The Vergecast - Who is the iPhone Air really for?

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

It's been a busy week for The Verge's product reviewers! We've got three new phones, three new watches, and a set of earbuds on the docket, and the team is ready to talk about (almost) all of it. First, Allison Johnson and Jake Kastrenakes join to talk about their experiences with the iPhone Air, iPhone 17, and iPhone 17 Pro. One is fabulous with some compromises, one is just a down-the-middle excellent phone, and the other is for camera nerds. After that, Victoria Song talks about the AirPods Pro 3, which are also a stellar upgrade, and then helps us make sense of the new lineup of Apple Watches. There's the SE 3, the Series 11, and the Ultra 3, but there's only one clear winner for most people. Finally, we answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]!) about Apple's up-and-down focus on AI Further reading: ⁠The iPhone 17 is the one to get this year⁠ Apple iPhone Air review: statement piece Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro is a bold redesign but a basic upgrade AirPods Pro 3 review: tripling down on a good thing The Apple Watch SE 3 is the one to buy Apple Watch Series 11 review: stuck in the middle The unbearable sameness of Liquid Glass Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of phones that look like phones. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am decluttering, starting to anyway. So it looks like my wife and I are going to be moving at the end of October, which means that I have now six weeks to get most of the things out of my house. And I would say, like, I'm not a pack rat or like a hoarder person in general, but I do accumulate things. Part of that is just the nature of this job. There's a lot of, like, iPad boxes and random accessories lying around in the basement near me,

and a lot of that needs to get shipped, and a lot of that needs to get thrown away. But I just, I need a moment, like a few times a year to just really be like, okay, time to get rid of most of the things that I own. It's a very productive moment. It's a moment I actually really enjoy. I should probably do it more often. So I have six weeks now to essentially declutter, pack up, and move. Sometime in the near future, I suspect I'm going to be doing.

doing this podcast from an entirely new place. But that is not what we're here to talk about today or any of the days for the next six weeks. We're here to talk about Apple. So it's Apple review season. We have lots of new devices. Our team has been testing the new devices. And this is one of the most interesting gadget moments of the year, not necessarily because the Apple products themselves are so interesting, but because this is a moment to kind of take stock of the whole gadget world. This isn't the end of gadget season. We're about to have MetaConnect. We're about to have some interesting Amazon hardware news, I suspect, in a couple of weeks. There's a lot of stuff left to come. But this is kind of the end of phone season in a certain

way. It's also a good time to just take stock of where we are, how Apple is doing, and whether or not any of these gadgets are still moving forward in an interesting way. So that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to have Allison Johnson, V-Song, and Jake Castronakis on. They've been reviewing the devices. They have lots of thoughts. I don't know anything about how they feel about these devices yet. So hopefully we're going to get some fireworks. All of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I just saw like 12 more things that I need to throw away and post for free on Nextdoor. By the way, posting stuff for free on Next Door, incredible. This is the first cast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped

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If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. All right, we got to start with iPhones. We have people who have used the iPhones.

Hello, people who have used the iPhones. Allison Johnson's here. Hi, Allison. Hello? Jake Castranakis is here. Hi, Jake. Hey, there. Jake, in two weeks, you have debuted as an Apple Live blogger and you have debuted, I believe, as an iPhone reviewer?

I'm trying my best. This is huge for you. Yeah, no, this is great. What a glow up for Jake this year. I know, it's fun. It's, you know, due to everyone else being unavailable, a lot of people thought really hard and said, I guess Jake is available. And that's how I got the Vergecast hosting gig. That's how I got this iPhone reviewing gig.

I mean, honestly, this is the life. So if I have this right, Jake, you reviewed the base iPhone 17. Yes. And Allison, you have some or all of the phones, but you've mostly been doing the iPhone air review, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's been my main gig. Okay, so this is good because I actually think, and you should both feel free to tell me I'm wrong and correct me. I think you have the two most interesting phones of the year by a mile, but for wildly different reasons.

And we should just get into it. So I think we have to start with the air, which I think is probably the phone about which I have the most questions, if that makes sense. Like it is the wildest of the wild cards of these phones so far. So, Alison, you've been using the thing. You've reviewed the thing. Hit me with it. How do you feel? How's the iPhone air experience, Ben?

Oh, boy. I feel pretty much like I anticipated I would. So I should say that I reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S-25 Edge earlier this year. It's kind of the same idea. It's a phone except thin. And the experience of using that and the iPhone Air is you're sort of wowed right at the beginning. You're like, oh, my God, this is so thin, it's so light. I feel like I'm going to break it.

You get used to that. You carry it around. And the thing that kind of sticks with you is the weight. Like it'll fit into pockets and little nukes and crannies of the bags I carry that normally I'm like trying to jam a phone into. And every time it does that, I'm like, oh, that was nice. But the thing that kind of sticks with me is just sitting and holding it and scrolling. And my hand doesn't get as tired. And I don't have such a great weight resting on my pinky, you know.

So it's the little things. It's hard to describe it and convey it without someone picking it up and holding it. If you can do that, I encourage you to. But that's my big takeaway. This is one of the challenges of this phone, right? You look at the specs and like, yeah, it's thinner and yeah, it's lighter. But the numbers are relatively small to the extent it's not like, you know, the regular iPhone weighs six pounds and this is suddenly much smaller. Like, it's just a slightly smaller iPhone.

But you're saying the differences there do add up to something meaningful. They do. And I went through the same thing. You look at the numbers. You're like, is this really going to be that big of a difference? And you pick it up and hold it. You're like, oh, it really is. And I think it just comes down to we are so attuned to like every gram that phone weighs

because we carry them and use them all the time. And there's just sort of a we've settled on like, this is roughly how. much of phone ways. And you pick this one up and you're like, oh, it's, I don't know, okay, I do know. You have had this experience of like picking up a toddler like a day after day and you're like so used to how heavy they are. Then you pick up a newborn. You're like, oh my God. I'm going to like toss this child into the air. Same deal. It's like toddlers. Interesting. So this really pours cold water on a theory I've had for a long time, which is that actually what I want Apple to do is make a bigger phone with like bruising battery life and that is completely indestructible.

And actually what you're making me think is maybe the lesson learned here is that that actually isn't a good idea because we're so attuned to it, that if you made it bigger, it wouldn't just feel not better. It would feel like actively worse. Yeah. And I will add to that. So, you know, spoiler alert, battery life is not super great on the air. We sort of anticipated that. It's not a disaster, but there's the MagSafe battery pack that Apple kind of reintroduced, like, specifically for the air. Jake was very excited about this on the podcast last week.

Jake loves a battery pack. I love it. Love making a phone bigger with more accessories. Well, that's the thing. It's like you can think of it as a modular phone where you're like, this is kind of how it is by itself, but then you slap a battery pack on it. But the thing is the battery pack itself is light and thin. You put it on the phone and you use it for a minute. I'm like, this is too heavy.

Like, this is heavier than a pro. It doesn't feel good. And I just want to leave it here until it's charged and then take this thing off of it. Yeah, there's definitely a real, like, we keep telling people go, like, touch it and try it and pick it up. And part of me is like that it might actually be terrible advice. Because like, maybe you shouldn't know how much thinner and later your phone could be unless you're prepared to spend the money on the thinner and lighter phone. You know, the reaction I've gotten, it's kind of a negative one at first, I think, from people who are not really expecting. Like my husband, he's like, I'm going to break this. I don't like that. Like, I heard that a couple of times. And then after you've used it a little bit, you're like, okay, okay. I feel better with this. This is nice.

