than any phone I've ever had.
After three days of unbroken use the iPhone Air has sold me on the value of a 'heftless' phone — but it's not a slam-dunk and I wish it didn't cost $1,000.
Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold
Samsung priced the TriFold at the equivalent of ~$2,500 in Korea and $2,899 in its short-lived US run — more than buying a Z Fold 7 plus a flagship tablet plus accessories. Reviewers near-universally treat it as a halo product or a tech demo more than a real recommendation. The discontinuation in March 2026 — three months after launch in Korea and roughly 140 days after the US release — confirmed what most of them had said in their hands-ons. Reddit users were openly relieved, the consensus take being 'always was going to happen at this price.' A second-generation TriFold with a thinner hinge, possible S Pen slot and an Elite Gen 5 chip is already rumored.
The Z TriFold launched in the US at $2,899 — Samsung's most expensive phone ever — and includes one free inner screen-protector replacement plus 50% off a screen repair within the first year.
It is far cheaper to buy a decent tablet plus a flagship phone — at a time of economic turmoil the TriFold feels frivolous, however impressive the engineering.
Samsung discontinued the Galaxy Z TriFold in the US after roughly 140 days on sale — barely four months — and announced it is already working on a second-generation TriFold.
The most-upvoted r/gadgets reaction to the discontinuation: 'this was always going to happen, there isn't actually a meaningful market at this price point yet.'
Samsung discontinued the Galaxy Z TriFold roughly three months after launch in both Korea and the US — Reddit's r/gadgets and r/Android megathreads both noted the device 'lasted roughly 6–7 Concords' and was 'always going to happen' at this price point.
At $2,900 it costs more than a flagship phone plus a flagship tablet combined — every publication review explicitly says you can buy an S25 Ultra and an iPad and an accessory loadout for less.
The chip is the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, not the newer Elite Gen 5 already shipping in the S26 Ultra, so the most expensive phone Samsung sells is lagging behind a $1,300 Ultra from launch.
Samsung discontinued the Galaxy Z TriFold roughly three months after launch in both Korea and the US — Reddit's r/gadgets and r/Android megathreads both noted the device 'lasted roughly 6–7 Concords' and was 'always going to happen' at this price point.
At $2,900 it costs more than a flagship phone plus a flagship tablet combined — every publication review explicitly says you can buy an S25 Ultra and an iPad and an accessory loadout for less.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy in the TriFold dominates the Kirin 9010 in Huawei's Mate XT on raw performance and benefits from 5G and modern Wi-Fi the Mate XT lacks.
You can switch the camera preview to the outer screen and shoot rear-camera selfies fully unfolded — but you're going to look like a doofus if you do.
Photos from the 200MP main are punchy, and the ultrawide has autofocus — a versatile setup, but not a meaningful step up over the Z Fold 7.
45 W wired charging finally matches the S25 Ultra and is a massive bump over the Z Fold 7 — 20 minutes nets ~46% and 30 minutes ~65%.
Samsung still trails Huawei on speed — the Mate XT charges at 66 W wired and 50 W wireless versus Samsung's 45 W and 15 W on the same nominal 5,600 mAh capacity.
If the TriFold had silicon-carbon battery tech like the Honor Magic 8 Pro's 7,100 mAh cell, the phone could be lighter, longer-lasting, or both.
On r/gadgets, owners are openly relieved Samsung pulled it — 'I had it for 3 days and went back to my Fold 7… it was just too heavy and too expensive to not have insurance on.'
Samsung kinda gave the game away when it discontinued the TriFold — it was always more of a concept than a viable product, too expensive, bulky and impractical for this world.
Even fans concede the form-factor needs another generation — '"more hits than misses" is not the bar you set for a device that costs almost as much as two or three conventional smartphones.'
On r/Android, an owner who got their unit on launch day is sticking with it: 'I love my Trifold. Still thinner than a Z Fold 5. I do question durability but it's been my daily driver since I was offered the first release day.'
Rumors point to a TriFold 2 with an entirely new hinge solution designed from the ground up — meaningfully slimmer, with leaks suggesting an S Pen slot built into one of the hinges.
