Apple iPhone 16e Overview: Questionable Worth Leave a comment

The iPhone 16e is not for me. If you happen to’re an avid tech fanatic and Apple fan, it is in all probability not for you both. It is for the particular person holding on to an iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X, able to improve as a result of their greater than seven-year-old smartphone is not working too effectively these days. They need a brand new telephone, and it simply must be an iPhone.

Part of my mind will not cease enthusiastic about whether or not this almost once-in-a-decade improve for these of us would not be higher served if Apple had included its nice-to-have facilities, like MagSafe or the ultra-wideband chip for improved AirTags monitoring. Even missing these options, the worth of the iPhone 16e feels $100 too excessive contemplating the various glorious competing telephones on this bracket. It additionally makes the iPhone lineup complicated—it is $170 greater than Apple’s earlier iPhone SE that is not obtainable.

I’ve spent a lot of my time this previous week utilizing the iPhone 16e and enthusiastic about its $599 MSRP, which naturally should imply that one thing is awry. This may increasingly not matter a lot to folks within the US, who favor buying by means of carriers that subsidize the fee, although they’re nonetheless paying for a $600 (locked) telephone unfold over a couple of years. However when the used iPhone market is wholesome and thriving, it feels as if anybody contemplating an iPhone 16e will discover higher worth with an iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Professional.

Cell Increase

The most effective iPhone 16e function? Battery life. Contemplating it is a 6.1-inch iPhone, which traditionally carry out the bottom in battery checks, it is a welcome shock. With common use over the previous week, I struggled to convey the telephone under 50 p.c. (It often hovered round 51 or 49 p.c by bedtime.) Sure, which means the iPhone 16e has higher battery life than the iPhone 16.

On one specific day once I used it for GPS navigation, music streaming, and movie snapping, it was left with round 30 p.c earlier than mattress. And one other busy day, I hit almost 9 hours of screen-on time and had 15 p.c within the tank. That is glorious. It is nonetheless not the very best iPhone battery life within the lineup—that’d be the iPhone 16 Professional Max and iPhone 16 Plus—nevertheless it’s sufficient to maintain that battery nervousness at bay while you’re out and about.

Apple claims this battery enhance is partially due to the first-ever Apple-designed C1 modem contained in the telephone. Apple spent years constructing this connectivity chip to scale back its reliance on companions like Qualcomm, and it appears to have paid off. I did not expertise any points with mobile connectivity over the previous week with the AT&T eSIM Apple offered, although this additionally may depend upon area. (I am in New York Metropolis.) I ran velocity checks by way of Ookla on varied telephones alongside the iPhone 16e and didn’t discover something out of the odd. That stated, keep in mind Antennagate? We’ll have to attend and see how the C1 modem performs within the fingers of much more folks the world over.