Does it feel fragile at all? I wouldn't say it does. Like, it feels solid. I did have it, like, sitting on the ground in my, four-year-old was like stomping around the room and I had a like, oh, I hope he doesn't stomp right in the middle of his phone. Like I would not normally think that of a, of a normal phone. But it's something that sort of crossed my mind more often using this. But at no point was I like, this feels so fragile. I'm going to break it. Okay. That's good news. I'm glad to hear that. Because I think, yeah, one of my worries would be that I would end up treating this thingling like a precious object because they kind of want you to think it is a precious object. And that's just not the right relationship to have with your phone, I think.

Like these things are so utilitarian and so ubiquitous that having something you have to baby is actually really annoying in my humble opinion. But you mentioned battery life. And I think the two tradeoffs we expected coming into this, we're going to be battery life and camera question mark. because there's only one, and we have a lot of thoughts about it. Let's start with battery life. What's the actual situation like? Battery life, where I've landed is, and I've only used a thing for a week, but it seems to me it's in, if there's a spectrum of like acceptable battery life on a brand new phone,

it's in that spectrum, it's on the low end. So depending on the phone, you're, you're, you're, trading in. Wait, can I just pause you? Actually, this is, can we just do a little exercise right now? Okay. I want all three of us to just say out loud what you think minimum acceptable battery life is for a smartphone. Like, how often do you need to charge your phone in order for it to be fine?

Jake, you go first. So my current phone that I use day to day is a pixel eight. Okay. And if it hits 20%, it goes into low power mode. And it drives me crazy because it turns the high refresh rate screen off, everything goes into dark mode, everything gets chugged, you know, starts slowing down. If it hits 20% and I'm in my day to day, that's when it's too low. So I think bare minimum is a phone that is above 20% power when I go to bed. Okay.

I like that. Allison, what do you feel like your number is? Yeah, about the same. Like, I need to get through my day. and if I see that 20%, you know, it turns red, it gives you a mean notification. Yeah, the iPhone is really alarming about it when you get 20%. And every time I look at the phone, you know, you see the percentage go down and it's still angry at you. So, yeah, I agree with that.

Okay. It's funny. I actually think we're all almost in exactly the same place, so it's really helpful. So the reason I ask is because I've been using the iOS 26 betas all summer. And like, beta software is famously just crushing to phones. So, like, I don't hold it against the betas when they crush my phones battery, but they have. And so I've gotten to the point where now I'm getting to 20% at, like, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And, like, the difference that that makes in, like, my psyche is so much more substantial than I am willing to talk about. Like, that feeling of, like, okay, I have to run out to do an errand. and there's like an actual non-zero chance

my phone battery is going to be dead before I get home because I have to use CarPlay to get there. I have my grocery list on my phone and they need to get back. So I'm going to like use this device. It's 4.30 in the afternoon and I feel like my phone might be dead before I get home.

It's like that is unacceptable. And so I think I like the like, I should be able to charge it every night and never hit low power mode, I think is a really good way of thinking about it. So does the iPhone error hit that? Does it at least hit that threshold? It mostly does.

So the days when I... That was a sigh at the beginning of that sentence that I don't like at all. It's just testing a battery. There's so many factors and so many things. And especially in a period where you're setting up a phone from scratch and using it, the first two days are just kind of a nightmare. So the days where I went really hard on the battery had like a ton of, you know, more than five hours of screen on time.

I was in the back of an Uber for an hour, all this stuff. Like, I was getting to that 20% by dinner time, and that was stressing me out. And I was like, do I put the battery pack? Do I charge it? Do I leave the battery pack on while I'm making a phone call? I didn't like that when I've had, and that was a lot more out and about and travel. When I've been at home on Wi-Fi and I'm just kind of doing normal stuff, and it's more like of three hours. of screen on time day, it's been much more acceptable where it's in the 30s by bedtime.

So didn't see the low power mode. I breathe this eye of relief. But for a brand new phone, that does not feel great, you know? Yeah. And that's the kind of thing that's like, this is the best this battery is going to be. It is not going to ever be any better. and a year from now, what's that going to look like?

Yeah, Jake, that description of the battery sounds like it does not hit my threshold. Does it hit yours? No, I agree with you because that's exactly where my two-year-old phone is, right? If I push it hard, I'm going to see lower power mode. On a normal day, it's winding down, but it's fine. But that's fine. It's two years old.

You've got to worry. That makes me concern about how that's going to be in the long term. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is like if you're not going to hold it. hold and look at your phone, the hell's the point of buying the fancy one? You know what I mean? I don't think, like, I just don't think the iPhone error is, like, the, the gentle user's iPhone

to begin with. So I think it's, it's a tricky, like, the self-selecting group of people who is going to buy this phone are going to be the people who maybe are hit the hardest by the battery limitations. But to some extent, that's physics, right? Like, it is what it is. I don't, I don't know how much there actually is to do to solve it. Like, there's only so much space. inside of the phone. The camera is the other one. What's been your verdict on the camera? The camera I'm a little more okay with.

With the asterisk that, you know, it is a single 48 megapixel camera, very capable in good light. You know, it's hard to buy a phone with a bad camera these days. You do get like a two-time crop zoom mode. You get the new selfie camera on their front,

very, which is very cool and nice. Does that work, by the way? Just random digression. Does it, does the thing where it'll do the landscape selfies, it'll do the crop selfies because it has the square sensor? Like, does that all work as advertised? It does. You need the thing we learned is that you need at least four people in the front, like moving into the frame and looking at the camera to trigger it where it's going to go landscape mode. Which makes me.

You take selfies with that many people. I don't know. I'm like. I don't have that many friends. I don't have them many friends. Yeah. Yeah, kind of rude of Apple. But it is cool.

It does some cool stuff. But the thing I miss on the air is the ultra wide. You know, the Samsung edge has an ultra wide. It is a little bit thicker and bigger. But that's just one of those things you can't like computational photography your way out of. If I can't back up in a room, that's it. Right. You're just doing one of these where you're, like, leaning all the way back.

So there's a few situations you get into where I'm like, this is a $1,000 phone and I can't do this. This doesn't feel quite right. Yeah. Yeah. And those tradeoffs are always easier to stomach when you're paying less money. This is like what we talked about last week with the folding and flipping phones. It's like, it's one thing to be like, oh, you get fewer cameras for fewer dollars. That makes sense.

But here is the expensive one. It does less stuff. And you're like, well, that doesn't compute quite the same way. Yeah. Jake, you've also gotten to use the selfie camera and you, as everyone knows, are the most prone selfie taker at the verge, I would say. Nonstop. If you put, if you were like, who is taking the pictures of themselves the most often, it's Jake and it's not close. I have a ring light set up in every room just in case I need to take some photos.

You just have one attached like with a chest strap at all times. I'm constantly slacking you these photos when I'm cooking dinner. Yeah. How have you found the new selfie? camp because it's the same one across all the models, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. I did side by sides with the 17 and the 16.

And quality-wise, the selfies look identical, right? Like, I don't think a lot has changed in the character of the selfies. It really just is this trick where it just goes sideways automatically for you. You don't have to... I'm a little torn. Like, on one hand, I did not personally find turning my phone sideways to take a landscape selfie all that difficult. On the other hand, selfies by far are shot in portrait, right? People are holding their phone upright. And Apple has now made it easier to get everybody in the frame while

you're doing that. They have fully dummy proofed the selfie. And you know what? It works. So I I don't think this is going to be necessarily like revolutionary for everybody. I don't think your selfies are going to look better. Is it going to make it slightly easier for a lot of people to take selfies? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I think dummy proof is like the story of the iPhone's camera. As we've, you know, talked about many times it is their whole thing is basically how do we make it harder to take bad pictures, which I think is a good and noble goal, but is maybe not the only goal that a camera manufacturer should have. Yeah. I mean, if you're a person who wants to take creative photos or, you know, quote, quote, great photos, it's, you know, maybe it's not what you want.

