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iPhone 16e Long-Term Review: What to Know Before the iPhone 17e Launches

I got this phone last year after using the SE 2nd gen for 5 years prior, and it's been amazing. Battery life is super long, it's fast (though I never really ran into issues with speed on the SE either, haha), and the camera is really nice. I got it primarily for the battery and the camera and storage, and it helped me film all day for a few days during a conference last summer. The battery surprised me at how long that lasted during those long days too. My aunt's family got a bunch of the 16e phones for their family to upgrade from some SEs as well and they've all been happy with them. I don't think most of the "downsides" are things many people care or even know about. I had to explain what MagSafe even was to my aunt and her kids when they asked me about what the 16e had vs the 16. 😛
 
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the 16e also has less Bluetooth range than other iPhones. I bought one and was surprised it kept cutting out audio walking around my 2 bed apartment. Apple support said you can’t expect a range of more than 10 metres and didn’t think it was a fault.

I never had Bluetooth issues with my 12 mini, nor the 13 mini I bought instead of the 16e I returned to the non Apple Store.
 
I've owned this phone for a year now. I traded in my iphone 13 for it last year so I didn't pull full price for it, I can't remember what I paid for it. It's a good phone, it's not exciting in any way, but it has been reliable and does what I need it to do, but the price isn't really "Budget" anymore.

The notch is really dumb though.
 
CarAnalogy said:
MKBHD did the best video on this. This phone is for absolutely no one who is actually shopping for a phone. It's for people who don't care or have no choice what phone they get either because they'll take whatever comes free with the plan or whatever their work bought in bulk.

And that was when it was brand new and being compared to the 16 series. Now that the base 17 exists there's no reason for the 16e to exist.
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I would agree with you now, to a certain extent - the regular 17 is a fantastic phone.

But when I got my 16e, the regular 16 was less of a draw.

No promotion, a wide lens that I don't use and a fiddly camera control. Wasn't worth it for me.

And hey! The 16e also was going to get new Siri! Right...

Anyway, I'm really happy with it and it'll tide me over until the iPhone air 2 fixes the issues with the original, next year (hopefully...).

The 'certain extent' bit above, is if someone just wants a new cheap-ish iPhone, they just use the main and selfie camera, they don't know about promotion and they don't care - or don't know - about all the other modern nice to haves and finally, they want a fast phone that will last them 4-5 years - well the 16e is great.

And it'll still be a great carrier deal when the 17e comes out, because my hypothetical person above will probably be great on a super low GB tariff, so I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see £25 (I'm English) deals for the 16e.

Sounds like a great way to get a fast modern iPhone to me.
 
orangeadrenaline said:
The people hating on the 16e are the geeks on this thread that have PRO models. The target market as pointed out on the 16e page are iPhone 12 and SE owners.
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Users with the standard model phone, like an iPhone 12, would likely get another standard model, like iPhone 16 or iPhone 17. SE owners wanted another low cost SE. Instead, Apple burned them with the 16e and a nice big price hike from $429 to $599. That is no longer a 'budget' phone. What do you have against people that prefer the features of the iPhone Pro? Why are you calling them geeks? The majority of consumers prefer the features of the Pro models. The 16e was an insult when it was intended to replace the SE, but came with a much higher price tag.
 
Hillstones said:
Users with the standard model phone, like an iPhone 12, would likely get another standard model, like iPhone 16 or iPhone 17. SE owners wanted another low cost SE. Instead, Apple burned them with the 16e and a nice big price hike from $429 to $599. That is no longer a 'budget' phone. What do you have against people that prefer the features of the iPhone Pro? Why are you calling them geeks? The majority of consumers prefer the features of the Pro models. The 16e was an insult when it was intended to replace the SE, but came with a much higher price tag.
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Really they should have kept the LCD screen like the XR or 11 design for $499, Single camera and updated internals
 
Lack of UWB chip was the “bye Felicia” for me.
Watch them add that stupid smart island BS while leaving out UWB on the 17e 😂
 
CarAnalogy said:
I wouldn't go so far as to say they care about lower income people. I think Cook is just covering all possible market prices by the book as he approaches all other business aspects. It's not about the people or the product, just the business.
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I understand what you mean, but both facts cannot be dissociated.

turbineseaplane said:
They don't care about lower income people beyond the ability to sell them older and/or gimped products, especially ones where all the R&D has been well covered and it's just pure sweet gravy.

