iPhone 16e review: Apple’s $599 iPhone tested and reviewed for my parents
Who is this for? My mom and dad, who don't want to spend more than $500 on a new iPhone after their $100 trade-in. Here's what they like.
🏆 Review score: 4 out of 5
Pros
✅ 🍎 Apple’s iPhone 16e is a big design upgrade over the iPhone SE 3
✅ 📱 OLED, A18, Face ID, USB-C & the Action Button in a $599 iPhone
✅ 🔋 Excellent battery life with the efficient Apple C1 cellular modem
✅ 🗄️ Starts at 128GB of storage (iPhone SE 3 started at 64GB)
✅ 🧠 It’s the cheapest way to get Apple Intelligence on an iPhone
Cons
❌ 💰 At $599, it’s $120 more than the $479 iPhone SE 3 128GB
❌ 🧲 No MagSafe for wireless charging and magnetic accessories
❌ 🎨 Just two iPhone 16e colors: black or white – that’s it
❌ 🛰️ No Ultra wideband chip for precision tracking
I’m holding the new $599 iPhone 16e in my hand, and it looks and feels a lot like Apple’s $799 iPhone 16, except it’s $200 cheaper. Sure, it’s missing the bells and whistles of my iPhone 16 Pro Max, but for my parents, the iPhone 16e is the ideal upgrade, as they trade in their three-year-old iPhone SE 3 phones for $100 off.
I outlined the real iPhone 16e price based on inflation and size. The biggest perk is that the new iPhone starts at double the storage. So, while the iPhone SE 3 started at $429 for 64GB, the true equivalent, the 128GB iPhone SE 3, was $479. After three years of harsh inflation, the price would have been $530.
Maybe it’s just me making excuses because I’m in charge of the Apple Card bill, but suddenly, $70 more for the much better iPhone 16e doesn’t seem so bad, especially when my parents will get new perks.
Larger, brighter 6.1-inch screen
Higher resolution 48MP 2-in1- camera
Better 12MP TrueDepth front camera with Face ID
Photonic Engine, Night mode and Audio Zoom
A18 chipset with a 4-core GPU
Apple Intelligence
Customizable Action Button
Crash Detection
Strong Ceramic Shield glass
IP68 dust and waterproof rating
USB-C instead of Lightning
Most importantly, way more battery life
It’s also missing some stuff, as I outline below, but the iPhone 16e isn’t meant for early adopters who may be waiting for the rumored iPhone 17 Pro Max or the nifty sound but equally unconfirmed iPhone 17 Air. It’s the core iPhone 16 features on a budget.
The only things that they would like on the eventual iPhone 17e are “additional colors and MagSafe. If you could tell Tim Cook that, please.” You got it, Mom.
Everyone has someone in their life who doesn’t want to overpay. This iPhone is meant for upgrade holdouts like my parents who need a long-lasting iPhone with excellent battery life but don’t need to spend more than $500 after Apple’s $100 trade-in SE 3 credit. The only things that they would like on the eventual iPhone 17e are “additional colors and MagSafe. If you could tell Tim Cook that, please.” You got it, Mom.
The Shortcut’s long & short review
👀 Face ID is a winner. It’s a radical change for my parents’ iPhone usage, but I had them use my iPhone 16 as a test, and they actually loved Face ID and didn’t miss the physical home button as much as I thought they could. In fact, it’s proven more reliable than using their fingerprints at their age.
📱 Bigger, brighter screen. The reason they love Face ID is that without the home button, it allows for a bigger screen. Apple’s 6.1-inch OLED display is an upgrade in size (up from a 4.7-inch LCD) and brightness (up to 1,200 nits HDR). My mom’s favorite part: “The wider screen makes it so much easier to type.”
My mom’s favorite part: “The wider screen makes it so much easier to type.”
📐 Sized perfectly for most people. Apple’s 6.1-inch screen offers a balance of a big screen that’s still manageable to hold in one hand. Taking the new iPhone to a busy Rockefeller Center in NYC, I felt more confident holding it caseless. Of course, I do recommend an iPhone 16e case for protection and a pop of color.
