iPhone 16e

Yawn.

Still riding the the coattails on the iPhone without introducing any revolutionary electronic equipment that might bolster their fortunes.

Cook should retire and put someone in charge with more vision than he has.

If the C1 is so good, why is it only available in this "entry-level" version?

@someone - they're introducing the new chip in a device that's not going to sell as many copies before introducing it in the new generation of phones this fall. Apple has taken this approach numerous times before, with both new chips and new process nodes. It lets them iron out production kinks in the new technology on a lower volume, lower stakes product.

The earliest version of this that I know of is 2012, when Apple tested a new process node with a die shrink of the A5 before using it with the A6 in that year's iphones. See anandtech's article "The iPad 2,4 Review: 32nm Brings Better Battery Life."

Also see last year when the M4 debuted in an ipad instead of in a mac.

If I were in the market for a new phone I'd be waiting a good while for ample real-world reports about any device with a first-ever cellular modem from any manufacturer. It's such a critical and (as I understand it) complex component that I wouldn't be comfortable getting such a device without some supporting reliability information.

@NaOH, agreed. The only good thing is the screen size - oh wait, it's the same as the 16. I think I'll wait until my iPhone 12 Mini dies before I buy a larger screen.

@Glaurung, good points. But how can you deny this is a "cash grab" from Apple? Hopefully not because it can have pole Intelligence... I mean seriously, it's still in beta!

@someone, I agree also. Hopefully nobody here purchased a soon-to-be-bricked-and-garbage AI Pin from Humane last year. at least (I think) we can trust that this C1 iPhone will work, have it kinks fixed while under Apple Care for free, and that (until the C2 comes out) work because Apple is too big to fail.

@Dave

I don't know why you think I'm defending Apple. Yes, this is a cash grab, raising the minimum price to buy an Iphone by $200. All to feed the rapacious greed of their shareholders.

Kinks in the new chip: I was speaking of production kinks, as in low yield of working chips. That's what introducing a new chip in a relatively minor product six months ahead of it launching in the flagships is about. Completely different from what you and NaOH are talking of, which is bugs in the chip itself. Launching a faulty/buggy modem, even in a low end iphone that won't sell that many units, would be incredibly stupid of Apple. They think their new cellular modems are ready for prime time or they wouldn't be launching them at all. You can't fix bad hardware with software updates, after all. Apple's software quality keeps going down and down, but their hardware, at least so far, has not suffered the same decline.

Oof, raising the price of the most affordable iPhone by 40% is certainly something. That being said, this seems closer in spirit to the first-generation SE than its two successors. I'll have to wait for reviews to confirm, but it appears to have fewer compromises compared to its contemporary counterparts, especially in the camera.

Honestly, if something were to happen to my 13 mini and I had to buy a new phone, I would be sorely tempted by this one. The disadvantages over the base 16 don’t really matter to me, and the 16 Pro would have to work hard to justify its price. But nothing happened yet, and it seems like I'll easily get another year or maybe two out of it before something interests me.

iPhone 16e: No ultra-wide band, no photographic styles, no cinematic style, no magsafe, no dynamic island and display with less peak brightness equal to iPhone 14 display and price is $599. It' so confusing/different with 16 that it shouldn't include the "16". No wonder in Asia Apple must throw 30% discounts through 3rd parties as mid-range $200 phones are better than 16e.
And September with this line-up: iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Plus, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16e.

If 256GB was +$50 I might have gotten that. Now I will just get the base version. And if faceid really sucks, I will pass it to mother and fuck off to Android with fingerprint reader. And 256GB base. And real browser with UBO.

One take that I haven't read yet... do people like the Dynamic Island? I suppose it's worth trying a phone without it for a while to see, but currently I feel it adds quite a few unneeded distractions and uses up more height than the notch. Are we marketing blocked because the notch never actually received a glitzy name of its own?

"do people like the Dynamic Island?"

Having had the Dynamic Island for the 15 and 16 cycle: kinda meh. Sometimes apps use it in a cool way, but it hasn't been a big value-add or anything. I would say that it's kinda the opposite of distractions, so little useful happens in the dynamic island that I would probably not notice if it was disabled now.