But I do think, you know, we've been doing selfie cameras for well over a decade now. and this is the first time I can really think of a major phone being like, hey, maybe we should optimize for the main way that people shoot selfies. And you know what? That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I buy it. So, Alison, just to cover off on the air here, where do you land in terms of like,

I'm just a person, I don't know, I have an iPhone 13 that is like on its last legs. It's time for me to upgrade. And I'm just earnestly trying to decide which iPhone to buy. I'm not like coming to it with any preconceived notions. Who is the air the right phone for? This is a weird one. So if you have an iPhone 13, I would infer about you that you like to hold on to your phone. You don't want to be going into an Apple store every two years.

I'll be like, I'll take the new iPhone, please. The iPhone era is not for that person. I think the battery is going to run down faster. I think you're just going to run up against the limits of what it can do sooner, I think, than a pro or maybe even the regular. So this doesn't feel like a phone for a person who wants to kind of set it and forget it. The way I've come around to thinking about it is that it's a little bit of a statement. It's sort of for a person who's like, you know what, phones are huge. I don't need all that. I don't like all that. I would just rather exist with a smaller, lighter phone. I'm fine having this battery pack on me all the time or I am always near a power outlet. And it's not a problem to just, you know, top off the battery throughout the day. It's kind of a leisurely comfortable way to live with your phone, I think.

There is a cohort of iPhone mini-loving people who are screaming at their headphones right now saying, you just described the reason they should have kept making the mini. And to all of those people, just know that I agree with you. I know. And to my iPhone mini friends, this is not a small phone. It is a big phone with small phone energy. It is still like, you still have to reach across the screen. It's lighter.

It feels nicer in that way. I can fit it in the front pocket of my jeans, which is how I carry my iPhone mini. But it's not a small phone. So I'm sorry for everybody. Yeah, that's fair. Big phone with small phone energy is actually, I think, a very good way to think about it. But yeah, I think it's going to be interesting to see how many people are willing to make the particular sacrifices you have to make, I think, especially on battery life in order to get the size and shape of the thing. And I have not yet bought an iPhone this year.

There's always still time. But I need to hold the air before I make a decision on whether it's time to get rid of the 16 and move up. Yeah. All right. So now let's switch gears to you, Jake, because I think this year for the first time in a while, my sense coming out of the event was that the base iPhone

was going to be the right iPhone for most people. in that same like I'm just looking to upgrade my phone I have no preconceived notions I just want a good iPhone the 17 looked coming out like it had all the right upgrades the price was good it seemed like it was closer to being the one than it has been in a while how does it feel after testing is that is that still where you land oh yeah I I tried living with the iPhone 16 for a week before I reviewed the 17 and it was driving me crazy

right the the always on screen is such a dramatic essential upgrade so it's such a critical part of a phone that it's kind of bamboozling that it has not been part of the standard iPhone for so long right it debuted on the pro in 22 and you know the reason it's remained a pro exclusive until now is because it's it's a major selling point and i think it's so major that the past several years i i would have told anybody like Yeah, like the pro is that's so important. You should spend money in the pro. Now there's a $300 price gap. And you're getting the best features.

You're getting the always on display. And it's a high refresh rate screen. It feels like a completely different phone than iPhone 16. Yeah, it feels like in terms of sort of obviously great things it doesn't do, the only real thing I can think of is the camera, right? Like are there sort of big things you feel like it's still missing? I think that's the story here, right? It's, there's always been like a pretty big gulf between the two.

And I think there's often been essential stuff in the pro line. And now it's, right, it's the main camera is a little bit nicer on the pro. That's fair. There's a telephoto camera on the pro. That's cool. I like telephoto. Right. I think that's it, right?

Like, it has a cool new redesign. You can't get this one in orange. Right? No one is going to know you have a brand new iPhone. Which, to be clear, is not nothing. Like, if we've learned one thing in the last seven days, it's that iPhone aesthetics matter an awful lot to people. And the addition of a new color was a big deal.

Like, especially a loud new color that screams, this is a brand new iPhone. That matters to people. I do think there's something there, right? If you look at this phone, it looks the exact same as every iPhone has for the past, like, six years, right? And so if you're upgrading from an iPhone 11, you're not going to be able to tell the difference.

You're going to be like, I replace my phone with the same phone. Which maybe feels like a bummer, even if the change is insider enormous. Was that the sage one, by the way? It is the sage one. For people watching this on YouTube, I hate doing this. Can you just hold it up? This is the one Allison said she was so taken with at the event, and I haven't actually seen it. Yeah, yeah.

No, let me show you this. It's lovely. How do you feel about the sage? It's beautiful. The sage is a fantastic color. It looks really, really nice. It's one of the best iPhone colors in a long. time. It is really nice. It's very, it's like a quiet color, but really nice looking, which I really

appreciate it. It's saturated enough. Yeah. It's not like, yeah. It's not, it's not a whisper of green. Yeah, finally, Apple did colors instead of just like, I always think of Apple's color scheme as they just like put the iPhone down next to a can of paint and then ship it to you. This one, they actually, they painted the things this time. Yeah. It's very excited. It looks really good. Yeah. God. So having used, having used the 17 now, Jake, what's, what are the downsides? What do you not like about the 17? what I mean again I'm just going to keep complaining about notification management on iOS but like that's not no nobody's here for that right if you if you want an iPhone you like it's still an iPhone it's great no I truly the the biggest um issues that have that I had with the iPhone 16 have been mitigated right there were there was a screen um I don't think I have major pro like I don't think there are major flaws I don't think there are major restrictions that that are only, right? Like, I don't know.

Are there some pro-res features I can't get? I couldn't even tell you. That's fine. Like, I don't need to shoot in pro-res. That's fine. Can I just say the fact that that question is really hard to answer is so exciting and such a big deal for the base iPhone because it's like, Alison, you and I have been going through this for years

where it's like, okay, I have a list of things on each side. And I have to try and explain to you whether this tiny upgrade, to the hardware and this new button and this tiny new thing in the camera, all of that adds up to you should, you know, spend a few hundred more dollars and get a new phone. We just don't have to do that anymore, right? And that's the thing with so many of these things. Like V and I are going to talk about the watches later, but I think what happened with the watches was they were basically like the base one is a great one.

And then for a little more money, you get the health stuff. And it's like that is a completely understandable decision. but there's nothing missing from the base model. And it feels like the iPhone for the first time, and kind of as long as I can remember, there's nothing missing on the base iPhone. Yeah, it doesn't feel like you're putting up with something and Apple's being like, well, if you want that,

you really got to pay a few extra $100. Jake, are you like a promotion guy 120 hertz? Can you see the difference and it bothers you kind of deal? Yeah, absolutely. And I think once you get used to that, it's very hard to go back. It's like even after a week with the standard model coming from a 120-hertz display, everything felt so sluggish. My iPhone 16 is sitting here and it's hearing you and it's really upset by all of this. You've been hurting the feelings of my still very new iPhone.

I don't know how you're living with that thing. I'm seriously like, it's hurting my productivity, not having a screen that's on. Like, it really is. I will say, Alison, you and I talk about. talked about the always on display last week. And a couple of people reached out and were like, hey, one thing you should try is turning off the wallpaper on the always on display. And I went to turn off the wallpaper on my iPhone 16 and it's like, oh, right, I don't even have an always on display. I hated it so much. I bought a phone that doesn't support it without even realizing. Okay. Jake, where do you stand on the wallpaper dimming on the always on display? I thought I was going to hate it because I have not been using that feature in the past. And actually, it's totally fine. Doesn't bother me at all. Yes. Yes. Okay. One more vote for totally fine. This is the worst. You guys are terrible. So on the pro, Allison, you're not reviewing it. Todd Hazleton is reviewing it. And we'll link to that in the show notes. But you've used it a bunch along with it. How does it feel compared to kind of these other funds? Like it is bigger and heavier. It is the more like substantial device.

