The iPhone Air
A slick, sensuous phone that just might be the best ever
It’s no reflection on the quality of Apple’s flagship product, but the release of a new iPhone hasn’t been an enormous deal for a few years. The specter of Apple devotees lining up overnight outside stores to be the first to buy the latest was always rather embarrassing.
I’m as big an admirer of the iPhone as anyone, but I stopped getting ‘excited’ (Apple for ‘quite interested’) by new models with the iPhone 15, in 2023, by which time it seemed, with so many superb Android phones on the market, that the smartphone as a species had reached pretty much its terminal velocity.
So the main attractions of the iPhone 17 range when it launched last month were, in order of priority, the excellent new orange (sorry, ‘Cosmic Orange’) color and a slightly better camera than in the 16.
I requested a review sample nonetheless from Apple, but a canny P.R. person there sent instead the new iPhone Air, which had not registered on me at all, and, if multiple media reports are to be believed, on anyone else either. Sales of the Air have reportedly been muted, to put it mildly.
Two weeks on, and I love the iPhone Air so much, I’d say it’s my favorite ever. It’s not just that it feels so light but that the quite remarkable thinness means it slides into a pocket in a way no iPhone has since the 6 in 2014.
The screen is bigger than that of an iPhone 17, but not as inconveniently huge as the Max models. It is, for me, the perfect size, and the screen quality is quite exceptional.
But there’s still more to this unexpected treat. The slick physical feel of the iPhone Air is so oddly sensuous that I’ve been using it without a case, meaning I will almost certainly break it before it goes back to Apple, but I have been, and still am, stroking and fondling the thing to an almost disturbing extent. To feel what I mean, go into a store and caress one yourself.
There are downsides. The battery life is not as good as with the thicker models. Apple sent the Air with a $99 magnetically attaching exterior battery, which boosts the phone’s capacity by 65 percent. But I’ve not actually needed to attach this yet. The Air seems to last me all day on a single charge. Oh, and you have Apple Intelligence, which isn’t meant to be a downside, but a lot of iPhone users, me included, are turning it off.
One other disadvantage: the single-lens camera on the Air is fine, but not as adaptable as those on the 17 and 17 Pro phones. So pulling out to get a wide angle, or zooming in optically, is very limited. You can still zoom digitally, but the quality then deteriorates badly.
But anyway, if you want to take a serious photo, I say, use a camera. The iPhone Air is a delight. In case Apple withdraws it, which is possible if not likely, be sure to get one.
Leica M EV1
A notoriously difficult camera made simple
Leica cameras go from expensive to very expensive. The best are German-made with the heft and precision of a vintage Mercedes, and the most celebrated of their cameras are the M series, which have been little altered since the early 1950s and, in some senses, since the original 1925 Leica.
Leica M cameras are in many ways a cult. If you are of a Leica mind, they inspire you to take Leica-like photos; the tail wags the dog to a considerable extent, with the result being that you find yourself taking Cartier-Bresson-esque photos whether you’re good at that or not so much.
The unspoken thing about M-series Leicas, however, is that they are really difficult to use. You can take Leica photos with Leica lenses on other terrific cameras in their range, which will focus automatically for you and produce identical results. But the M-series cameras are resolutely manual focus for reasons that are much discussed by we camera geeks. Not only are they manual focus, but the focusing is really, really hard, as you need to line up two faint images in the optical viewfinder.
What I have always wanted was a Leica M with an electronic, up-to-the-eye viewfinder, which shows exactly what the photo you take will look like. And now they have one. I expect purists already hate it, but the difference with the Leica M EV1 is huge. The tricky-as-hell focusing maneuver is now both easy and, surprisingly, pleasurable.
I’ve been using the new M EV1 for a week or two with my favorite Summilux 28-mm. wide-angle lens, and it’s a joy both to handle and use. The photos are, not unexpectedly, as good as anything at my skill level could possibly be.
Small point—the M EV1 is not officially out in the U.S. yet, as it’s awaiting F.C.C. approval for the radio-based Bluetooth and Wi-Fi elements, and the F.C.C. has not been working at full speed due to the (now resolved) government shutdown. So the impatient would do well to buy overseas and put those mighty dollars to good use.
Brane X
A portable speaker with physics-defying bass
If you love your music with maximum bass, an extraordinary new portable speaker from Brane, an Austin, Texas, start-up, could be your new best friend.
Their sole product, the Brane X, provides a massive, thumping, internal-organ-vibrating bass down to 27 Hz, which is way lower than any other portable music machine. Most bottom out at 55 Hz.
Landing Gear’s home-music setup consists of twin Sonos Era 300s, which with Sonos’s heavy $899 Sub 4 subwoofer totals at $1,857. A pair of Brane X1s will produce sound of the same gizzard-wobbling timbre without a separate sub, all for $1,000. It may not have quite the refinement of the Sonos system, but the X1 is incredibly impressive, whether you buy one or go for a stereo pair.
Brane is proud to say that the eight-pound X1 has been developed—since 1992—not by audio engineers but by physicists. Brane says its physics-defying bass came about as the result of ceaseless laboratory work during the pandemic.
They tried more than 200 experimental rigs, they say, to finally perfect a new form of bass element they call an RAD—Repel Attract Driver—which counters, and I’m sure we all know it well, Hofmann’s Iron Law. This is not a courtroom drama but a theory promulgated in the 1950s that says for a speaker to be extra bassy, it must either be inefficient and require a huge amount of power or be physically large. The Brane X1, however, while being portable enough to carry around easily, runs on battery power for up to 10 hours.
Ifi Valkyrie
A headphone amp so good—and expensive—you’ll treasure it like a fine wine
Your columnist is no wine expert. Asked at a press launch once by Moët et Chandon if I liked the lunchtime champagne I was quaffing, I said, “Yes, thank you, it’s very nice.” The Moët person did a very French moue face and said, “I’m happy to hear that. Each glass you are drinking costs over $1,000.”
This lack of expertise does not stop me from buying the most expensive wine I can afford. My favorite ever was a $70 bottle from a wine store in a small French town, which I worked out would be a $600 bottle in a restaurant. It was brown and sedimented and, I would say, very nice, but I’d be pushed to explain why.
The same applies a little to the highest of high-end audio. It is an adventure to listen to a recording of the highest quality on the most costly and refined gear you can get your hands on. I’ve heard plenty of $1 million-plus sound systems, and although I couldn’t specify why, technically, they are so good, I certainly appreciate that they are superlative—and would buy such a system if I could.
So it is with headphones. Take any ultra-premium pair—say, the $5,000 Focal Utopia from France, or the $2,495 Grado Labs HP100 SE from Brooklyn, or possibly the $6,000 Hifiman Susvara from China—hook it up to a specialist headphone amplifier, and listen to the best version you can get of your favorite music. You then enter a kind of audio Nirvana in which the recorded sound you’re hearing is, paradoxically, better than real life.
As to which headphone amplifier, I am currently transfixed by the Valkyrie, a gloriously deluxe model from the blessed Ifi Audio, based and made in a coastal resort outside Liverpool, England. The Valkyrie is absurdly over-engineered, like $1,000-a-glass champagne, and worth every cent. The Valkyrie does everything, including some functions I don’t understand and, to be honest, are too subtle to hear, but it is like having some amazing wine in your cellar.
For the pathologically hard to please, do be aware that even at $1,699, the Ifi Valkyrie is far from the most expensive headphone amp on the market. Near Cambridge, England, an über-geeky outfit called DCS makes the Lina, which is $9,750. And Wavac, in Japan, has one for $350,000.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer at the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology
