Apple delivered its newest price range handset, the $599 iPhone 16e, with out pomp. There was no massive occasion in individual, nor was there one on-line. No journalists scrambled by means of hoards of colleagues to snap images of the telephone. As a substitute, CEO Tim Prepare dinner tweeted out that new {hardware} was on the way in which, days earlier than Apple introduced the handset through a press launch.
Accordingly, the 16e isn’t an thrilling machine. It’s a protected one. It’s an amalgam of earlier iPhones, in a bid to create a product that’s dependable, whereas holding prices down. The handset most intently resembles the iPhone 13 and 14, each in dimensions and the inclusion of the show notch up prime. The iPhone 15’s Motion button is right here, however the 16’s Digital camera Management is absent.
From an innovation standpoint, the iPhone 16e’s most fun component must be its customized C1 modem. That’s not a sentiment you hear too usually. Modems are decidedly unsexy. Most customers solely ever acknowledge their existence when theirs goes on the fritz. However it’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 vital for a few causes. The primary is that the 16e is $200 cheaper than the iPhone 16, which was, so far, the most affordable approach to get the chip. The second and extra vital 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 prevailing iPhone 16 line and the most costly iPhone 15 fashions had been the one iOS gadgets able to working the function.
A “modern” tackle a well-recognized type issue
Don’t get issues tangled, although. The star of this present isn’t a selected piece of silicon. It’s the value. Pricing, in any case, is why analysts have pointed the iPhone 16e’s potential to assist Apple make up for misplaced floor 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, significantly in creating markets the place true flagships can battle.
However dropping the value level doesn’t routinely translate to a deluge of latest iPhone customers. Apple faces extraordinarily stiff competitors from home producers in China — a phenomenon that’s solely more likely to worsen as commerce tensions enhance.
There are different sophisticated elements in markets like India, the place each the iPhone 14 and 15 will likely be round to buy by means of 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 out there right here, beginning at $699.
Components like these obscure the 16e’s place within the present iPhone lineup. A $100 worth distinction between it and the 15 isn’t insignificant, nevertheless it’s nowhere close to the value gulf some Android producers put between their mid-tier and flagship gadgets. Serviceable, low cost Android gadgets have by no means been briefly demand. The iPhone 16e isn’t a price range machine, per se, as a result of Apple doesn’t make price range gadgets.
Additional blurring the traces is the truth that the 16e’s iPhone 14-inspired design doesn’t really feel like throwback in the way in which 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. Because of this, the 16e appears like a “modern” iPhone in a method the final SE didn’t.
That’s a profit for many potential patrons, however there’ll undoubtedly be those that will mourn the tip of Contact ID in favor of Face ID. The 16e’s arrival additionally heralds the tip of the “small” iPhone. Some will miss the extra compact, 4.7-inch show discovered on the final SE. The 16e’s arrival means which you could not buy an iPhone with a display screen underneath 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 just a few 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 similar footprints and weights.
All three sport a USB-C port (by legislation), although the 16e doesn’t function the MagSafe connector on the rear. The handset does charging by means of the Qi normal, 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 vital 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 area 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 successful 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 additional enhance of RAM ought to assist with a few of that on-device Apple Intelligence processing.
Clever design
Apple Intelligence presently options textual content rewrite, summaries, and generative imagery, created by means of Picture Playground. Is the power to run Apple’s reply to Google Gemini sufficient motive to go for the 16e over the much less clever iPhone 15? The platform’s usefulness will, after all, differ 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 come back. I can’t promise any life-changing options on the horizon, nevertheless it’s solely attainable you’ll kick your self in a yr or two for deprioritizing the expertise.
Visible Intelligence — Apple’s reply to Google Lens — can also be out there on the 16e, although the absence of the Digital camera Management function means you’ll should entry it by way of 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 truth through the announcement, as a substitute highlighting what it calls a “2-in-1” digital camera system. Via the magic of computational images, the iPhone 16e is a single-camera smartphone that “feels” like a two-camera system. This boils all the way down to the 48-megapixel sensor with “integrated 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 transferring from two picture sensors to at least one, 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 a substitute. That stated, the 16e is able to getting some good photographs for a single-sensor handset and definitely marks an enormous leap over the past iPhone SE.
It comes all the way down to the options you want
Each time the value drops by $100, you’re sacrificing one thing. That’s how revenue margins work. Selecting one of the best “entry-level” iPhone within the present lineup is much less simple than it might need been prior to now. It comes all the way down to what options you want and what you’re prepared to do with out.
The 16e is an train in function prioritization. If you happen to want the newest every part, eat the additional $200 and get the common iPhone 16. If Apple Intelligence isn’t a precedence, the iPhone 15 has you lined.
Ultimately, there’s surprisingly little daylight between the iPhone 16 and 16e. It prioritizes Apple Intelligence by means of the inclusion of the A18 and 8GB of RAM. The handset makes sacrifices within the identify of affordability, like MagSafe, Dynamic Island, Digital camera Management, and the dual-camera system. If you happen to can dwell with out all these, by all means, save your self the $200.
