Other Time for an iPhone Neo?

[benwiggy]

The cheapest iPhone (17e) is the same price as the MacBook Neo! (In the UK: both £599.) If Apple can make a laptop for that price, then surely a basic phone should be a fraction of that?

There's clearly a market for a cheaper iPhone. Loads of people who need a phone that can handle 'apps', given that they have become such currency -- I had to download an app just to park my car today -- but who don't need all the bells and whistles. People who don't spend their life glued to it, but still need something that works.

 

[BotchQue]

Hear, hear! I paid $399 for my "budget" iPhone SE about six years ago, and thought that was too high.

 

[Apple_Robert]

In my opinion, the 17e is the budget phone of the lineup. I don't see that changing.

 

[CMoore515]

e series is the Neo-type iPhone.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

The cheapest iPhone (17e) is the same price as the MacBook Neo! (In the UK: both £599.) If Apple can make a laptop for that price, then surely a basic phone should be a fraction of that?

That's exactly what the SE3 was until they quietly dropped it a year ago. I hope an SE4 is in the works.

 

[benwiggy]

e series is the Neo-type iPhone.

But the 17e costs as much as a laptop!!! So still not really a "budget" phone. That's my point.

 

[mulatosnarf]

E series is it. Won’t see a $400 iPhone again

 

[kitKAC]

That's exactly what the SE3 was until they quietly dropped it a year ago. I hope an SE4 is in the works.

The "e" line replaced the SE line.

 

[curnalpanic]

Yeah, perhaps based on the S10 (Apple watch SoC) in the body of the iPhone 5s. That would be cool.

 

[aaronage]

But the 17e costs as much as a laptop!!! So still not really a "budget" phone. That's my point.

Why should a budget phone cost less than a budget laptop? 🤔

iPhone 17e is likely quite a bit more expensive to produce than a MacBook Neo. It carries the additional cost of a higher quality OLED display, 2 x cameras, a modem, NFC, FaceID, various sensors, Taptic Engine, GNES/GPS hardware etc. Plus, manufacturing an iPhone is inherently more complex/costly due to its size.

There isn’t much room for cost cutting really. Apple can’t lower quality anywhere (e.g. the display) 😅

I do like the idea of applying Neo branding to all entry level products though (iPad -> iPad Neo, Watch SE -> Watch Neo, iPhone 17e -> iPhone Neo etc.)

 

[Basic75]

But the 17e costs as much as a laptop!!! So still not really a "budget" phone. That's my point.

As long as iPhones are being perceived as a desirable product that customers are willing to spend a lot of money on Apple has no incentive to make a lower-cost alternative.

 

[mansplains]

But the 17e costs as much as a laptop!!! So still not really a "budget" phone. That's my point.

It’s entry level, not budget. The former 16e costs less than the previous entry-level MacBook, so was it “budget”? Or how about 17e costing more than Mac mini? Everyone would prefer prices to drop, these comparisons are pointless.

I said the same thing earlier, people seem to confuse entry level with budget. At the end of the day, you can purchase older iPhones. Those who are budget-conscious generally don't care about having the latest and greatest, at least in my experience. "It's not budget!" Who said it was?

 

[throAU]

The cheapest iPhone (17e) is the same price as the MacBook Neo! (In the UK: both £599.) If Apple can make a laptop for that price, then surely a basic phone should be a fraction of that?

There's clearly a market for a cheaper iPhone. Loads of people who need a phone that can handle 'apps', given that they have become such currency -- I had to download an app just to park my car today -- but who don't need all the bells and whistles. People who don't spend their life glued to it, but still need something that works.

Maybe, but you'd be surprised - being larger gives the Neo a bit more flexibility when it comes to tolerances for

• SOC heat/power consumption
  • The iPhone reject parts (broken GPU core, maybe need too many volts and power to run properly to use in an iPhone) are essentially trashed iPhone chips that would otherwise be written off
  • To fit the performance in a small iPhone, the chips that go into the phone need to be the best quality chips that apple get from TSMC. Laptop bound parts not so much. Take a chip that won't run in the phone at the design power, add a hundred millivolts and it will work in a budget laptop.
• Bigger battery
  • No need for as much energy density, battery doesnt' need to be as complex
• Less pixel-dense display
  • Pixel density can be lower and still be retina due to larger viewing distance
• No touch screen
• no faceid
• no rear facing camera (i.e., not the selfie camera) - iPhones have 1 of those at least in addition to the webcam front facer
• No other fancy sensors like accelerometers, altitude sensors, gyroscopes, etc.
• the neo is simple to assemble and repair, which means less cost for apple to support RMAs

All of those things can make the MacBook neo less expensive to make - by a LOT.