⚫⚪ ‘I wish there were more colors.’ My parents are trading in a red (Mom) and a white (Dad) iPhone SE 3. The fact that there are only two colors is “a bit of a letdown,” according to my Mom.
📸 48MP 2-in-1 camera. It seems like the same 48MP camera as the iPhone 16, but it’s not. The sensor is, in fact, smaller, and it uses Hybrid Focus Pixels instead of 100% Focus Pixels. The early verdict? Not as much of a downgrade. It turns out that perks like the use of Apple’s Photonic Engine and night mode (new over the iPhone SE 3) matter. The zero shutter lag doesn’t hold up as well at night, but it’s a solid camera.
🤳 12MP TrueDepth camera. My parents do take selfies with their grandkids, and, good news, there’s a nice upgrade over the 7MP iPhone SE 3 front-facing camera. Better HDR, night mode, and 4K video outpace the old FaceTime HD camera. Will my parents take slow-mo 1080p video at 120fps? I doubt it. But it’s here.
🔭 Does it have a telephoto camera? Apple’s 2-in-1 iPhone 16e camera crops into 48MP photos to offer a zoomed-in look. It’s still optical quality and much better than digitally zoomed-in photos, even if it’s coming from a single camera lens.
👐 No Ultra-wide camera. My parents refuse to tap the ultrawide camera button on my iPhone when snapping family photos. They’d rather back up into a ditch than use the UI. So I don’t think they’ll miss this one.
🛰️ No Ultra wideband chip. We use Apple’s Find My a lot as a family for finding our AirTags, AirPods 4 and each other’s iPhones, but the iPhone 16e lacks the precise location tracking found in the Ultra wideband chip. There’s no way to use the superb Find Nearby feature to pinpoint a lost item. This is a reason to consider the rest of the iPhone 16 lineup, which all offer the second-gen chip and WiFi 7 instead of WiFi 6.
🚗 Crash detection. I didn’t see many people highlight this yet, but the iPhone SE 3 didn’t have this peace of mind feature, so it’s new to the iPhone 16e. First seen in the iPhone 14, it’s a safety feature that’s now in all new iPhones.
🏝️ Notch vs Dynamic Island. Face ID is here by way of the notch, meaning it doesn’t have Apple’s Dynamic Island, which is increasingly useful for persistent notifications. I appreciate seeing live game scores, timers, and Uber pick-up/drop-off time estimates in this space, but most of these items still live on the lock screen. Not a deal breaker.
🥽 No Spatial Photos or Video. I’d love to see my parents use the iPhone 16e to capture spatial video for use in my Apple Vision Pro headset when I visit, but that’s not possible with the single-lens camera on the iPhone 16e.
🛡️ Ceramic Shield upgrade. Apple and Corning’s durable and scratch-resistant glass is marketed as “tougher than any smartphone glass.” According to our four years of tests, first conducted when the iPhone 12 launched, this is true. It’s a huge bonus since the iPhone SE 3 just used normal glass on the front.
🔘 Custom Action Button. There’s no Camera Control, but the Action Button, which was first introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro, can be used to be tailored to your needs: it can still act as an on/off toggle that silences the iPhone 16e, launch the camera or be programmed to do any other shortcut.
🧠 Apple Intelligence. The key benefits for my parents’ iPhone 16e phones are notification and Mail summaries. This makes things easier to read at a glance (even if comically wrong occasionally). Apple’s AI Writing Tools might have been helpful before my dad retired, though I’d also be out of a $5 per email rewrite allowance as a kid. They’ll still find summaries helpful in Safari (pictured above).
📶 Apple C1 modem is a 🚀. The iPhone 16e marks the first time we got to test out an Apple-designed cellular modem. No one but Qualcomm has been able to supply a good iPhone modem. We were made to believe Apple’s modem might suck but it turns out it just sucks down data at fast 5G speeds. It’s also smaller (more room for battery) and more energy efficient.
We were made to believe Apple’s modem might suck but it turns out it just sucks down data at fast 5G speeds.
📡 No mmWave? Not a biggie. My parents, Verizon users, won’t get the bonus of mmWave 5G (the radio isn’t in the iPhone 16e) for faster, short-range speed boosts, but they don’t hang out in airports or at stadiums as much as someone like myself. Not an issue for them.
