Apple may be arriving late to the slim phones party, but it could have a major advantage over Samsung's S25 Edge at launch, potentially solving the biggest challenge for slim phones: battery life.
On Tuesday morning local time in Seoul, South Korea, Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy S25 Edge, its first ultra-thin phone and the top rival for the upcoming iPhone 17 Air (or "Slim"). Earlier that day, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported Apple is developing an AI feature for iOS 19 designed to optimize battery life.
Those two announcements might not sound connected at first, but Apple's AI battery life feature could be a key step toward getting an edge over the Galaxy S25 Edge.
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Apple has had a rocky year getting Apple Intelligence off the ground, plagued by delays and setbacks, especially with a much-needed Siri overhaul.
Furthermore, most of the Apple Intelligence features rolled out so far offer minor tools like AI-generated emojis and image generation in the Notes app, which may be helpful to some but aren't necessarily game-changers.
That may be changing as Apple gears up to launch the ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air (also called the iPhone 17 Slim). On Monday, Gurman reported that Apple is developing a feature for iOS 19 that will use AI to optimize battery life based on individual users' phone usage patterns.
This could be the most useful feature in iOS 19
Using AI to optimize battery life is a refreshingly good idea.
While this feature sounds helpful for any iPhone user, it may be specifically designed for the iPhone 17 Air. Ultra-thin phones may look cool, but they have some inevitable challenges, such as durability and battery size. A thinner chassis simply has less space for a large battery.
As a result, there's a good chance this new era of ultra-thin phones will have a dip in battery life.
Apple will be playing catch-up with the iPhone 17 Air since the Galaxy S25 Edge is launching months ahead.
So, it wouldn't be surprising if Apple is trying to use that time to give the iPhone 17 Air a big advantage by resolving the battery life issue.
Using AI to optimize battery life is also a refreshingly good idea. AI image generators are somewhat gimmicky, in my opinion, but using AI to improve hardware performance has real merits.
Few people were likely complaining about not having enough emojis to choose from, but longer battery life is one of the most critical and common deciding factors when choosing a new phone.
So, if Apple can deliver an effective AI battery optimization tool with iOS 19, it could very well set itself up to make the iPhone 17 Air the most popular ultra-thin phone despite coming out later than Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge.
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