What a Phone Taught Me About My Needs

These past couple of days, the urge to replace my iPhone Air with a small-screen phone as my main device has been exceptionally strong.

In September 2025, drawn by the iPhone Air’s exquisite industrial design, I weighed my options and chose the Air over the iPhone 17. Looking back now, that decision wasn’t just because the Air was beautiful and lightweight. More importantly, I had an unanswered question: Do I truly prefer a small screen, or thinness and lightness? The Air happened to introduce a variable that had never existed before: it was a large-screen phone that achieved extreme thinness and lightness. So, I decided to test this question myself, rather than relying on imagination or others’ experiences.

Before the iPhone Air, I had actually tried large-screen phones many times. In 2020, I bought a Redmi K30 Pro and sold it after two months; in 2023, I bought a vivo X Note and kept it for three months; later that year, I got a vivo X90S, which I held onto for eight months. While each phone had its merits, they all ended up with the same outcome. So, when the Air appeared, I began to wonder if what I truly disliked was the large screen, or the bulkiness. If a phone was thin and light enough, would I change my preference?

A year later, that experiment now has an answer.

The Air’s thin and light body truly delighted me; every time I picked it up, it put me in a good mood, and that hasn’t changed to this day. But feelings don’t lie. Throughout this year, its wide body has consistently accompanied my daily use. Especially when walking outside, many operations that could originally be done with one hand now require two. While it’s much more comfortable than those bulky large-screen phones of the past, this change in operating method persists and hasn’t disappeared due to its lightness.

What truly made me realize this was actually the other phone at home, an iPhone 13 mini. When I’m at home with no restrictions, I can grab any phone I want, and many times I would still subconsciously pick up the 13 mini instead of the Air. This behavior is more authentic than any subjective evaluation, because in that scenario, there’s no influence from battery life, camera, or work needs; picking up a phone is almost always my most natural choice. I later realized that the Air’s thinness provides a sense of pleasure, while the small screen offers the one-handed usability I rely on daily. Both are important, but they aren’t on the same level in terms of my needs.

This reminded me of my past experience choosing an iPad. I once owned two iPad Pros, but eventually sold them both, keeping only the iPad mini. This might seem like a confusing choice; the Pro clearly has a better screen, stronger performance, and superior speakers. However, in my usage scenario, a tool’s value first comes from its high utilization rate, from people being willing to use it consistently. If its size or weight makes you increasingly reluctant to pick it up, then its configuration advantages are difficult to truly translate into practical value. Looking back now, the same principle applies to phones: the iPhone Air’s thinness is an advantage, but the operational cost imposed by its size is a fundamental aspect of the user experience. When there’s persistent friction in the basic experience, no amount of extra features can fully compensate.

So, the biggest takeaway from this year isn’t actually the iPhone Air itself, but rather that I can finally prioritize my needs. Previously, I always felt I liked both small screens and thinness, but after a year of use, I can now state very clearly: my true need is a small screen, and thinness comes second. This reordering might seem like just a change in the position of two words, but it alters how I will choose phones in the future.

Yesterday, I stood for a long time in front of the shelves at a used electronics store called SofMap. I looked from the iPhone 13 mini to the iPhone 15 Pro, and then from the 15 Pro to the 17 Pro. The 13 mini is the product I’m most familiar with and that best fits my size preference; the 15 Pro is the lightest Pro generation in recent years, with a 70.6mm body width, 187g weight, 3x telephoto lens, and titanium frame, all of which align with my preferences; the 17 Pro, on the other hand, boasts a newer platform and a longer lifecycle. Previously, standing here, I would mostly hesitate between different products; this time, I wasn’t nearly as conflicted, because this year with the Air had already helped me accomplish the most important thing: it taught me that when choosing a phone in the future, size should be prioritized above all other factors.

Later, I also pondered an interesting question. If I could travel back a year and tell my past self about this year’s usage experience, I would most likely not buy the Air again, but would instead directly choose the iPhone 17. This is because the Air’s biggest appeal to me last year wasn’t just its thinness, but its ability to answer that previously unanswered question. Once the experimental conclusion is known, its exploratory value ceases to exist.

However, such a hypothetical is ultimately just a parallel universe. In the real world, no one can skip the experiment and directly get the answer. If I had been told the final conclusion directly last year, I certainly could have avoided some detours, but that conclusion would have always been something someone else told me, not something I had truly verified myself. It was this year of real-world experience that allowed me to systematically rule out all other possibilities: a bulky large screen wasn’t the answer, an ultra-large screen wasn’t the answer, a regular large screen wasn’t the answer, and even an extremely thin and light large screen wasn’t the answer. Once all variables were eliminated, what remained was my own true need.

There’s a Chinese analogy: You can’t just start with the sixth bun. Imagine someone says the sixth bun made them full. That’s misleading—they only became full because they had already eaten the first five.

So, looking back now, I don’t regret buying the Air.

It didn’t become the phone I ultimately wanted to keep, but it taught me what kind of phone I should keep in the future, allowing me to truly understand my own needs. And the value of that understanding far exceeds that of a phone itself.