And actually it seems like more so this year because the air is allowed to be the thin one. This one doesn't have to be. Like how does the pro feel just as a phone to use right now? Yeah, it feels a little like a cheat kind of going between the air and the pro is like not the situation most people are going to be in. So the pro really did feel kind of just like dense and heavy in a way. I don't think it would have really struck me if I hadn't been used. the air so much. The switch to the more curved edges I don't particularly like. So the last, the 16 Pro had more straight sides. I feel like that is nicer in my hand. I can grab

on the phone. I don't feel like it's going to go flying. Most people could put a case on their phone. This does not bother them. It bothers me a tiny bit. But I'm still just, appreciative of the smaller pro being everything that the bigger pro is, like the pro max. You get the same telephoto camera. You know, it's just a matter of battery life, really, in screen size, if that's a thing to you. Yeah, the little pro kind of remains my little pet favorite of the bunch. It is a very good phone. I think there are increasingly few people I would recommend.

amend it to because it's like if you want all the things that the pro has, you probably also want more battery and more screen on which to do those things. So I'm like, I'm not sure who the base pro is for, but I also am with you. And that like there's something about that phone that I just really love. It's like, you are, you are the in-between phone and I love you for that. Yeah. I'm like, just please don't go anywhere. Don't get bigger. Don't disappear. Next year, Apple, take that one and make it thin and everything will be fine. Whoa. Mind-blown. the iPhone Pro Air, and I will love that phone,

and I will come on the show, and I will spend a month talking about how stupid the name is, and that is my promise to you. Alison, question on the camera thing, because, right, I think if we're looking at it and we're saying the single, most compelling and in many ways only reason to go from base iPhone to iPhone to iPhone is still about the cameras,

you're the most professional photographer of the three of us. How compelling is that case to you? you right now this year. It's, you know, it does put you in a class of like, you really care about image quality, which is all three of us, I think. So on the base iPhone, the camera sensor in the main camera is just a little smaller than the one you get on the pros. You do not notice anything about this in good lighting, portrait modes, fine. Where I see a difference, and the air also has the smaller sensor on the main as the base iPhone, is in the 2x portraits. So if I've lost anybody, then that's fine, just by the base iPhone. If you know what I mean by the two-time

portraits and you're screaming like, oh, God, I can't give that up. Like, I, I, I take portrait mode photos constantly, take them of my kid. The two-time zoom is just so nice for that. So 1X feels too wide. The 4X on the pros this year is actually very nice, but sometimes that's too close anyway. But I can see the difference. In low light, you know, you're taking a portion of a smaller sensor and you lose detail that the pro hangs on to. So it's in the minutia.

I don't think there's a great case for, oh, you really should spend extra on the pro because two times portraits. But it's there if you go looking for it. Yeah. I think I find this all really interesting, like from an Apple strategy perspective, but from just like I'm a person who wants a phone perspective, really exciting. Because in many ways, I think this decision of which iPhone to buy is kind of easier than it's been in a long time where it's like, do you just want a really good iPhone by the, by the, the iPhone 17. If you want the camera by the pro, if you want the, like, aesthetics by the air, like done and done, right? And I think there are small tradeoffs on each side, but that fact, it is as clean a delineation between the phones as I can remember, like, in a long time.

Yeah. It's very helpful to us. Yeah. People who recommend phones. Travis, our producer, just slacked me. The air is an orange, though. And it makes a reasonable point. But do you think, like, it's been so frustrating, I think, for the typical buyer, right, the thing that says iPhone, right, the plain old iPhone, it should be the essential version of the phone. And I truly feel like that has not been the case in recent years. And this year, it is so clearly the case, right? Like, I don't think you're missing anything major. I think you'll have a fantastic phone for a while to go. And, you know, I don't know what's coming next for the pro, but it doesn't feel like there's any obvious thing at the moment that, I don't know, you have to be like, well, that's too bad. Right? You don't get a vapor chamber cooling. Oh, no. Whatever will I do? Yeah, I don't have a vapor chamber. I can't vape with it. Like, what are we even doing here? If they build a vape into the pro, oh no. That's terrible for America, but they will sell a lot of phones. Indeed. All right. So before I let you guys go, we got a hotline question that the three of us are going to answer

together and it has caused me to think more than I thought it would. So here, let me just play it and then we're going to talk about it. You know what? I feel like anybody who has an iPhone air is now susceptible to losing their phone in the couch. It's going to be the most loseable phone ever. Okay. So here, two questions.

A, Allison, true or false? Is this a very loseable phone? Oh, true. Yeah. I was on a plane and had the iPhone air. I usually put it in my pocket, and it has happened that the phone will kind of fall out when I'm moving around, and then then you're in that situation where you're like, oh, God, it's in the seat somewhere. They say, don't adjust your seat because you're going to start a fire with the battery or something like that. I had almost a full panic attack because I thought it had fallen out of my pocket, and it will just slip right in between the seats, and then you've got to call it flight attendant.

Long story short, I just put it in my bag, and I forgot it was in my bag. That's a long way of saying, yes, this feels like a phone that you will lose in the couch. It is a loseable phone, even maybe not in the ways that you think it's going to be a loseable phone. Yes. Okay. And then my other question is, does everyone else almost lose their phone all the time? Because I almost lose my phone all the time.

Like yesterday, I was sitting down in the car. Phone just slipped out of my pocket without even noticing and fell like. in the side between the seat and the car door. And I spent like half the afternoon being like, oh, no, I've lost my phone. It's gone forever. I have also lost my phone in couch cushions. I have also just randomly left my phone places that it doesn't make sense to leave your phone.

Like, is this like a specific medical condition that I have? Or does everyone almost lose their phone all the time? If I'm going to lose it, it is in that exact situation in the car. Because it will just go in between all the weird inner workings of the seat in the console, and I will spend a lot of time fishing it out from the bottom of the car where there's a lot of goldfish crumbs. Yep. But I've trained myself, I think, to leave my phone in very specific places. So if I go in the kitchen, there's like a place I put it down in the kitchen.

If I go in the TV room, and when I have that moment of, oh, I lost my phone, I don't remember where it is, I go to one of those spots. and it's usually there, but I have had to, like, actively do that. Otherwise, I would lose my phone all the time. Okay, that's not just me. Jake is sitting here like, I've never lost a phone in history. I used to be, like, really, really good at this, because I just always just, like, put it straight back in my pocket when I was done with it. And now phones got bigger, and these, like, silicone cases are really popular,

and as they get older, they get kind of, like, funky. They, like, don't slip into pockets very well. And so now I'm just, like, stick it wherever. It's like, I don't know. It could be anywhere. It's fine. If it gets lost, it was meant to be. Hands down, the best feature of the Apple Watch is the thing where it will make my phone make noise so that I can find it, which I do more often than I'm proud of.

All right. We need to take a break. Allison and Jake, thank you both for doing this. Good luck being just in the crosshairs of our commenters for the foreseeer the future. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard.

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All right, we're back. V-Song is here. Hi, V. Hi. From some other hotel room somewhere in America, this is just what you do here. I live on planes and hotels. You really have like spent, how many hours have have you spent at your home in the last 10 days? Not many. Yeah. Maybe 36? Yeah. That's probably how many in the last 10 days.

That's good stuff. So you're, if I have my schedule correct here, you're currently traveling for MetaConnect. Yes, I am. What's happening at MetaConnect? You can read the leaks at the verge.com. But I. Yeah, gosh, what could it be? What could it be?

