iPhone 16e

I don't know if the iPhone 16e is the most controversial iPhone launch ever. After all, we've "survived" the obliteration of the headphone jack and the recent transition to eSIM, but all signs are beginning to point towards the market and consumers expecting something a little different from this spiritual successor to the otherwise popular SE series.

The question is whether the price increase, the lack of features, and the intersection between concrete expectations and the actual product lead us to a smartphone that is impossible to recommend, or if it is only impossible to recommend for some.

Okay, so what is this really, it's the display dimensions of an iPhone 14, the shell of an iPhone 16, the USB-C port, the IP68 certification, and even the A18 chip of recent iPhones and a singular 48 megapixel Fusion 26 millimetre camera. And here, just scratching the surface, we come to the two key sacrifices that are as incomprehensible as they are insulting.

The iPhone 16e does not have MagSafe. It has Qi-based wireless charging, but not the magnets needed to ensure the phone works with the ocean of accessories that Apple and a host of other manufacturers have built over the last several years. It's hard to contain how much of a farce this is, when the whole idea of a cheaper iPhone was that even if you paid less, you got access to the so-called "walled garden", to the ecosystem. Now Apple is apparently starting to further segment this "garden", because when MagSafe is not universal among iPhones, where do we draw the line? Incidentally, Ultra Wideband (UWB) is also missing, which means you can't use the nifty little compass to locate lost AirTags or Apple devices like AirPods.

Both of these sacrifices represent the absolute low point of the 16e, because I believe they are two features you just can't do without, as they are part of this ecosystem benefit that is so essential to recommending Apple products to anyone - they are small pieces of a bigger puzzle, and the more pieces you have, the stronger the picture becomes. And who do you recommend an iPhone 16e to when you can get an iPhone 15 from last year with MagSafe, UWB, and an extra camera lens?

It would have to be Apple Intelligence, and it's worth mentioning that while this suite may not be that compelling right now, it could be in the future, and iPhone 15 owners are excluded. Comparing across generations also gets a bit tiring, and the bottom line is that the iPhone 16e could have easily sacrificed elsewhere to offer MagSafe and UWB.

That doesn't sound very good, does it? Well, that's not the whole story. It uses the new A18 chip, which means you get more horsepower than you'll ever use, you get a nice 2532x1170 OLED display with HDR, True Tone, and a contrast of 2,000,0000:1. Plus, this iPhone has the best battery life we've ever tested - on any smartphone ever. It can really go for several days.

The camera is odd, and we're missing the ultra-wide lens, but that said, this 48 megapixel 26mm f/1.6 lens can produce pretty excellent images, and 4K Dolby Vision video at 60fps is also extremely stable and sharp. You also get access to Apple's Photonic Engine, Deep Fusion, and other systems that produce pretty cool images. Yes, you lack the versatility of multiple lenses, but it's pretty competitive and beats a lot of similarly priced smartphones over on the Android side.

The iPhone 16e isn't a train wreck, but it seems like Apple was on the verge of unveiling a budget phone that could have really blown people away, but in the end it just ended up being a bit too expensive and the wrong things have been cut. I don't think the average consumer will miss UWB or the missing core of the A18 chip, but the 5500 is not a budget phone.