I've spent the last week with the iPhone 16e trying to answer one important question: what does the E stand for? Is it easy, or extra, or eggs? It's probably not eggs, but I feel like there's almost a secret code to crack in the meaning of that letter, something that's going to make this phone make sense, because honestly, I'm a little confused about it.
It's cheaper than an iPhone 16, but it's not cheap, and it has most of the core iPhone features you'd expect, even Apple Intelligence. But it doesn't have all of them. So who is this phone for, and why does it exist? To try and puzzle it together, let's start with the regular iPhone 16 and kind of work our way backwards to the 16e. Bear with me on this one. I'm recording myself here in Seattle with a bunch of help from the rest of the crew in New York.
On both the 16 and the 16e, you get a modern 48-megapixel camera, but on the 16e, you give up the extra ultra-wide lens. That also means you're going to lose macro photography, and I don't think that matters to most people. Just bear in mind that if you want to take a big wide shot, you're going to have to back up a little bit.
There's also no MagSafe. It still has wireless charging, but the magnets that would allow it to hook into Apple's system of chargers and accessories just aren't there, which is weird because MagSafe debuted in 2020, and every iPhone since then, minus the 2022 iPhone SE, has had MagSafe. If you're the only person in your house and there are a bunch of MagSafe accessories and chargers that everyone else can use and you're the only one who can't, that kind of sucks.
There is an Action button on the 16e, but you give up the Camera Control. That's not such a huge loss, honestly. I find it kind of fiddly, and I mostly end up ignoring it. You also lose the Dynamic Island, and that's the thing that allows you to follow sports scores or keep tabs on your incoming Uber while you're doing other things on your phone. It kind of stinks that it's missing here. I think it's pretty handy, but I guess maybe it's more of a nice-to-have.
Then there's kind of a grab bag of smaller stuff you don't get on the 16e. Like there's no Thread radio, you don't get ultra-wideband, which lets you precisely track down your missing AirPods or an AirTag. You don't get cinematic video, and you only get optical image stabilization instead of the more robust sensor-shift image stabilization. There's no millimeter-wave 5G. That's the 5G that has huge capacity and a limited range, and it's not a big loss, but it can come in handy in like a big stadium event.
There's also an older version of Portrait mode and Photographic Styles. The A18 chip has one less core in the GPU. There's Wi-Fi 6 instead of Wi-Fi 7. That's all getting into the weeds, but the point is there's kind of a long list of stuff you have to take away from the iPhone 16 to get to the 16e.
This is all supposedly in service of price. The iPhone 16 starts at $799, and the 16e is $599. So the real question is, what is that list of extra stuff worth to you?
There's one more complicated factor, and that's C1. That's Apple's first in-house modem, and the iPhone 16e is the very first iPhone to use it, rather than like the Qualcomm chip in the iPhone 16. Apple has reportedly had a lot of trouble building this thing, and in my mind, it's the biggest wild card going into testing this phone. You can get by without MagSafe, but if your wireless connection's flaking out all the time, then that's a non-starter.
Thankfully, I haven't seen any red flags as I've been testing the 16e. I've been using it alongside a regular iPhone 16, both on the Verizon network, and I can't really find any place that one seems better than the other. When the signal's bad, they both stuttered playing back video, and when the signal's good, they both deliver plenty of speed.
I've been using both phones to do a bunch of stuff, like making FaceTime calls from the scary basement of my co-working space and uploading 4K video from the middle of Pike Place Market. I've watched YouTube videos on crowded buses and just run a ton of speed tests. Generally, sometimes the 16e was better, and sometimes the regular 16 did better. My colleagues in New York have been testing the phones on AT&T, and they've had pretty much the same results.
Hi, Elon. Hello, how are you? Oh, great. Looks like you guys are in a quiet spot. Yeah, it's... I mean, it's not as busy as it usually is, but yeah, we're in Times Square. See the stairs over there? Oh, so this is the 16, just the regular 16. How's the reception right now? It's pretty good. There's like just the slightest bit of stutter, like jumping around a little bit, but it seems fine. It's about what I would expect. Got it. You're coming in great, like pretty clear. Okay, let's switch to the 16e then. Call me on that phone. Okay.
We'll do. Okay, Allison's calling. All right, Allison, we're on the 16e. How does it sound? How does it look from your end? It's all right. I mean, there's a little bit of stuttering, jumping, a little crunchy. Same on our end, too, actually. Yeah, just audio stutter. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's bad. I would say it's... I probably would be like, oh, you're in Times Square. It's not going to be perfect. 16 might have been just a little bit better, I think. Yeah, that's from my experience, too. Like, if I just had this phone, I wouldn't really think about it, which I guess is the point, right? Right, yeah. I've seen enough of Times Square, I think. Let's go back to the video. Okay.
Great. This was definitely not scientific, rigorous testing, and I want to keep trying the 16e in a lot of different situations. But the results so far have been good, and it looks like the C1 is not going to be the deal breaker that I was worried it might be.
This is Apple's cheapest iPhone, and it does most of the things that most people will want it to do. It has a very good camera, has a top-notch processor, and great battery life. So why does it feel like kind of a letdown? I've been doing this long enough to know you should not get your hopes up based on rumors, but I think that's what happened here. We thought we were getting an iPhone SE 4 that was going to cost $500 and have all the basic features of an iPhone. Instead, we got a $600 iPhone that doesn't have MagSafe, so it sort of feels like it's missing a standard feature. My iPhone 13 mini has MagSafe. Just why?
It actually makes more sense if you think that the E stands for essential. The 16e feels like Apple's attempt to make an essential iPhone that just has the essential features. And Apple wants us to think that Apple Intelligence is a core part of the iPhone experience. The thing is, Apple Intelligence is just not that useful yet. We made a whole video about it. You can go watch that if you want a recap.
Maybe if the iPhone SE never existed, I'd feel differently about the 16e. It is a good phone that's significantly cheaper than the regular iPhone 16, and if you're looking for an iPhone to buy out of pocket, that $200 probably makes a difference. But I can't help feeling like this phone is a little off the mark. It's just a little too expensive for what it offers, and it comes up a little short for its price. I was hoping for an iPhone 16 Essential, and I think we got an iPhone 16e.
Oh, what? Huh? I mean, it's full of metal parts. Well...