Mark Zuckerberg in his many glasses. What could it possibly be? Exactly. All right, well, we'll come back to that another time. I actually think there's a chance Metacconnect is like sneaky fascinating this year. But we'll come back to that another time. You are also deep in the throes of oh, so many Apple reviews. Sorry.

And I want to talk about AirPods for like two seconds because I think that is all that is required to more or less tell the story of AirPods. And oh, you're wearing them. Okay. So let's start. with the wearing them because I would say that your feeling and the general consensus on the AirPods Po 3 is that they are terrific.

We came out of the event being like, this is the most straightforwardly great upgrade, and it seems to have been pretty much exactly that. Basically, Apple went and triple down on a good thing, made everything that you like about the AirPods better, and then said, what do you not like about the AirPods? Let's see if we can fix that

too. And, you know, by and large, the largest, the most common complaint that I've ever heard about AirPods from people who are tech journalists, from people who are normal people, from just anyone, is the fit, right? Because either you are blessed with ears that the AirPods fit into, and that's true across the regular AirPods range or the pro range, or you're just not. You're just not blessed with the ear canal for an AirPods.

And, you know, you take the AirPods Pro 3 out of the case, at a first glance, and it just looks the same, right? But then I happen to have my own personal pair of the AirPods Pro 2. You take that out of the case and go like, oh, oh, the shape is definitely different. The AirPods Pro 2 are flatter. These are more angled. So when you look at them side to side and you compare them from every single angle and we have some comparison photos in my review, you can just tell that they're much more angled and designed

to fit in better. One thing that you can do is you can kind of twist to adjust the fit a little bit with these. And you could do that with the AirPods Pro 2, but, you know, if you twist it just a little too far is going to pop out. This, you can actually feel it, at least with my ear shape, you can feel it get more secure, the seal tightening, and not in an uncomfortable way. That's a pretty normal thing for these kind of in-ear things that you kind of, they teach you to sort of put it in and turn it, and that's actually how you get that seal. But AirPods, my experience

has never been, are particularly suited to that. So it's good that they've leaned into that. So they've leaned into that. I went on a run with these, and during that run I went, trying to shake them out of my ear and they didn't shake out. So, you know, I really do think that if you've had trouble with fit before, that you should go to an Apple store or bug your friend who has them to see and try them out before you commit to buying them. Because every ear shape is unique. And I've never had a major problem with AirPods fit. So I'm not surprised that I also don't have a problem here. But if you've had a problem in the past, I would recommend trying to trying them out before getting your hopes up too high.

I'm just saying as someone who hasn't had that issue, they still fit me better. So it's like I, even I saw an improvement. So I think a lot of people will see an improvement. That's good news. So it seems like, yeah, the existence of more sizes of tips plus the little subtle design changes both feel like wins. The thing that seems to be somewhat controversial is the actual material of the things themselves. They're not foam, but they're not not foam. Like, what are these things you're sticking in your ears?

So I saw Dan Seafurt right after the Apple event, and Dan is famously, if you know him, he has had problems with earbuds. And so he uses the real traditional foam tip. And he's like, show me these things and show me that foam tip. And I showed him the tip. He goes, that's not a foam tip. And he's correct. And he's kind of correct. It's not what you would think a traditional foam tip is, you know, foam tip.

it's foam, it expands in your ear and it gets disgusting if you sweat in them. So these to the naked eye are going to look exactly the same as the silicone tips that you're used to from the regular AirPods Pro. The difference is in the very like, and hopefully this doesn't mess up anything, in the very front part right here, that's where they've infused some foam. I see. And the reason why they've done that is that's the part that will expand for the more secure fit. The rest of it is silicone so that when you sweat, it doesn't get disgusting and so that it's easier

to clean. That's the philosophy that I was told when I was at Apple Park on the day of the event. And so, you know, foams there just don't think of it as like a traditional foam tip. Do you notice them? Do they feel any different

in your ears because of the material change? Absolutely not. Like they just feel like the fit feels more secure. It could be that some of that is this foam infused tip, but just looking at them, I was like, this looks the same. Like, they won't fit. Like, you can't interchange the tips between the old ones and the new ones.

So there is a difference there. It's just, like, I put them in my ears and they stay. That's interesting. I think the thing that I'm most curious about with these is, like, you know, you mentioned everybody's ears are different. My thing is my ears start to get, like, sore after wearing the sort of in-ear headphones for too long. It's one of the reasons I've become a huge fan.

of the shocks over the bone conduction stuff. You know I love those too, yeah. I do. And there's just something about them that is like, because they're not blocking that ear canal, there's just, there's some, it's some combination of like the buildup of pressure that I feel in my head from having them blocked along with just the physical toll of them pressing against my ear canal. If I wear them like for hours and hours, like on a cross-country flight or something,

I will come off and like feel physical pain as I take them out. And I've seen mixed things on that front in this one. Some people are like, they block sound better, but as a result, they're actually, the seal is better, which means they're going to hurt more. But so I think Apple just like continues to poke at this. And this is another reason I'm excited about the idea of there being five tip sizes. It's like what I normally do is just go to the smallest tip size. And I will sacrifice a little bit of the noise cancellation in order to not have them hurt over time. So the idea that I can go even smaller here actually seems potentially like it'll solve that problem for me.

Yeah. So here's what I can say from my testing. I wore them on two cross-country flights now for several hours at a time. And they were pretty comfortable for me. I did wear – I've worn these an obscene amount over the last few days to test them. So when I was wearing them for a really, really long time, like I want to say seven hours at a time at one point while I was writing my review. Because I was like, oh, let me check this. Let me verify, like, my notes and whatnot. I did have a little bit of, like, itchiness on the inside, but that's just kind of similar to any AirPods, but by and large, I found them quite comfortable. I didn't experience as much pressure buildup, although there were times that I did. And usually I would just take them out, have a little break, put them back in. So I think if that's something you're sensitive to, you're going to have to play around with it. I don't think it's going to go away completely, but it is improved.

Okay. I'm excited to try them. These were the one thing I, like, jumped to buy immediately because I'm like, it's been a while. I still have the regular AirPods with the lightning port,

and it's like, this feels like the thing to upgrade for. So I'm excited about that. Mostly I want to talk about the watch, because I think the watch situation seems much more complicated.

And I would say, what you found so far is that our suspicions from last week have been confirmed, which is that the watch SE3 is the watch most people should buy. Tell me why you landed there.

It's the star. It has the biggest upgrade from the last generation to the next. So the difference between it and a series watch is almost non-existent, depending on what are the things that you care about. And the big thing that I was going to say was the major thing for the Series 11 watch was the improvement in battery. And that was quite modest in my testing so far. Because you were excited about that when we saw the announcements,

the jump from 18 hours of rated battery life to 24 hours of rated battery life seems like, and like you said last week, Apple tends to underestimate those things. So like a six-hour jump, which is what, like a 33% leap in battery life could be a big deal. It was a bummer to hear that it wasn't a big deal. It's more like the 24-hour battery life estimate is now more accurate. Interesting. Okay. Like the 18-hour battery life estimate was, I think, inaccurate. It was quite low. and now I think 24 hours is accurate, but still a little low, just not very low. So I was getting around, I mean, it's very hard to fully tell you what the battery life expectation is going to be on the amount of time I've had testing three watches simultaneously on two wrists.

