Yes, but

Why do phones have to be as slimmed down as a coke addicted supermodel from the 90s anyway?

I'd much prefer they shrink the fucking things enough that they fit in your pocket.

This is why you spend much money for name brand phone protector!

Not to make phone tough..

...but so..

.. it can sit level on flat surface!

I for one would love a cheaper option without a ridiculous camera. Or even no camera!

Next version isn't even going to have a camera. You'll just generate the image

Samsung did it: https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moon-photos-ai-galaxy-s21-s23-ultra
- i fucking hate tech companies
the phone will just generate shit all the time - texts, voices, images, music - all to post on AI-gen only social media. And it doesn't even need human interaction to do that but you are legally obligated to buy 12 of these per year or you will be deported to Moldova.
- As somebody who extensively travelled to Moldova for the wine, food, and the parties I say, not too bad. I'll be in the first train
Don't give them ideas!

The next iteration will be a cheese wedge, 1mm thin on one side and 1cm thick on the other.

I'd rather have that. it'll actually stay stable when you put it down, plus the screen would be slightly tilted upwards so you can see it better when it's just there on the table.
Actually razor blade sharp. One atom thick iPhone
People slicing their hand are just holding them wrong
- Yeah, but if it's an iPhone.. you probably have to pay Apple a proprietary fee; due to becoming injured by their patented technology.
- you need mechanical stability a bit too, so if it's too thin, it just breaks too easily.
  IMO the perfect size for a smartphone should be the weight of an apple (fruit) or some other snack like croissant, something that you can comfortably hold in one hand.

No, but hell no

Give me a chunky phone with a week long battery

Apple: here is your phone with a weak, long battery.
- Regular sex will make your day.
  But anal sex will make your hole weak.
Better yet, week long replacale battery
It will weight more than kilogramme
- Uhm IIRC typical battery is 2000 mAh/day, so one week battery is 14 Ah/day, which is 50 Wh assuming 3.7 V.
  A typical sodium ion battery (which i very much like btw) typically holds 0.2 kWh/kg, so 200 Wh/kg, so to store 50 Wh, you'd need around 250g of battery.
  For reference, i think smartphones should be about as heavy as an apple (fruit) which is 100g average. And the battery makes most of that weight (like, 80%). So the battery could be about 80g, which would store 16 Wh of energy. That would make about 4000 mAh. Which is what many phones today already have. Which lasts for 1-2 days.
You're describing rugged phones

Apple got rid of the headphone jack but not the camera bump..

Not just Apple...

Kill the bump! Give me better cooling and battery life with replaceable battery.

No.
-Apple
and battery life with replaceable battery.
You mean a $99 magsafe powerbank that only fits on this specific phone doesn't satisfy you as a replaceable battery?
/s
- Wait... the magsafe battery is tied to a specific phone serial? I can't get the magsafe battery and lend it to my buddy who is low on battery at the moment?

just give me a battery i don't have to tend to every fucking day or two. everyone just slaps a fat case in these flimsy ass phones anyway.

My Xperia lasts 2 - 3 days. Look on GSMarena for what you want, they have filters.
- Jack, sd card, removable battery, open bootloader, linux :'(
- mine also did when it was newer. we probably have tech to have week long batteries though.

I can understand people wanting “smaller" screens cause they don't have huge hands/pockets

But slimmer phones when the cheapest ones (< 200€) already are like 8mm, I don't really get it, at this point it's just a structural weakness, like the geth would say

The only advantage would be to have a bulky phone case while still maintaining a 6 or 8 mm width, but still it wouldn't prevent your phone from bending

You clearly have not watched Zack’s YT on this. The big ones bend and break way sooner. It’s not even close.
My guess, what we are witnessing here with the Air is just a stepping stone to a foldable. As a standalone I’m with you, it’s the inferior phone. Just not because of the structural weaknesses - it’s not weak at all - but due to smaller battery, less cameras and less speakers.
Oh, and case less gang checking in.
I was recently messing around with an iPod touch 5th gen, with dimensions 4.86 inches (123.4 mm) in height, 2.31 inches (58.6 mm) in width, and 0.24 inches (6.1 mm) in depth. It weighs approximately 3.10 ounces (88 grams). It felt fantastic in the hand and I want a phone that size now.
I was near an Apple store a few days ago and tried out the iPhone air, it was honestly really nice in the hand. I wouldn’t buy one, but seeing in person, I kinda get it.

Stfu. Only psychos carry around a naked phone.

Your phone is only as thin as it's thickest point.

Do phones really need to be so skinny? Part of the reason I always get a case is not only for protection, but also to deliberately make it a little thicker.

No, they're just desperate for some kind of differentiator at this point because phones haven't meaningfully changed in five years. Hell, maybe ten.
- Yeah they have. They removed a bunch of features so they can sell more dongles and cloud storage. You know, "innovation".
- Yeah, the only real improvements in phones over the last decade are the adoption of USB-C and the addition of extra camera lenses, and I never really use the extra lenses on my phone.
  I replaced my 2016 Galaxy S7 last year with a Motorola G32 mainly because the Galaxy wasn't holding a charge or getting software updates anymore. The G32 is actually lower in spec in a few ways (lower-resolution screen, no wireless charging) but it's still more than adequate for my needs, has a headphone jack and MicroSD slot and supports LineageOS (although I haven't installed that yet.)
  Even the S7 upgrade wasn't strictly necessary but I saw a good deal and didn't like the way my LG G2's volume buttons were on the back.
  We're well past the point where smartphones should've been fully comodified and where we should be able to get generic versions based on common standards (i.e. a common platform open to OS developers without the need for a specialized build for each phone.)
This has become one of the useless marketing figures everyone chases because they made it seem important in the first place.
I absolutely prefer having something a bit thicker, as it fits the palm better.