Forgot to add: rather than having a dynamic island on the non-Pro, I think it would have been better off with a 90Hz or 120Hz display. Even our daughter's Samsung A54 that was around 300 Euro a year ago has 120Hz and for touch use the higher refresh rate makes a nice difference.

I am not really sure what to think of the 16e. The 16 was already pretty lackluster and stale, this is even a more mediocre phone that costs 719 Euro in Europe. The SE2 was also pretty bad when it was released in 2022, but at least it was 230 Euro cheaper and an therefore an excellent gateway for people into the Apple ecosystem, phone for kids, etc.

After this (quite puzzling) new iPhone model, I wonder how the iPhone SE 4 is going to look like and how will be introduced. "Like the iPhone 16e, but shittier"? "Like the iPhone 16e, but actually cheap this time"? (I'm in Europe and in my country the iPhone 16e starts at €709). Is there even going to be an iPhone SE 4 at this point?

I currently have a refurbished 2020 iPhone SE which is currently at 79% battery capacity, and was considering getting a refurb 2022 iPhone SE and selling my current one to get extra years of support and keep this form factor for as long as possible.

Comparing the 16e to the SE3 and the 15 Plus (the other option I was looking at) on Apple's UK website, I didn't see any compelling reasons for choosing the 16e. Yes, the camera is better, but to be honest I take photos infrequently these days and those from the SE2 aren't too shabby. The 15 Plus would give me a bigger battery, but aside from that and the larger screen there isn't much else that's tempting me.

Addendum: I just realised that the iPhone SE was discontinued, so don't mind my previous comment. I guess the real tagline is "This is actually the iPhone SE 4, but pricier". LOL, sigh.

Isn't there a 10% tariff on anything made in China? Add Apples 30% tax on that and you have most of the price increase.

It is great. Anything I would not notice anyway was not included by design. With the larger screen I will consider in a couple of years after enthusiasts and corp buyers will begin to offer it at 20%-30% discount.

It costs the same in Evropa without any tariffs, so this is what they think the market price is.

@Kristoffer, huh?

Apple has *never* done a 30% tax on hardware. It's called 3rd party software - and only because iOS (and yeah, iPadOS) are locked in. Wrong! Please, explain how you come up with this mythical 30% tax on iPhones. (Sure, maybe *now* because of Apple's normal inflated prices for each piece of hardware.)

I'm speaking from someone who has owned nothing but Macs, iPhones, and iPads since 2004. Never once have I've seen a 30% tax on any of them. Not once. It's called either "inflation" or "cash grab".

Actually the most accurate term is "profit margin". And it's awfully difficult to know what it is by how Apple beaks down their products in the quterly financial report.

Again, no 30% Apple tax.

Given that I refuse to upgrade to a phone without some kind of physical home button, I hope I don't regret missing my opportunity to upgrade my iPhone 7 to a new iPhone SE 3rd gen.

"I hope I don't regret missing my opportunity to upgrade my iPhone 7 to a new iPhone SE 3rd gen."

Do you believe there will be another iPhone with a physical home button? I can't imagine Apple doing that.

@Dave, it was meant as a tounge in cheek dig. You are absolutely correct in everything you say.

But I'm dead serious that a 10% tariff definitely would raise the price on iPhones, and most definitely by more than 10%.

@scineram I also doubt Apple would have the spine to make this a US only price hike. The two Boss Babies that are running america would shit their pants if headlines like "This is why iPhones are cheaper over seas" began showing up. Plus it plays into Tim Cooks greed to raise prices everywhere. Number. Must. Go. Up.

The notch, the dynamic island, round corners are all utter abject design abominations, simply there to more easily identify iPhone users in a sea of proper rectangles.

> Do you believe there will be another iPhone with a physical home button? I can't imagine Apple doing that.

Probably not. At least not until Apple suddenly rediscovers how insanely great it is to have buttons you can actually feel and press, and then find some bizarre way to "reinvent" the button and pitch it like it's a totally new thing no one has ever done before that we're totally going to love.

Maybe they'll make it possible to use the shutter button as a home button.