And, you know, it's easier and I'll have a much better idea once I get to just wear one watch at a time for a longer period of a time instead of like switching between watches and wearing two watches on. same wrist, which means it's switching between phones. So take what I say as my... Perfectly normal use case that everyone does all the time. Perfectly normal use case that everyone does and is not like my specific thing. So I'm going to say to like take this as my first crack at the battery testing, which I, you know, I have my whole process down to a pet. I account for these things. My first 24, 48 hours with the series 11, I got maybe about 28 to 30 hours on a single charge.

which is better. It's better than 24 hours, but is it the 36 to 40 hours that I think people were hoping for? No, it's not. So if you're on a series 9, if you're on a series 10, what I think you're going to find is that you don't have to worry quite as much. If you go to bed with less than ideal battery life, you'll wake up and you'll have like 3% left, that sort of thing. And you can stick it on a charger. It goes zero to 80 in about 30 minutes. So it's even more true that if you just stick it on a charger while you're getting it ready in the morning, you're good, you're good to go. You don't really have to think about it as much. But, you know, I can already hear the Garmin users going like, well, I measure battery life not in hours, but in weeks and months. And this is... We're thrilled for you. We really are. Yeah, I love that for you guys. You guys are not going to be impressed by this battery life change. But, you know, if you are coming from a series five, a series six, and I'm sure if you've

had those watches, the battery has decorated since in a long time, and you jump to this, you're going to be pleased with the battery life that's available. But is it exciting? Is it exciting for me? Having worn the new iteration year after year, I'm like, oh, it's a little bit better than the series 10. Just a little. The thing I think is interesting about this is my sense from talking to people over the years is that the idea of upgrading your watch every year is essentially non-existent. Like I know, I know a lot of people who are like, I get every other phone because I like phones and want the new stuff or whatever. I know people get every phone because they're like, I like I like the new watch. I don't know anyone who is like, I get every watch every year. That's just like you wear your watch until it doesn't work anymore and then you get a new watch. And so I think that makes this sort of iterative upgrade cadence to me even more acceptable on the watch than on some of these other devices. Yeah, because when you are, when it is time for you to upgrade all of these small changes, they do add up to. something big. But I really do think that the SE3, that's just on every single level. If you have an SE2, on every single level except bezels. This has been improved. The bezels are still bezels,

but if you've been on the SE, you don't know what you're missing with non-bezzles. So it's a really great thing. And the only thing that's new that I think the SC3 is not getting is the hypertension notifications, which I can't really talk about because it rolled out yesterday. And so I am testing that in real time with everybody else who got the watchOS 26 update, which to my point as to why the Series 11 feels like it's the middle child of Apple Watches is that everything that's new and cool that has come to this watch is not exclusive to this watch. Either the Ultra3 has it or the SE3 has it or the Apple Watch Series 9, 10, and Ultra 2 also have So you're just kind of like, eh?

Because the SE3, it's got an always on display. It has the pinchy pinch and the flippy flip. So it has those gestures. And those were the two things that I really felt were kind of deal breakers for me on an SE versus a series. Well, they have them. Yeah. And to be clear, the thing where a bunch of old watches are also getting all the new features, unbelievably good news.

This is great. It just means you probably most people with recent watches probably don't need the new one. But wait, in terms of the new things on the SE, I want you to rank four features for me in terms of how big a deal they are. The four features are fast charging, the always on display, 5G, and the battery life improvements. I have a ranking in my head of how much I care about each of those things, but I want you to rank them for me. Fast charging, always on display, 5G battery life. Always on display number one.

Okay. What are the other? So we're always on display, number one. 5G at the very bottom. And the other two were... Always on fast charging and battery life. Fast charging is number two. And then battery life is number three.

Because the battery life is still 18 hours. It's pretty good 18 hours, I must say. So I was on a 13-hour flight. I started that flight with maybe about 87% battery. And I got home and it was at 27. So, or not a 13-hour flight, but because of the time change. difference from when I got on to the flight and and it was it was it was it went from 87 to 27 and I think

that's pretty great stuck it on the charger for 10 minutes went back up to 37 um you know it's it's it's fine you're going to have to baby it a bit more uh what happens there is that it's it's just doesn't have as much capacity for for the battery life but because you have fast charging the sting is taken out because the last SAC didn't have fast charging. Usually we had to sit there, wait for your watch to charge, and that took a while. The fast charging is not as fast as on the Series 11. It's, I think, zero to 80 in 45 minutes as opposed to 0 to 80 and 30.

So you do have to wait a bit longer. Yeah. But it's not so bad, really. It's just kind of like now that the fast charging is there, you don't mind the lesser capacity quite as much. Whereas if you don't have the capacity and you don't have fast charging, you're just sitting there watching at that watch,

looking at that watch and going faster. Yes, 100%. And it is the thing, there is a amount of time, and I think it's probably an hour, where if my watch takes more than an hour to charge, there's a strong chance I'm just going to forget about it. This literally happened to me yesterday. My watch was almost dead.

I put it down to charge on my incredibly slow charger that I've complained about on the show before. just flatly forgot about it for 24 hours. Just didn't put it on. And it's like that's the thing that Apple can't have happened, right? It's like these things can't just like die in a drawer somewhere or else it all falls apart. So I agree.

I would rank them the same way. And I actually think seeing what you saw about the fast charging, which is that it's not like, you know, blistering. But it is like put it down while you're making coffee in the morning and it is going to meaningfully charge enough to potentially get you through the rest of the day. Like, that's pretty exciting. That goes a long way for me. It goes a huge way. So it's really a question of whether do you want a bigger screen with smaller bezels and the whole entire health suite of features? Or if you're like, you can keep that.

I'm going to save $150. And the bezels are, I'll just use one of those black backgrounds. So I don't notice them at all. Like, that's sort of like what is the tradeoff there for you? And the Vergecast listeners, I suspect, will be like, I will pay for the little bit of polish, madam. But I think the average person, the vast majority of people, people who have not been totally sold by the smartwatch idea,

they're going to look at the SE3 and go like, whatever, I'll save 120 to 150 depending on the size that you want. And my recommendation, actually, for people who are bothered by bezels, is to go up to the 44 millimeter size. on the SE3 because if you compare the active display area, it's similar to the 42 millimeter Series 11. So if you think about

it that way and you trick yourself into using the black backgrounds a bit more, you're really not going to notice that stuff quite as much. Yeah. Yeah, I've come to think of it as like, I think looking at it now, Apple just got the naming scheme

of the watch wrong. That actually what it is is, is because the SE typically, like when you think about the iPhone SE, it refers to something less, right? It is not the base model. It is a specific thing for a specific group of people. And even the watch SE was that for a minute. It was a very much like Fisher Price,

my first smart watch kind of smart watch. It's not that anymore. So now I think about it as like the SC is the watch, the series is the pro and the ultra is the ultra. And that like, that frames it better for me. And it's like this is the, the SE is the mainstream watch in the way that the iPhone 17 is the mainstream iPhone. phone. And then if you want it to do more sort of nichey stuff, you scale up. And if you want it to do more nichey stuff, you scale up again. But like most people who just like want a smart watch and don't have further questions about how they're going to use it, the SE is going to be enough. Right? The SE is going to be more than enough. Because what are the health features really at this point in time that you are going to be missing out on? Because the SE3, they added the wrist temperature sensor. You are getting the vast majority of the health features on there. So what you're,

you're missing is the EKGs. And I want to be clear, with the EKGs, you're only missing then spot checks for AFIB detection because the irregular heart rhythm notifications, which I call the passive AFIB like checking, so you'll get a notification, be like, we've detected some irregular heart rhythm notification. That's on the SC3 now.

