Apple delivered its newest funds handset, the $599 iPhone 16e, with out pomp. There was no large occasion in particular person, nor was there one on-line. No journalists scrambled via hoards of colleagues to snap pictures of the telephone. As a substitute, CEO Tim Cook dinner tweeted out that new {hardware} was on the best way, days earlier than Apple introduced the handset by way of a press release.
Accordingly, the 16e isn’t an thrilling system. It’s a protected one. It’s an amalgam of earlier iPhones in a bid to create a product that’s dependable, whereas retaining prices down. The handset most carefully resembles the iPhone 13 and 14, each in dimensions and the inclusion of the show notch up prime. The iPhone 15’s Action button is right here, however the 16’s Camera Control is absent.
From an innovation standpoint, the iPhone 16e’s most fun aspect must be its customized C1 modem. That’s not a sentiment you hear too usually. Modems are decidedly unsexy. Most shoppers solely ever acknowledge their existence when theirs goes on the fritz. But it surely’s not the expertise that makes the element attention-grabbing. It’s the truth that that is the primary time Apple has made one.
Whereas the 16e borrows liberally from earlier Apple handsets, there are parts of the corporate’s newest flagship that assist justify Apple’s new naming scheme. The strongest argument in favor of ditching the acquainted iPhone SE branding is the inclusion of one other element: the A18. That’s the identical processor discovered on the common iPhone 16.
That is necessary for a few causes. The primary is that the 16e is $200 cheaper than the iPhone 16, which was, to date, the most affordable option to get the chip. The second and extra necessary is future-proofing. Apple will proceed supporting the chip longer than it would the iPhone 15’s A16 chip.
Past bug fixes and safety updates, future-proofing additionally contains Apple Intelligence, the nascent generative AI platform the corporate is banking on as the way forward for iPhone. Earlier than final week, the present iPhone 16 line and the costliest iPhone 15 fashions had been the one iOS gadgets able to operating the characteristic.
A “fashionable” tackle a well-recognized type issue
Don’t get issues tangled, although. The star of this present isn’t a specific piece of silicon. It’s the worth. Pricing, in any case, is why analysts have pointed to the iPhone 16e’s potential to assist Apple make up for lost ground in key markets like China and India. Within the grand scheme of issues, a $200 worth drop from the entry-level iPhone isn’t enormous, however each bit counts, notably in creating markets the place true flagships can wrestle.
However dropping the worth level doesn’t routinely translate to a deluge of recent iPhone customers. Apple faces extraordinarily stiff competitors from home producers in China — a phenomenon that’s solely more likely to worsen as commerce tensions improve.
There are other complicated factors in markets like India, the place each the iPhone 14 and 15 might be round to buy via retail channels for some time. The iPhone 14’s discontinuation makes discovering a brand new one far tougher right here within the U.S., however the iPhone 15 continues to be formally accessible right here, beginning at $699.
Parts like these obscure the 16e’s place within the present iPhone lineup. A $100 worth distinction between it and the 15 is critical, but it surely’s nowhere close to the worth gulf some Android producers put between their mid-tier and flagship gadgets. Serviceable, low cost Android gadgets have by no means been in brief demand. The iPhone 16e isn’t a funds system per se as a result of Apple doesn’t make funds gadgets.
Additional blurring the strains is the truth that the 16e’s iPhone 14-inspired design doesn’t really feel like throwback in the best way the final SE did when it was launched in 2022. Whereas the 16e nonetheless sports activities the show notch slightly than the Dynamic Island (launched on the 14 Professional), the general design of the road hasn’t radically modified over the past couple of years. For that reason, the 16e appears like a “fashionable” iPhone in a method the final SE didn’t.
That’s a profit for many potential consumers, however there’ll undoubtedly be those that will mourn the top of Contact ID in favor of Face ID. The 16e’s arrival additionally heralds the top of the “small” iPhone. Some will miss the more compact, 4.7-inch show discovered on the final SE. The 16e’s arrival means that you may not buy an iPhone with a display beneath 6 inches.