Phones with iPhones level performance are actually harder to make than a laptop with similar performance due to size/space/power consumption/heat constraints.

 

[The Game 161]

yes it's called the 17e

 

[Cobold]

But the 17e costs as much as a laptop!!! So still not really a "budget" phone. That's my point.

If Apple can make a laptop for that price, then surely a basic phone should be a fraction of that?

So because a Laptop is bigger it must be more expensive? That's not how it works with electronics.
Downsizing a ton of components like camera, sensors like proximity, gyroscope etc, OLED screen, and so forth into a small phone is mutch mutch more expensove than putting the same into a laptop 5 times the size.

Or why do you think all those cheap Windows Laptops are really clunky and bulky? Right - because they've to be cheap. Downsizing and making stuff slim and sexy is expensive.

 

[klasma]

I hope an SE4 is in the works.

I don’t think so. The EU regulation that became effective last year requiring iOS updates for five years from the discontinuation of a model also disincentivizes Apple from releasing multi-year models like the SE. I suspect this is a reason why they switched to yearly updates with the “e” line, and that might also play into its higher price.

 

[ayephoner]

There is no reason for them to make a cheaper phone. It would just compete with older iphone models. The used phone market is huge. The used laptop market isn't.

 

[ricketysquire]

I just want consistency across the product range. The budget MacBook is the Neo, but the budget iPhone is the e. The budget iPad is just iPad. :face-palm:

 

[ayephoner]

I just want consistency across the product range. The budget MacBook is the Neo, but the budget iPhone is the e. The budget iPad is just iPad. :face-palm:

And they went with year number for OS number, but leave iphones, airpods, and apple watches as model numbers. Macbooks, ipads, and the vision pro don't get any numbers.

Just put a 26 after everything released this year. Use a 27 next year.

 

[Happy_John]

That's exactly what the SE3 was until they quietly dropped it a year ago. I hope an SE4 is in the works.

I very much doubt it. The production lines for those cases and screens will be long gone.

 

[dizmonk]

The cheapest iPhone (17e) is the same price as the MacBook Neo! (In the UK: both £599.) If Apple can make a laptop for that price, then surely a basic phone should be a fraction of that?

There's clearly a market for a cheaper iPhone. Loads of people who need a phone that can handle 'apps', given that they have become such currency -- I had to download an app just to park my car today -- but who don't need all the bells and whistles. People who don't spend their life glued to it, but still need something that works.

Stop it.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

But the 17e costs as much as a laptop!!! So still not really a "budget" phone. That's my point.

Only because they just released a new laptop with the lowest price from Apple ever.

So it was a "budget" phone a month ago but not today, though its price hasn't changed?

 

[HouseLannister]

The cheapest iPhone (17e) is the same price as the MacBook Neo! (In the UK: both £599.) If Apple can make a laptop for that price, then surely a basic phone should be a fraction of that?

The Neo doesn't have a cellular modem, magsafe, etc.

Now if you want the e-series to be renamed Neo for consistency, that's fine. But it's not going to suddenly become a cheaper phone.

 

[Abydos]

interesting question, if you assume that the 'average' phone user's connection to the internet is through their phone then the 'average' user needs the full features of the mid-level phone thus not a iPhone Neo, if the phone is an auxillary device then maybe but the lack of features might effect its market (think of a modern iPhone 3GS for example)

 

[Siliconguy]

There is definitely a market for a cheaper phone, I bought a $129 Motorola last summer. The cheapest phone in the Apple refurb store was $529.

Apple chooses to have no entry in that market and that is their call to make. My call was to save $400. The Motorola came with 128 GB storage, a 120 Hz display, and a battery that can go a week. It also required extensive cleansing of preinstalled crapware, but that only took an hour. I also had to uninstall a bunch of junk from the A16 iPad I bought last fall and would love to uninstall several Mac apps that Apple has made immutable (voice memos, stickies, news, podcasts, reminders, to name five) so it's not just an Android thing.