So if you're worried about AFIB, you can get the passive notifications via the SE3. So it's just the spot checking with the EKG, blood oxygen, which was missing on all the watches sold in the U.S. for the last 18 months until recently. So really, I don't, I know there are some people who have reached out to me being like, no, I really care about that feature. And I believe that is true for a certain subsect of people, but for the vast majority of people, you didn't know it was there and you didn't miss it. And the hypertension notifications, which I cannot responsibly talk about, because I have only used it for

one night or like one day. But, you know, I think that could be. a very useful screening tool. But at the same time, if you are on the relatively younger side, if you're not really worried about hypertension at this point in your life, again, it's very possible that you will never, ever interact with that feature. So are you going to miss it? I don't think so. If you're older, that might be a thing that you want to keep a track of. If you have a history, family history of blood pressure, high blood pressure, that might be a thing that is a little bit of peace of mind or maybe not piece of mind. a health anxiety that you want to sign up for, sure. But sleep apnea notifications,

sleep score, which is the new thing, all of that stuff is coming to the SE3. So really the three things that I mentioned are the only health features as of this point in time that you're going to be missing out on. And, you know, the SE doesn't get updated every single year. It could be that for the series 12, they're like, we did it, guys. We figured out non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. I will eat my shoe if that happens in a year. But, you know, they could say that that's the thing. and then you're like, ah, I've got an SC3. But that's not a right now problem. And if you're thinking about upgrading right now,

I just laid it out for you. So, yeah. Right. And, yeah, I would say there is very little evidence to suggest that there is some gigantic groundbreaking thing coming next year. This is a thing everybody says every year. And it's like, just if you want the thing now,

just buy the thing now. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. All right. So before I let you go, I do just kind of want to walk up the line of watches here because you've used them all. you have, I think, a sense of like, what is for who.

And so if we start with the SE3, which I think is like the watch for most people, it is the one you should start by looking at. You mentioned the health features. What else is there to sell me on the series 11? It's $150 more expensive. It goes from 249 to $3.99. What am I getting that I'm paying for? Bigger screen. So if like me, you have garbage eyeballs and, you're...

you would really appreciate the larger space that's there. If you are someone who's really like, I'm going to stay up all night, tossing and turning about vessels, that's the Series 11 as well. It is slightly thinner, like one millimeter thinner. If you're the princess and the pea mattress type, maybe that'll be a thing that you notice.

If you are buying this for your parents and for their health, and you really want to show that you love your parents and that you want them to have the full suite of health detection features and have that a future proof sort of thing. That's that I think the Series 11 is going to be a good choice for you. That's about it. Oh, and if you really want when you're using the messaging feature, if you really want a little keyboard, that is not accommodated at all on the SE3, you're going to need the Series 11 for that. I don't know anyone who is super invested in the key.

I mostly call this up because I had one person ask me online. It's like, it's a keyboard there? And I was like, I'll find out for you, one person. But no, the keyboard is not there on the SE3. So if you really love that keyboard and typing via a keyboard on your Apple Watch, that is a reason to get the Series 11. And honestly, if you are that person, A, God bless and B, I would like to know more about you. I will say the tapbacks, using a watch made me such a religious user of tapbacks.

It's perfect. It is the perfect messaging feature for a smart watch. And I love it very much. Okay. So then we jump to the Ultra, which you're still testing and still reviewing. Yes. Is it as simple a case there as it has been in recent years, which is it's bigger and it is more outdoorsy? Yeah.

There you go. There's satellite connectivity now. Yay. I mean, that's something. I will say in the, in the, we talked about this last week, right, that I think like ultra people are sort of self-selecting. Like you either are one or you're not either aesthetically or because there's a feature. But we've, I'm sure you have to, but I've heard from some people who are like, you don't understand the satellite connectivity thing is huge. Like it makes this thing compelling for a whole new kind of purpose for this niche of people.

For that niche of people, satellite connectivity is big. Is it going to replace the garment? in reach for like the really serious through hikers? No, because the battery life is not, it's just not there for that. But if you are on a weekend hike going off the grid, it's there. It's there and it's helpful for you and you don't need an extra subscription to use it, which is big. So for like the weekend Warriors, I think this is a big, it's a big upgrade that gives them a little more flexibility and what gear they want to carry. If they want to be a little bit more minimalist, they can be. you know having 5G cellular I mean they touted it as this thing which is don't get me wrong if you have the 5G coverage that's great but it's 5G and lTE on the all three watches have it though so it's not that different from the series 11 to the ultra in terms of the coverage for the cellular the main difference is that you know there's a different antenna for for the two higher end watches so in the edge cases where things are dropping out of

little bit. It'll be a little bit better because it has this redesigned antenna, whereas it's just regular 5G and LTE on the SE. The number of people who I think this will truly affect this minuscule. It's just like how often do you download stuff directly onto your watch versus doing it at home where you have Wi-Fi and your phone connected to it? I think for most people, the 5G is not going to be a game changer or life-changing unless you're you're the heaviest of cellular users. Cool. The Ultra is still the Ultra.

I compared my Ultra 2 to my Ultra 3. And again, garbage eyeballs. I was really truly like, I guess it's miniscually smaller, the bezels. Sure. Sure. It's not going to change your life. It's what you're saying. No.

It's mostly for people if you don't have an Ultra yet, it's slightly better. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think, so I have a series eight that is finally kind of starting to show and feel its age. And I'm like, I've been debating, like, am I ready to become an ultra person just for the sheer screen size alone? And I think the answer is no. I think I'm going S.E. this year.

But I want cellular. Like, I am, as much as everyone in our team keeps trying to be like, I'm going to live a smartwatch only life and it's a total disaster. I'm going to live a smart watch only life and it's going to be sick. I can't wait. I would just say get the 44 because you are a tech nerd. So I do think if you were to go for the 40 and you saw those bezels, you would be like, what is this? 40 feels small. I think, let me look at mine.

Mine is, I think, I have the 45 right now. So I think I would probably go 44. Go 44, the bezel situation. Just use the dark watch faces. Trick yourself to not thinking that's there because I have the 40 millimeter ESC. And when I did see the icons, I was like, what is this? Smart Watch for my ants. I can't see anything.

thing. Good Lord, especially because watchOS 26 improves the smart stack so that you have a tiny icon that pops up when there's a relevant suggestion. And the smart stack, so the example I've been using is you open your camera on your phone and a little camera icon's going to pop up and then you pinchy pinch and then you can open up the camera remote because it shows up. And it's very neat. It's very contextual. When that happened on the 40 millimeter and I had just switched from an Ultra to a SE. I was like, what is this icon? Oh, put it right next to my eyeball. That's what it is. But again, terrible eyesight. If you have 20-20 eyesight, you're probably fine. So, yeah, this is a me problem. Yeah, fair enough.

All right, last question. Are you using the flow watch face? Yes, I am. I am. In fact, I like it. I think it's very minimalist. I think it's pretty. I love pink and purple, and it's now pink and purple on my wrist.

Liquid glass. is liquid ass on the phone, in my opinion, but on the watch, it's fine. See, I totally disagree. I think it is like, I think it is more offensive on the watch than almost anywhere because it's like, my problem with the flow watch face,

I'm looking at it right now is like, it's pretty and it's charming, and it is like borderline unreadable. It's like, what I actually want from my watch is just to show me the time all the time. And ironically, when it's off and you're just glancing at it from the side, it just has the black background.

It's very readable and nice and translucent in a cool way. You turn it on. It breaks. I don't like it. Here's my hack, David. You can go edit that watch face and turn off the background so that it's never on. And then you just have the nice always off look. I mean, this is such the story of liquid glass.

It's like if you just turn off like most of its features, it's pretty great. And look, now I've made it incredibly boring, but way more readable. Thanks a lot, Apple. We're doing great here. Yeah. Everybody, everybody's killing it. It's fine. As always, turn off most of the features.

It'll be fine. The OS 26th story. That and if you turn off most of the features, your battery life will improve. Also true. That's a fair point. All right, you've convinced me. All right, V, you have smart glasses to go play with, I'm sure. So many.

I'm just going to be me all day. Smart glasses, V. All right, we've got to take a break anyway. V, thank you. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns.

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For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people?

So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third, like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's dig in. All right, we're back.

