That is the dumbest side profile I have ever seen. The camera bump and camera together are thicker than the rest of this thing. By its design it now demands a massive case or just won't ever sit even reasonably flat on a table. Ridiculous.
It won't be completely stable, when used without a case. The geometry is such that on the side of the lens it's the lens that is touching the surface where you put it, not the bar-shaped bump. Meaning, it won't sit on the long edge of the bar.
Yes, see for example the hands-on video of The Verge.
You can also tell from the side profile images on the Apple website. Drawing a straight line from the lens to the bottom edge of the phone doesn't cross or touch the edge of the "plateau", by a good bit.
I've got an iPhone XR with a chunky (highly protective) Speck Presidio case that's comfortably thicker than the camera protrusion and therefore lays 100% flat.
Gotta say it would drive me nuts to have a phone that didn't lay flat and couldn't therefore be put down safely on the edge of the sink etc.
It is really freaking obnoxious, I can attest to that. I think they either don't want to be mistaken for a Pixel for vanity reasons, or it's easier to do the magic camera switching if the 3 cameras are closer together. But for whatever reason, I hate not having the cameras in a row with a plateau that is symmetrical.
Website says "Up to 27 hours video playback", which is apparently 7–8 hours more than the iPhones 13–15 and 4–5 more than the 13–15 Pro. Also normally their battery estimates are conservative.
I don't want/need the whole thing to be flat but I do prefer it to be stable. For instance if the plateau were a bit thicker so that the camera lens was flush with the surface (even just an extra bar sort of inside the plateau) it would mean that when I put it down it would never rock back and forth when I'm tapping at it on a table.
The problem with the one-sided camera bump is that the phone is unstable. It wobbles when you touch it, making using it while lying “flat” on the table incredibly annoying.
Right now I have to lean my phone on my purse to get a nice reading angle, because the lens block is lopsided and my phone wobbles around otherwise. The Air bump is still a better angle than flat, and I bet the lens doesn’t keep it from resting stably on the lower edge of the chin (?) rather than the lens edge.