The iPhone 15, iPhone 16e, and iPhone 16 all sport a 6.1-inch Tremendous Retina XDR show. The screens are largely the identical, however there are a number of key variations. The 16e has a notch within the place of the Dynamic Island and tops out at 1,200 nits of brightness in comparison with the utmost 2,000 nits on the opposite fashions. The three handsets share practically equivalent footprints and weights.
All three sport a USB-C port by law, although the 16e doesn’t characteristic the MagSafe connector on the rear. The handset does cost via the Qi customary, although its speeds prime out at 7.5 watts, to the 15’s 15 watts and the 16’s 25 watts. The 16e sports activities the longest said battery lifetime of the three telephones, at 26 hours to the 16’s 22 hours and the 15’s 20 hours. The brand new C1 modem performed an necessary half within the 16e prolonged battery life, being each much less energy starvation than older silicon and smaller in a method that allowed the corporate to liberate house for a bigger battery than the iPhone 16.
Each the iPhone 16 and 16e sport the newest A18 chip with a six-core CPU and 16-core neural engine. The 16e takes a little bit of a success on the graphics processing facet with a four-core GPU to the 16’s 5 cores. All three telephones begin at 128GB of storage, upgradable to each 256GB or 512GB. The 16 and 16e, in the meantime, sport 8GB of RAM to the 15’s 6GB. That little further enhance of RAM ought to assist with a few of that on-device Apple Intelligence processing.
Clever design
Apple Intelligence at the moment options textual content rewrite, summaries, and generative imagery, created through Image Playground. Is the power to run Apple’s reply to Google Gemini sufficient purpose to go for the 16e over the much less clever iPhone 15? The platform’s usefulness will, in fact, fluctuate dramatically between people in its present type. However these are very a lot early days.
Apple is dedicated to its generative AI providing, and it’s set to be the centerpiece of updates for years to return. I can’t promise any life-changing options on the horizon, but it surely’s totally potential you’ll kick your self in a 12 months or two for deprioritizing the expertise.
Visible Intelligence — Apple’s reply to Google Lens — can be accessible on the 16e, although the absence of the Camera Control characteristic means you’ll need to entry it via the Motion Button. Extra notable than the absence of Digital camera Management, nonetheless, is the presence of a single digital camera on the rear of the iPhone 16e.
Apple glossed over this reality through the announcement, as an alternative highlighting what it calls a “2-in-1” digital camera system. By way of the magic of computational images, the iPhone 16e is a single-camera smartphone that “feels” like a two-camera system. This boils right down to the 48-megapixel sensor with “built-in telephoto,” which suggests the picture offers you a more in-depth, 12-megapixel model of the picture, with out majorly sacrificing picture high quality for zoom.
You’ll inevitably lose versatility shifting from two picture sensors to 1, even when stated picture sensor makes use of fancy fusion expertise. For some customers, this alone is sufficient to justify the added $100 to $200 to get the iPhone 15 or 16 as an alternative. That stated, the 16e is able to getting some good pictures for a single-sensor handset and definitely marks a giant leap over the past iPhone SE.
It comes right down to the options you want
Each time the worth drops by $100, you’re sacrificing one thing. That’s how revenue margins work. Selecting the most effective “entry-level” iPhone within the present lineup is much less simple than it may need been prior to now. It comes right down to what options you want and what you’re prepared to do with out.
The 16e is an train in characteristic prioritization. If you happen to want the newest the whole lot, eat the additional $200 and get the common iPhone 16. If Apple Intelligence isn’t a precedence, the iPhone 15 has you coated.
Ultimately, there’s surprisingly little daylight between the iPhone 16 and 16e. It prioritizes Apple Intelligence via the inclusion of the A18 and 8GB of RAM. The handset makes sacrifices within the title of affordability, like MagSafe, Dynamic Island, Digital camera Management, and the dual-camera system. If you happen to can reside with out all these, by all means, save your self the $200.