Let's go to a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866Vorge11. The email is Vergecast at theverge.com. We love hearing all of your questions. This one is about Apple because that's what we're doing here this week. But it's about a thing Apple hasn't talked all that much about recently, which is AI. It's from Nathan. Here it is.

Hey, friends. This is Nathan. This is probably a not likely take, but with Apple and, the iPhone 17 event, having AI, like, basically not present at all. And I've been wondering this for a bit. Like, is there any chance that Apple just doesn't believe in AI and they're not failing at it? They're just not even really trying and they're just waiting for it to burn out.

I don't know. Seems unlikely, but, and maybe that's optimistic of me. But yep, thanks. Right. So, Nathan, I think the simplest version of the answer to your question is no. I don't think Apple has given up on the idea. that AI is important and cool and exciting and is just waiting for it to burn out.

I sort of love that theory. It's a really fun conspiracy theory that would actually retroactively make a lot of Apple's moves here makes sense. But that is like galaxy brand even one level beyond what I'm capable of. So I admire the take, but I don't think that's what's going on. But I do want to talk about kind of the framework

I've developed for listening to companies talk about AI because it's been really helpful for me and it might be helpful for you too. So if you're a company in the world, right now. You have to talk about AI. You just do, especially if you're a public company who once a quarter has to sit in front of investors and be like, here is our plan for growth over time. That story is just about AI right now. And if you don't talk about AI, somebody will ask you about AI. And if you don't have an answer about AI, they will hammer your stock price. That's just a

thing that happens. It is completely divorced from the actual reality of whether AI is good or useful or valuable or anybody wants it. That's just what's happening. So that is that is one side of the AI story. is important. You have to understand how often these companies are talking to their investors and how many of the things that they say are not about product. They're not about thesis, about the future. They are about stock price. And if you start looking at that way, a lot of the tech industry gets much bleaker and less fun, but I think it starts to make sense. So you have your story for investors. Then I think you have your story for users. And the story for users for Apple is actually really AI heavy and really different from the way lots of other companies talk about AI.

So Apple is in an interesting place in that it's been doing a lot of really interesting, like what it used to call machine learning things for a long time. Apple is actually very clever about the ways that it uses the on-device processing that your devices have to do things for you. Like the thing where you would pull down the notification shade and start to search, and right at the top, it would give you like four or eight suggested apps that it thinks you might want to open. That's contextual, right? It's dependent on what time of day and what you've been doing recently. And it's a guess as to what it thinks you might want to be doing when you open your phone. That's AI.

Like they didn't call that AI because that wasn't the buzzword when this stuff was coming out. But that's AI. Siri, all the stuff Siri has done around your phone. and bad is AI. Like what the rest of the industry is doing is the same ideas. We've been at this a long time. And so I think if you think about the way Apple has done clever processing stuff in photos over time, the thing where you could go and search for a person and find your photos, like that's AI. This isn't like novel groundbreaking stuff that Apple is doing, but it is the stuff. Like that is the technology. What's changed is that now everybody is obsessed with

this idea of like a God-level chatbot that can do everything for you. and we're all talking about agentic. And so where Apple, I think, has gone awry is by trying to catch up on the buzzwords because everybody is obsessed with this one very particular instantiation of AI, which is a bot that I ask a question and it goes and accomplishes things on my behalf.

Everything that I have seen and read and talked to people about suggests that that tech doesn't work for anybody. And there's not a ton of indication that it's going to anytime soon. There are little bits of this agentic stuff that are starting to work, but the idea that I'm just going to have like a magical interface to the world that I just

ask it to, I don't know, fulfill all of my desires. I don't know, buy me groceries. It's like a thing that all these companies want to be able to do. And I just say like, hey, buy me groceries. And it will go, it will figure out what I need. It will figure out what it costs. It will figure out everything. It will meal plan for me. And it will, none of that works. I don't know how, I don't know how to be clearer about that. None of that works. And Apple is out over its skis because it has to talk about that again, because it has to make a case to its investors. that it is growing and it is going to keep growing, but none of it works.

And so Apple is now in this tricky place where I think what we've seen this year, and I think the thing that gives me hope for what Apple is doing with AI, is that a lot of the stuff at WWDC was not like flashy AI-first features, where you're interacting with the AI in order to do something. It's just features. Like it's just software. I think if you look around, there are basically two kinds of AI. There's AI that is.

magical god chatbots and there's AI that is software and we're actually doing ourselves a disservice by talking about them is the same thing because one side doesn't work and might not ever and also might be a total societal disaster and the other is actually going to meaningfully change the way that we interact with our devices and so apple having these on-device models that it can use to help you do stuff inside of your apps we're seeing in ios 26 a lot of devices are starting to do this so that you can scan photos and pull text out out of them. There's this cool app called Stuff that you can write a to-do list on a piece of paper, scan it, and it'll pull it into the app as a digital to-do list. That's AI. That's not

magical Siri chatbot, but it's AI. And so I think if Apple is smart, and I think Apple generally is smart, it's going to do that kind of stuff more going forward. And to whatever extent, it's going to try to do magical god chatbots. It seems like it's preparing to lean, non-companies like Open AI and Anthropic and even Google to do that. The idea that Apple is going to internally build magical, beautiful, perfect Siri seems unlikely. And I think that is where you're going to see Apple start to pull back because the idea of Apple intelligence being like the front and center interface to your phone, I don't think was ever the right idea.

I don't think Apple knows how to do it. Apple is not doing it well so far. And I think you're going to see it start to pull back on that stuff and start pushing on the idea that actually what AI is is like an enabling infrastructure. and tool set to do really cool stuff inside of your devices. Nat is the version of AI that I am much more excited about anyway, so I think that's cool. And in the meantime, there is this messy thing where Apple is going to have to keep telling everybody that it's inventing God inside of your iPhone so that its stock price will go up.

But if you just look at those different things pushing and pulling against each other, which side wins and like who is drinking which Kool-Lade and huffing which farts is like the story in AI right now, because there is what you have. have to say out loud, there is what is possible, there is what is useful, and there is what is interesting. And those are not all the same thing right now. So that's my big take on just how I'm thinking about what Apple and all of these other companies are up to. Are we building God or are we building better software? I'm deeply suspicious of one of those things and really, really excited about the other. And I think Apple is starting to lean toward the side that makes me happy.

Anyway, Nathan, I hope any of that makes any sense. If you have theories about what Apple is up to with AI, or if you've seen cool ways in which it's actually giving developer tools or even implementing some of this AI stuff itself, send them my way. All this new software is packed with this stuff, and I'm super curious to see how people are using it in interesting ways. So hit me up. 866, Verge1, Vergecast to theverge.com. Thanks as always for calling it. All right, that is it for the Vergecast. Thank you to Jake and Allison and V for being here, and thank you, as always for listening. If you want to know more about any of these gadgets, stuff we haven't covered in our reviews, obviously you can read more stuff on the site.

But send us questions. If you have questions about these or any of the gadgets that have come out this year, we have some fun kind of gimmicky stuff we're going to do with all of these gadgets for the rest of the fall. But if you want to know any more, you can always call us on the hotline at 866 Verge 1. You can email Vergecast at the verge.com. Send in all of your questions. We actually have some fun stuff coming up. I think we're going to probably do like a mega hotline episode in the pretty near future.

So keep all your questions coming about all this stuff and anything else. I want to hear all of it. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media. Podcast Network. This show is produced by Travis Larchuk, Brandon Kiefer, and Eric Gomez. We will be back on Friday to talk. I don't know. I have more hot takes that I didn't get to get out last week, and I have a lot more of them. One of them is about the speed at which you should listen to podcasts. Stay tuned for all of that and lots more. We'll see you then. Rock and