⚙️ Latest A18 chipset. It’s similar to the power of the iPhone 16, with one fewer GPU core than the iPhone 16 and two fewer GPU cores than the iPhone 16 Pro. My parents aren’t gaming on their phones outside of Candy Crush (Mom) or Wordle (Dad), so I think they’re safe. And the A18 means this phone will last 3+ years without a hitch.
🔌 USB-C is universal. My parents own a MacBook Pro and iPad Pro, both of which have USB-C connections to charge. That’s why I’m thrilled to get rid of their Lightning cables – it’s more universal among their other gadgets. When I visit, I’ll finally be able to charge my devices without sifting through a tangled web of Lightning cables.
⚡ Charges wireless, but no MagSafe. iPhone 16e doesn’t have MagSafe, and that’s the one techie upgrade even my non-techie parents wanted. It can still charge wirelessly, but lining up the phone with a charging pad is more of a pain and the 7.5W charging rate is far from the 25W wireless charging rate I can get from an iPhone 16.
💦 IP68 water-resistant. The iPhone 16e (IP68) is rated to survive 6 meters (20ft) under water for 30 minutes, whereas the iPhone SE 3 (IP67) is rated for a depth of 1m (3.3ft) for 30 mins. That’s the difference between IP68 and IP67, and I’m all about the extra protection.
🔋 Beefier battery. I love this for my parents. The iPhone 16e is the longest-lasting iPhone in the 6.1-inch size, and while I want to do more testing to confirm this over the next month, Apple’s estimates blow away what we’ve seen from the iPhone SE 3.
26 hours of video playback battery (up from 15 hours)
21 hours of streaming video playback (up from 10 hours)
90 hours of audio playback (up from 50 hours)
If there’s one thing my parents are going to appreciate, it’s an even longer-lasting iPhone battery. I’ll love it too. Soon, I won’t be on FaceTime calls with them in which they suddenly “hang up” because the battery gives out (allegedly).
🆚 iPhone 16e rivals. Apple didn’t update the iPhone SE for three years, so a few of its Android rivals decided to swoop in: Google, Samsung and OnePlus.
My Google Pixel 8a review: a $499 phone that touts “AI at an affordable price” with useful features like the face-swapping “Best Take.” But you may want to hold off – I expect a Goole Pixel 9a to launch next month.
Samsung Galaxy A35G: At $399, it’s $200 cheaper than the iPhone 16e with an all-screen display, Circle To Search and three rear cameras instead of one (like Apple) or two (like Google). But it doesn’t have all the AI bells and whistles of the pricier Samsung Galaxy S25 series.
My OnePlus 13R review: this $599 phone is actually $499 with an any-device, any-condition $100 recycling reward. It tops all of its rivals when it comes to specs: a 6.78-inch screen, 256GB of storage, 12GB of RAM, three cameras, a 6,000mAh battery, and Qualcomm’s last-gen-but-still-mighty Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip (just shy of the top-tier Snapdragon 8 Elite, like on the OnePlus 13).
🙅♂️ None of these iPhone 16e rivals get you out of “green bubble jail” with your family and friends, however. Tread carefully.
Should I buy the iPhone 16e?
Yes, if…
✅ You want a new iPhone that’s just $500 after a $100 iPhone SE 3 trade-in
✅ You’ve yearned for core iPhone 16 features, but $200 makes a difference
✅ You’re coming from a cheap Android and want to stay within a budget
✅ You relish having the best battery life on a 6.1-inch iPhone
✅ You want to upgrade to a big OLED that’s easier to type on
✅ You’re ready to ditch Lightning, the home button and the mute switch
✅ You’re ready to embrace USB-C, Face ID & the Action Button
No, if…
❌ You’re an early adopter of tech (wait for the rumored iPhone 17 Air)
❌ You like to use MagSafe charging and accessories (get the iPhone 16)
❌ You want a variety of colors to choose from (see the iPhone 16 colors)
❌ You desire Apple’s best photos and 5x zoom (get iPhone 16 Pro Max)
❌ You think the price hike to $599 is too much (get an old iPhone 15 Pro)
❌ You’re willing to switch to Android to get more for less (get the OnePlus 13R)
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