Apple Unveils the Budget-Friendly iPhone 16e, Replacing the SE Series

rewrite : The rumored successor to the iPhone SE family has finally arrived with a much cheaper price tag, except it’s not called SE anymore. Apple has officially discontinued the SE lineup and the new model is the iPhone 16e instead, joining the 16 lineup.

As the rumors pointed out, the iPhone 16e is based on the iPhone 14’s body, but with a newer chip, a single camera, Apple Intelligence, and more.

Design and Display

Since it’s the same body as the iPhone 14, you get the same 6.1-inch “Super Retina XDR” OLED display with Ceramic Shield on the front and back, which Apple claims is the “toughest back glass in a smartphone.” You also have identical thick bezels and a wide notch of the iPhone 14.

Internals and Software
The iPhone 16e leaves the iPhone 14 behind in the chipset department with its A18 SoC, the same as the iPhone 16 phones. This enables the phone to run Apple Intelligence, just like its brethren. Apple never mentions RAM capacity during their launches, but rumors pointed to a minimum of 8 GB to support Apple Intelligence.

Cameras
Apple is calling its singular camera a “2-in-1 camera system.” This is a 48MP sensor, an upgrade from the 12MP + 12MP combo on the vanilla iPhone 14, but you don’t get the ultrawide shooter anymore. What you do get is 2x lossless zoom with OIS, 4K video recording at up to 60fps, and more. The front camera is a 12MP sensor.

Battery and Pricing
As always, Apple is making absurd comparisons to make big claims. The company says that the iPhone 16e lasts “6 hours longer” than the iPhone 11, a phone over 5 years old, and also says it has “the best battery life ever on a 6.1-inch iPhone”, which makes it hard to compare with actual hard data.

In any case, I suppose we will have to wait for official numbers to show up through disassembly videos, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see the same battery as the iPhone 14.

The iPhone 16e has a starting price of $599.

iPhone 16e Specifications