There is a new iPhone in town but, to everyone’s surprise, it is not an SE. The tech giant had been widely expected last week to unveil the fourth generation of the SE, which was last updated in 2022, but instead it unveiled the iPhone 16e.
Apple is clear that this is not a continuation of the SE line, but a completely different line. What’s the difference? There are many.
The iPhone 16e has a design that is closer to the current iPhone line-up for a start. It ditches the home button and fingerprint reader of the iPhone SE, bringing in the TrueDepth camera that Apple uses for FaceID.
The display is now edge to edge, and the screen size has been increased to 6.1 inches too, indicating that the days of the small screen may be behind us, with a full-screen display that brings back the notch to house the front-facing camera.
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It even supports Apple Intelligence, or at least it will when it launches in the European Union in April, bringing generative AI tools to your smartphone for less.
The iPhone 16e is cheaper but not cheap; it comes in at €729 for the entry level 128GB model. That compares to €979 for the iPhone 16, and a significant leap to €1,239 for the 16 Pro.
To get to that price, Apple has inevitably made a few sacrifices. The chip, for example, is an A18 but it drops one GPU core so there are four instead of five. That will hit benchmarking performance scores, but most people won’t notice that core’s absence.
The iPhone 16e has also made some changes to the camera. While the iPhone 16 has a dual camera and the Pro gets a triple lens, the 16e dumps the second lens in favour of a single wide-angle camera with a 48 megapixel resolution.
You still get a telephoto lens, but with a slight difference. Apple describes it as a two-in-one camera, so you can zoom in with “optical quality”, which means it takes the centre 12 megapixels and crops out the rest. The image quality is good and, for most people, it will suffice. If you want macro photography or spatial photos and videos, you’ll have to go higher up the line – with the accompanying increase in price tag of course.
Unlike the rest of the iPhone 16 line-up, there is no camera control button on the 16e. But while the button is a useful addition, it isn’t essential; more often than not, I still forget about it on the 16 Pro.
Where you might miss it is for quick access to Apple’s Visual Intelligence feature (when it launches in the EU), which allows you to summarise and copy text, translate text from other languages, identify animals, search Google and so on.
It’s a handy feature that could be one of the more popular ones among Apple’s AI suite. But that can be accessed via the action button on the 16e, which replaces the mute switch that the older devices, including the SE, had.
The 16e supports wireless charging, via Qi rather than the faster Qi2, but Apple hasn’t included Magsafe, its magnetic connection for wireless charging and accessories.
It does keep all the satellite features though, including Emergency SOS, Roadside Assistance, Messages and Find My via satellite. These are the features you hope you never need but on the off-chance you do, you are covered even when your phone network isn’t.
And there is a notable first for the iPhone 16e: it is the first phone to feature Apple’s custom-designed C1 modem. This is something that has been years in the making, and Apple is confident the power-efficient modem will bring something new to the table.
[ What is Apple Intelligence, and how do I get it on my smartphone?Opens in new window ]
That has made the 16e more power efficient than similarly sized phones. Overall, the battery life is better in the 16e than the 16, at least in my experience so far. Officially, it has four hours more of video playback than the iPhone 16 and is just one hour shy of the 16 Pro.
In reality, the phone lasted longer than the 16 in standard use, by at least two hours. That is the difference between charging during the work day and not having to carry a powerbank.
Good
If you want a cheaper iPhone and all the “nice to have” extras aren’t a priority, then the iPhone 16e could the one for you. It drops a few of the features you can live without – Dynamic Island, Camera Control, an extra GPU core that you may or may not notice – and gives you a cheaper price in exchange.
Bad
There isn’t a huge difference in price between the 16e and the standard 16 – at €729 for the 128GB model, the 16e is only €250 cheaper. That might limit its appeal somewhat.
No MagSafe is surprising, and the 16e is gambling that the camera sacrifice will pay off.
The rest
The colour options are limited to black and white, although you can get a decent amount of storage in the device – up to 512GB. The 16e also uses USB C instead of lightning, marking another Apple device to cross over to the universal charging standard.
Verdict
As a less expensive entry into the newest iPhone line, the 16e works. But only as long as you feel the sacrifices are worth it.
