Apple iPhone 16e Evaluation: Questionable Worth

The iPhone 16e is not for me. For those who’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 fascinated 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 numerous wonderful 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 accessible.

I’ve spent a lot of my time this previous week utilizing the iPhone 16e and fascinated 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 price, although they’re nonetheless paying for a $600 (locked) telephone unfold over a number 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 this can be a 6.1-inch iPhone, which traditionally carry out the bottom in battery exams, this can be a welcome shock. With common use over the previous week, I struggled to carry the telephone under 50 %. (It often hovered round 51 or 49 % by bedtime.) Sure, which means the iPhone 16e has higher battery life than the iPhone 16.

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

Apple claims this battery enhance is partly due to the first-ever Apple-designed C1 modem contained in the telephone. Apple spent years constructing this connectivity chip to cut 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 supplied, although this additionally may rely upon area. (I am in New York Metropolis.) I ran pace exams by way of Ookla on numerous telephones alongside the iPhone 16e and didn’t discover something out of the strange. That stated, bear 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.