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In 2017, Apples then-newest iPhone foreshadowed the most significant design shift in the devices history. With the iPhone Xs debut, Apples smartphone ditched its iconic home button so it could transition to an all-screen form factora design that was ultimately destined for every iPhone model. That transition was finally completed in 2025 when Apple scuttled the last iPhone with a home button, the iPhone SE, and replaced it with the all-screen iPhone 16e, finally bringing all-screen uniformity across the entire iPhone lineup that the iPhone X ushered in eight years earlier. When I look at Apples newly unveiled iPhone Air, I cant help but think it signals the beginning of the end for the single-screen iPhone. The Airs thinness is impressive, but the real story is what it foreshadows: a future where every iPhone comes with at least two screens. The iPhone Air feels like half a phone The iPhone Air Apple introduced today makes me feel like Im looking at just half of an iPhone. Thats a compliment. At just 5.6 millimeters thick at its thinnest point, the iPhone Air is the slimmest iPhone Apple has ever made. Its an engineering marvelno doubt about that. That Apple could fit storage, RAM, circuit boards, and such a large battery inside such a small form factor is indeed awe-dropping, as Apples event today was dubbed. Still, it feels incomplete. Like it should have something else attached to it. Say, oh, I dont know, another iPhone Air, bolted onto its side by a hinge, so when you open it up, you get an iPhone with a massive display. Of course, thats exactly what I think Apple had in mind when designing the Air. Not a thin phone for its own sake, but a trial run of a device that had less of the consumer in mind and more of Apples future iPhonesthe foldable ones with two screens. At 5.6 millimeters thin, Apples engineers have proved they can make a ridiculously thin iPhonewhich means they could fuse two of the ridiculously thin iPhones together to create a compelling foldable iPhone that, even when folded shut, is still not much thicker than the iPhone 17 Pro of today. It’s why I can’t help but feel the Air is clearly an intermediary step between the mono-screen iPhone weve known for nearly 20 years and the foldable iPhones that will define the next 20 yearsa future where each and every iPhone family member eventually has two screens: one on the front and a larger one inside. But that multiscreen device that Apple is ultimately transitioning the iPhone to become wont be ready until next year. And it feels like Apple thought that, in the meantime, if it could release half of its future devices to the public now to juice sales and make the single-screen iPhone look less 2010s in 2025, then thats what it should do. And now it has. The iPhone Air is a great stopgap until we get to the real next-generation iPhone next yearthe first one with two screens, which I feel, like the iPhone Xs all-screen design back in 2017, will ultimately become the norm for every iPhone over the next decade. More consumers are ditching mono-screen phones for dual-screen foldables And Apples transition from the nearly two-decade-old single-screen bar or slab phone design to a dual-screen foldable cant come soon enough. Samsung has been making foldables since 2019. I used to make fun of them until I tried a Galaxy Z Fold5 a few years ago and had a sort of nostalgic epiphany. When I held the companys glorious dual-screen foldable in my hand, I had flashbacks to the thoughts I had the first time I held an original iPhone back in 2007: This is the phone of the future. Samsungs new Galaxy Z Fold7 (and Galaxy Z Flip7) are even better. Googles new Pixel 10 Pro Fold also makes me think the future of smartphones is dual-screen foldables. And the numbers are showing that, increasingly, consumers do, too. A report from Grand View Research last year found that interest in foldables has skyrocketed since the first ones emerged from Asia in 2018. By 2023, when foldables began catching on worldwide, they had an annual market cap of around $27.79 billion. In 2024, that number jumped to $34.7 billion. By 2030just five years from nowthe market cap of foldable phones is expected to nearly triple, to over $74 billion per year. As for why, foldable phones with dual screens are simply more versatile. These smartphones can switch between a compact form and a tablet-sized display, providing users with more screen space for multitasking, gaming, and media consumption without compromising portability, Grand View Research noted in its report. That portability is compromised even less when the unfolded phone is made super thinsomething Apple has now shown it can achieve with the launch of the iPhone Air. Which is why the iPhone Air feels less like a finished product and more like a preview of a radical design shift still to come. In that future, all iPhones could be dual-screen foldables, and the single-screen model may one day join the home-button iPhone as a relic of the past. The Air Apple announced today is a step toward that future, not the destination itself.
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E-Commerce
Fast Companys creative director, Mike Schnaidt, breaks down the Manuka Slab typeface and explains why it was chosen for the summer issue of the print magazine. If you’re looking for a bold serif with personality, Manuka Slab might be just the font you need.
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E-Commerce
Nepals prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, resigned on Tuesday after youth-led protests sparked by a government ban on social media in the Himalayan country left nearly two dozen people dead and hundreds injured, CNN reported. That ban has since been lifted, per Reuters. Protesters reportedly set government buildings, police stations, and the houses of politicians on fire Tuesday, a day after police fired tear gas at and used rubber bullets on protesters storming parliament in the capital, Kathmandu, per Reuters. The protests, led by Nepal’s Generation Z, aged 13 to 28, come after the government blocked Facebook, X, and YouTube, saying the social media platforms failed to register and comply with necessary oversight. What started as an outcry against a social media ban has grown violent and expanded into widespread criticism of the nation’s political elite and poor economic prospects for its citizensespecially young people, who are frustrated by their lack of opportunity, according to the Associated Press. Unemployment among Nepal’s youth is staggeringly high at 19%, according to the International Labor Organisation (ILO), with thousands estimated to be leaving daily to seek work elsewhere. Last Thursday, Nepals minister for communication and information, Prithvi Subba Gurung, said about two dozen social media platforms were repeatedly given notices to officially register their companies. TikTok, Viber, and three others were allowed to continue operating because they had registered. Critics argue it was an attempt at censorship. On X, where Nepal is trending, one user wrote: “Nepal protest is primarily against corruption and misgovernance. Social media ban was just the tipping point.” Others posted video of Nepal’s parliament burning and Gen Z protesters in the streets. The clashes are the most deadly Nepal has seen in decades, and come after a long period of turbulence marked by a dozen different governments once it became a republic, following the end of the monarchy in 2008 and a decade-long civil war.
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