Apple has delivered its latest budget, the $ 599 iPhone 16E, no pomp. There was no big event in person, nor was there one on the internet. No journalists were confused through colleagues’ doors to take photos of the phone. Instead, Managing Director Tim Cook tweeted This new material was on the way, days before Apple announced the handset through a Press Release.
As a result, 16E is not an exciting device. It’s safe. It is an amalgam of previous iPhones, in an attempt to create a reliable product while maintaining costs. The handset is more like the iPhone 13 and 14, both in dimensions and in the completion of the screen at the top. The iPhone 15 Action button is here, but camera 16 control is absent.
In terms of innovation, the most exciting element of the iPhone 16E should be the custom C1 modem. This is not a feeling you hear very often. Models are definitely endlessly. Most consumers only recognize their existence when their own goes to Fritz. But it’s not the technology that makes the element interest. It is the fact that this is the first time Apple has done one.
While 16E is borrowed liberally from Apple’s previous headphones, there are elements of the company’s latest flagship that help justify Apple’s new naming system. The strongest argument in favor of the dissolution of the well -known iPhone SE brand is the inclusion of another element: the A18. This is the same processor located on the normal iPhone 16.
This is important for some reasons. The first is that 16E is $ 200 cheaper than the iPhone 16, which was the cheapest way to get the chip. The second and most important is future protection. Apple will continue to support the chip more than the iPhone 15 chip A16.
In addition to error corrections and security updates, future protection also includes Apple Intelligence, the AI’s hatching platform that the company pulls as the future of the iPhone. Before last week, the existing iPhone 16 line and the most expensive iPhone 15 models were the only iOS devices that can perform the feature.
A “modern” takes a familiar form of format
Don’t confuse things. The star of this show is not a special piece of silicon. It’s the price. In the end, pricing is why analysts have highlighted the iPhone 16E’s ability to help Apple offset lost ground in basic markets such as China and India. In the big plan of things, a decline in $ 200 prices from the iPhone Entry-Level is not huge, but every piece counts, especially in the growing markets where they can fight truly flagship.
But the rejection of the price point is not automatically translated into a flood of new iPhone users. Apple faces extremely fierce competition from domestic manufacturers in China – a phenomenon that is likely to worsen only as commercial tensions increase.
There are other complex factors in markets such as India, where both iPhone 14 and 15 will be around to buy retail channels for a while. The iPhone 14 stopping makes finding a new one much more difficult here in the US, but the iPhone 15 is still officially available here, starting at $ 699.
Elements like these kill the 16E position in the current iPhone series. A $ 100 price difference between and 15 is not insignificant, but is nowhere close to the price of price, some Android manufacturers placed between their medium -level devices and the flagship. The helpful, cheap Android devices were never in a short time. The iPhone 16E is not a budget device, per se, because Apple does not make budgets.
Further cloudy lines is the fact that the design of the 16E iPhone 14-inspired does not feel as if it were overturned by the way the last SE made when it started in 2022. While the 16E still races on the screen and not on the dynamic island (entered at 14 Pro), the total design of the line has not changed radically in recent years. For this reason, the 16E feels like a “modern” iPhone in a way that the last SE didn’t.
This is an advantage for most potential buyers, but there will be undoubtedly those who will mourn the end of the touch identity in favor of the face. The 16E arrival also mentions the end of the “little” iPhone. Some will lose the most compact 4.7 -inch display found in the last SE. The arrival of 16E means you can no longer buy an iPhone with a screen below 6 inches.


The iPhone 15, the iPhone 16e and the iPhone 16 All Sport a 6.1 -inch Super Retina XDR display. The screens are largely the same, but there are some basic differences. The 16E has a notch in place of the dynamic island and overflows with 1,200 nits of brightness compared to the maximum 2,000 nits in other models. The three cell phones share almost identical fingerprints and weights.
All three USB-C (by law) sports doors, although the 16E does not have the Magsafe link on the back. The headset charges through the Qi standard, although its speeds are over 7.5 watts, 15 watts of 15 watts and 16 watts. The 16E exercises the longest life of the three phones battery, at 26 hours up to 22 hours of 16 and 20 hours of 15. The new C1 modem played an important role in the extensive 16E battery life, as it was less hunger than hunger than the oldest silicon and shorter in a way to allow the company to free the company.
Both the iPhone 16 and the 16E Sport the latest A18 chip with a six -core CPU and a 16 -core neuronal engine. The 16E gets a piece of a hit on the four -core GPU graphics side in the five cores of 16. All three phones start from 128GB storage, upgrading to 256GB or 512GB. The 16 and 16E, meanwhile, 8GB of RAM at 15’s 6GB. This little extra ram thrust should help with some of these Apple Intelligence processing devices.
Intelligent design
Apple Intelligence currently has the text, summaries and genetic images created through playground images. Is it the ability to run Apple’s answer on Google Gemini enough to choose 16E over the least smart iPhone 15? The utility of the platform, of course, will be dramatically different among people in its current form. But these are too early.
Apple is committed to AI’s genetic offer and is ready to be the focus of updates for the coming years. I cannot promise any feature that changes life on the horizon, but it is quite likely to kick yourself in one or two years to disappoint technology.
Visual Intelligence – Apple’s answer to Google Lens – is also available in 16E, although the absence of camera control function means you should access it through the action button. More remarkable than the absence of camera control, however, is the presence of a single camera on the back of the iPhone 16E.
Apple returns to this event during the announcement, instead of emphasizing what it calls a “2 in 1” camera system. Through the magic of computational photography, the iPhone 16e is a camera smartphone that “feels” like a system of two cameras. This boils to the 48-megapixel sensor with a “complete telephoto”, which means that the image will give you a closer, 12-megapixel version of the image, without significantly sacrificing the quality of the zoom image.
You will inevitably lose the flexibility that moves from two image sensors to one, even if this image sensor uses fancy technology. For some users, this is only enough to justify the added $ 100 to $ 200 to get the iPhone 15 or 16 instead. This is what the 16E is able to get some nice shots for a sensor headset and definitely marks a big jump over the last iPhone SE.
Comes to the features you need
Each time the price is reduced by $ 100, you sacrifice something. This is how the profit margins work. Choosing the best iPhone “Entry-Level” in the current composition is less simple than it might have been in the past. It comes down to what features you need and what you are willing to do without.
16E is an exercise in the hierarchy of characteristics. If you need the latter all, eat the extra $ 200 and get the normal iPhone 16. If Apple Intelligence is not a priority, your iPhone 15 covers you.
In the end, there is amazingly small daylight between the iPhone 16 and 16E. It prioritizes Apple Intelligence through the inclusion of A18 and 8GB of RAM. The handset makes sacrifices in the name of economic access, such as Magsafe, Dynamic Island, Control Control and double camera system. If you can live without all this, in every way, save yourself $ 200.