It's really funny to me that we're having these conversations all over again. I had the Moto Z back in 2016 and it was almost half a mm thinner than the 2025 iPhone Air. (As always, here's Apple still playing catchup, a decade later this time.)

I honestly didn't mind it - the Moto Z had a Moto Mods battery that snapped on the back (in a MUCH more elegant manner than Apple's magsafe battery implementation in my opinion) and so I always knew that was an option if the battery life became a concern over time. And I loved that the extended battery made the back of the phone perfectly flush with the camera bump too, so if you elected to add battery life, it was literally what we've all asked for the whole time: Just make it thicker and add battery. But if you didn't need extended battery life, then you had a razer thin phone (and a camera bump), probably the thinnest I had until the Fold7 at 4.2mm.

I wish that Motorola's solution had stuck, because they solved this problem already, meanwhile everybody is here reinventing the wheel over and over again in 2025. 🤦

Yes Butt !

I like big butts and I cannot lie

Tbh, the camera bumps are nice if you use phone cases. They allow the phone+ phone case thickness to be much thinner than otherwise. Provided they aren't enormous unexplainable bumps like the pixel phones'

Pretty well packed with sensors isn't it?
- It is not, especially compared to solutions like Samsung's that have a different bump for each camera. The food thing with that design is, you can expose the camera and make the case form-fit around, which doesn't make the phone thicker. Google pixel cases that do that expose this entire slab to the elements though, this glass will get scratched quite easily

Well, you cannot cheat physics. You get two of resolution, depth, and thin-ness. If they want resolution and depth, they need the optics to do this.

Parascope lenses don’t require cheating physics.
- Periscope? (my Sony phone has one)
- No, but they require thickness for the high resolution sensor then.

honestly I don’t mind it - the grooves allow you to actually hold the fucking thing one handed without being a basketball player

Sounds like you need a case with actual grip more than anything. Maybe they should stop making phones smooth and so big? They are all phablets these days.
- if they sold smaller phones I would’ve. I prefer not to use cases; this isn’t a problem, but a complaint on the status quo. I sympathize with those under 6’3 who have to purchase further solutions. agreed that phones should be smaller in general; like they were about few generations ago.
This is exactly the reason. It makes large screen devices easier to hold for people with normal sized hands.
You hold your phone by the camera bump???
- The bump keeps the phone from sliding down past your fingers on the back
- lolol not literally - it rests against my index or middle sometimes

It’s because most customers use cases. They know this, and so Apple can say they made it thinner, when the reality is that it’s always not that thin. Especially when you can throw a case and a mag safe battery on the back and make it even thicker than the pro model.

It's sorta like the late 90's-early 00's when people were swapping the shells of their Nokias and pagers.
The thinner phones just allow the user the option to change the appearance to what they think looks good without becoming too thick.
And even then, it's hard to find a case where the lip is higher than the camera lens. The best you can usually get is the lip and the lens at the same level, so any slightly uneven surface can scratch it.

I have no problem with functional protuberances. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing more, such as a universal mounting connector of some sort? I don't know if I am atypical in this regard, but I like mounting my phone on things. Handlebars, car dashes, tripods, mic stands, etc. There are solutions for this, but they invariably involve something wrapping around and blocking some of the front side of the phone, which has become increasingly problematic over the years with screens pushing towards the edges. My bike holder sometimes blocks the front-facing camera needed to unlock the iPhone, for example. But if there were something on the back side that a mounting bracket could securely latch onto, none of this would be a problem.

SP connect and quadlock offer mounting brackets, that get glued to the back of your phone (or phone case) check on their websites under "universal"
- That's interesting. It's basically what I'm thinking phones should just have by design. Something that can twist-lock it into place. I guess the question with this after market solution is whether you trust that adhesive enough? It would be better if it were just built into the phone, but it's nice to have some affirmation that my ideas are not totally baseless and that others have been looking into it. Thanks!

I don't mind a camera bar (or "visor"). It's better than the stupid bump they used to use, because it's stable, and it also provides a slight angle that makes the phone a little more visible when it's laying on a desk.

What I don't like is a super thin phone that has no meaningful battery and is easy to bend. "Bend" means that dropping it results in more than just shock force.

Take a look at JerryRigEverything’s iPhone Air video.
It took 200+ pounds of force, in the middle of the device, to bend it. It was very impressive.
- I've heard that, and it's very impressive. Unfortunately, I weigh more than 200 pounds, and putting a significant fraction of my weight on the device is not a particularly remote possibility, given my track record.

I would prefer it if there was a raised lip around the lenses - like you get when you put a case on. That protects (to a degree) the lens of the hideously expensive camera phone you just bought.

Seriously. How did we get to the point where so many phones are designed for you to set them down directly on the camera lens? What are we doing?
- Can you imagine putting your 5 grand Leica lens down🙀

I recently had cause to use my phone as a clinometer to measure the gradient of a path at various points. Camera bumps made the task take twice as long as it otherwise would have, because I had to record it camera forward, then camera backward, and average the two, just to negate the effect it has on how the phone sits...

Yes, and, no.

It’s a hand ergonomics thing. People with smaller hands who still want a larger screen have an easier time holding the phone body if it’s thin. The camera bump is outside of the handholding area so stuffing the big circuitry there lets you make a better hand experience.