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It doesn’t work like that. Apple customers are not captive. If they sold selling gimped products, they wouldn’t sell. Maybe you don’t personally like those products (I don’t like the iPhone 16e either), but it seems like Apple knows lower-income customers and their preferences better.
 
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AlexESP said:
That $429 budget iPhone was also introduced under Tim Cook.
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True, but things now changed with the 16e. Using the most charitable calculation, taking the $399 iPhone SE from 2016, inflation-adjusted would still be below $550 today. And the SE 3 would be $485 inflation-adjusted today. Assuming 2% inflation, it will take ten years to catch up on that difference.
 
I completely disagree with the opinions that it’s a bad phone and that nobody is buying it. Sure, if we compare it to the iPhone 17, it doesn’t look great, but at the time of its release a year ago, it really wasn’t a bad choice at all… I got it for $539 for my child. I was considering the iPhone 15 since it was in a similar price range, BUT:
  1. The iPhone 16e, based on the benchmarks I checked, has about 28% better CPU performance and 4% better GPU performance. So it’s better suited for gaming for a child (mainly CPU-heavy games, since the GPU improvement is marginal, although the 16e does have hardware-accelerated ray tracing).
  2. The Action Button and the ability to program it to open a favorite app.
  3. A muuuuch better battery — it outperforms many other, more expensive iPhones in this regard.
  4. 8 GB vs 6 GB of RAM, which also helps in games and should provide smoother performance for future iOS versions.
  5. It supports the noise and wind reduction features introduced in iPhones starting from the 16 series.
Overall, compared to the iPhone 15 (again, at the time of release it was a real competitor), the 16e only loses out in one area: it has one fewer camera. If photography isn’t a priority, you’re really not losing much and actually gaining quite a lot. Even the lack of MagSafe isn’t a big deal — I bought a MagSafe-compatible case, and the phone charges just fine on MagSafe chargers.

That said, I’ll honestly admit that once the 17e comes out, it’ll be harder to defend this model — especially if the price of the 17 drops after the 18 is released. The 17e will basically just be a CPU update plus the addition of MagSafe, which you can effectively restore with the case I mentioned. In that scenario, I’d aim for a discounted 17 rather than go for the 17e. But at launch, the 16e was perfectly fine — especially for $539.
 
"tired-looking notch"

Meanwhile the MacBooks are still using the same style of notch and that's not tired looking per the Apple fans?

I guess it's not possible to hear true critics of a design until Apple moves on to a different one.
 
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orangeadrenaline said:
The people hating on the 16e are the geeks on this thread that have PRO models. The target market as pointed out on the 16e page are iPhone 12 and SE owners.
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No one is hating on the 16e, people are just pointing out the differences, you choose the phone that is better for your use case, as is your money after all.
If you feel that 16e is adequate, then go for it, if you think a different model is better suited, the get that one.
 
AlexESP said:
… Now they do care about lower income people, much more.
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If they did care, they would not have removed the option for users to install a 3rd party internal SSD. They are cheaper and sustain the life of the Mac … significant for lower income people.
 
Despite the suggestion that no one should be buying the 'e' phones, I think my wife's next phone will end up being a 17e.

She currently has a base iPhone 13, and aside from the battery life and speed (which isn't too bad to be fair), she has no use case for the additional features that the newer non-e phones have. She only takes photos with the primary camera, she doesn't notice the difference between the 60hz display she has a the 120hz in my 16pro, and has no problem with the notch. The 17e will likely be a completely fine upgrade for her.

I suspect she is closer to an average customer than most of us posting here.
 
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