When most people buy a new phone, they only make a few choices. Almost everyone is locked into one operating system or the other, iOS or Android, so that limits their options. The second element that most people consider is price. While there are plenty of people who buy a phone for its camera, the majority of people buy a phone for its basic features, such as screen size, storage, and battery life. 
For a while, the iPhone SE was Apple’s entry-level iPhone model. It was aspirational: it was the low-priced iPhone that people bought to get into the ecosystem, or because they didn’t want to spend more. It lacked the marquee features of other iPhone models, the display was smaller, and the camera was almost an afterthought, but it still ran iOS and let people use familiar apps and communicate using iMessage. 
But in recent years, the iPhone SE became outdated, and was the poor cousin of the Apple product line. It was the only iPhone with touch ID; Face ID had come to all other iPhones in 2017, with the iPhone X and XS. The screen was substantially smaller than other iPhones, in part because of the smaller body, but also because of the amount of space taken up by the home button. In addition, it wasn’t released on a regular schedule. iPhone SE models were released in 2016, 2020, and 2022, so unless you bought one in a release year, your phone was quickly out of date.
The new iPhone 16e marks the first time that Apple has added a third option to its main iPhone product line. The prices for the base models in the smaller size displays (6.1“ or 6.3”) of the iPhone 16e, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro, are $599, $799, and $999. In a standard pricing strategy of good, better, best, each step up costs an additional $200.
(The iPhone 16e, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro.)
It’s tempting to compare the new iPhone 16E to the iPhone SE, considering it a successor to that budget phone. But it’s more realistic to think of the iPhone 6e as a less expensive iPhone 16. It’s the iPhone for people who don’t want the more advanced features and higher prices of the other models, or for people just getting into the iPhone ecosystem. While this is the cheapest iPhone available, it doesn’t feel cheap; unlike the iPhone SE, which always felt like an outlier.
What surprised me most about the iPhone 16e – I’ve been using an iPhone 16 Pro Max since September– is how little I missed from the premium model. The iPhone 16e has a lovely OLED display, Face ID, and a full-size screen, unlike the iPhone SE, which had wasted space at the top and the bottom.
This iPhone is snappy and responsive – it uses the same processor as the iPhone 16 – and it’s hard to find anything I do in my daily use of an iPhone to tax the processor. Videos look just as good on both iPhones and spatial audio sounds similar between the two. Since the iPhone 16e has only four GPU cores, compared to five for the iPhone 16 and six for the iPhone 16 Pro, it might not play high-intensity video games as well as other models, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any other tasks it can’t perform.
With Apple’s latest chip, 8 GB RAM, and 128 GB storage, this phone can run the new Apple Intelligence features, and the combination of the processor, RAM, and storage future-proof this model for several years. And the advertised battery life of up to 26 hours of video playback – four hours more than the iPhone 16 – is a real plus for a phone this size.
The main difference across the iPhone product line is the cameras.The iPhone 16e has a single camera, the iPhone 16 has two cameras, and the iPhone 16 Pro has three cameras. The iPhone 16e camera is quite competent, with a 48-megapixel main camera that can shoot at a 2X optical zoom, but if the quality of the camera is important to you, then don’t choose this model. You have far more options with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, though the iPhone 16e can shoot video in 4K Dolby Vision at up to 60 fps.
One feature missing from the iPhone 16e is MagSafe, which both allows you to charge more efficiently using an inductive charger, and us MagSafe accessories. However, I purchased a third-party case with magnets, and this snaps onto my MagSafe charger and allows me to connect MagSafe accessories. While this model charges more slowly on inductive chargers than other iPhones, it’s fine for charging overnight, and it has fast charging via USB-C, with up to 50% charge in 30 minutes.
Like the other iPhone 16 models, this phone has the customizable Action button, but it lacks the Dynamic Island at the top of the screen, something that many people won’t notice. It doesn’t have the new Camera Control button. It lacks the 120 Hz ProMotion and always-on display of the Pro models, but, again, most people won’t notice these unless they’re downgrading from a recent Pro iPhone.
The iPhone 16e is for people who don’t upgrade their iPhones often. It’s not surprising that, on the device’s product page, Apple compares this model to iPhone 11, 12, and SE models, showing that the iPhone 16e has from 50–100% more battery life and 90% faster CPU performance than these two- to five-year-old iPhones.
If you know enough about the features of the iPhone 16e and how they compare to the more expensive iPhone 16 models, then this phone probably isn’t for you. If, however, you’re upgrading from a several-years-old iPhone or switching from Android, and don’t want to pay $800 or more for a new phone, then this is the phone you should get. With Apple’s current 0% financing in the US and some other countries, this phone will run you $25 a month for two years; and a few more bucks for AppleCare+ to protect it.
This is the first iPhone that really feels like the commodity that the smartphone has become. I found it difficult to identify any key features that would make this a bad choice for most users. It’s certainly not the best iPhone, but it’s pretty darn good.
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