Ahead of Friday’s sales, journalists and influencers just published their first hands-on, reviews, and unboxing of the iPhone 16e. This new addition to the iPhone 16 lineup, which is kind of an iPhone SE successor or a Galaxy FE-like device, comes with an A18 chip, a 48MP main camera, Apple’s first Wi-Fi chip with C1, and an iPhone 14-like design. Here’s what everyone is talking about: this $599 phone.
Reviewers agreed that the iPhone 16e is an okay phone with perks but an odd addition to the lineup. For Wired, the best feature available with this device is its battery life, thanks to the new C1 chip:
Considering this is a 6.1-inch iPhone, which historically perform the lowest in battery tests, this is a welcome surprise. With average use over the past week, I struggled to bring the phone below 50 percent. (It usually hovered around 51 or 49 percent by bedtime.) Yes, that means the iPhone 16e has better battery life than the iPhone 16.
Still, the reviewer was annoyed by the lack of MagSafe, an ultrawideband chip, and a single rear camera. The Verge agreed on that while also revealing that one of the most important upgrades of this generation, Apple Intelligence, isn’t as convincing right now:
Case in point: it took me several days to notice that Apple Intelligence wasn’t running on the 16E I was testing, despite having the Apple Intelligence option turned on. I sorted it out — I guess something about the way I set it up prevented the necessary AI models from downloading — but this says a lot about how useful Apple Intelligence is right now. The most interesting stuff is yet to come, and the 16E will be ready for it, which is nice. But I definitely wouldn’t let Apple Intelligence be a deciding factor in picking this phone versus, say, an iPhone 15.
CNET, for example, praises the single 48-megapixel iPhone 16e rear camera, as it feels better than several mediocre cameras available from other vendors:
The iPhone 16E has a single rear camera. I’ve said it before, but I’d rather have one really good camera than the two or three mediocre ones that can often be found on budget phones. The 16E’s main camera takes lovely photos, even when using night mode. It has a 48-megapixel sensor, which has enough resolution for sensor cropping to offer a 2x magnification, and the results are decent. Images look sharp, have a nice dynamic range (good for high-contrast lighting like sunrises/sunsets), and colors are attractively subdued.
USA Today thinks this is an worth upgrade if you’re holding onto an old iPhone for 5+ years:
If you’re still holding onto an iPhone that’s 5 years old or older or thinking about switching from Android, the iPhone 16e is the best entry point into Apple’s ecosystem in years. It offers the core features of the iPhone 16 at a more palatable price and doesn’t feel like a stripped-down version of a flagship model. It’s a “good enough” phone for a decent-ish price.
You can also read iPhone 16e reviews by Gizmodo, Engadget, and PCMag.
iPhone 16e videos
These are some of the video reviews of the iPhone 16e:
