The iPhone 16e might lack some of the iPhone’s most premium features, but I can’t help but love it. While testing it for my iPhone 16e review, the phone’s light weight and clean rear design made me happy every time I picked it up, in a way I haven’t felt since my iPhone 5s. And its updated guts make it a perfectly serviceable daily driver that’ll stay fast and responsive for years to come.
It isn’t as cheap as the iPhone SE it replaces in Apple’s lineup. And while it largely resembles the iPhone 14 and 15, it’s missing MagSafe, one of the iPhone’s best features for many years now.
I downgraded from my personal iPhone 16 Pro to the iPhone 16e for the review, to put it through its paces — and came out impressed. Keep reading or watch the video below.
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2025 iPhone 16e review
Apple's budget entry in the iPhone 16 lineup is the first device to use Apple's efficient C1 modem. It delivers long battery life and Face ID but skimps on key features, including MagSafe.
- High-end Apple design at a lower price point
- Apple C1 modem
- Longer battery life than other iPhone 16 models
- No MagSafe, Dynamic Island or Ultra Wideband chip
- Only two colors: black and white
Apple does not update the entry-level iPhone, previously called the iPhone SE, too often. Whenever it does, the new budget iPhone suddenly becomes the best-phone-per-dollar-spent again. But then it ages for two to four years at the same price and becomes less of a valued purchase.
The iPhone 16e might mark a new strategy. Rather than keep it on the shelf at the same price, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple gives this model more regular updates — with older models dropping in price over time.
Table of contents: iPhone 16e review
- Design
- Colors and cases
- Missing MagSafe
- The C1: Cellular connectivity
- The C1: GPS and satellite connectivity
- iPhone 16e camera
- What else is missing?
- Conclusion
- Price
Design
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
If the iPhone SE were the only iPhone you knew about, and you decided to upgrade to the 16e, you just made a ten-year quantum leap. The prior model still resembled the iPhone 6 from 2014. The new model is perfectly in line with today’s iPhone 16 lineup.
The first difference you’ll notice as soon as you pick it up. It’s over 15% lighter than my iPhone 16 Pro, at 5.9 ounces compared to 7.0. That sounds like a nitpicky difference, but it’s huge. The 16e feels incredible. I love holding it in my hand in a way I haven’t felt since the iPhone X.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The next biggest difference is that there’s no triple-camera system dominating the rear. I can hold it in my left hand and sweep my pointer finger across the back of the phone (like a windshield wiper) without touching the camera. Contrast that with my iPhone 16 Pro, where I stand by what I wrote in my initial review: “The camera bump sits right where my index finger naturally wants to rest. I have to scrunch up my finger or adjust the angle to get it out of the way.”
Beyond that, you’ve probably seen this before. It has flat sides, with subtly rounded edges all the way around. The aluminum band around the outside is softly textured. The back glass has a matte finish. It has circular speaker and microphone holes on the bottom and a USB-C port. Instead of a ring/mute switch, it has the Action button.
Colors and cases
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
To almost everyone’s disappointment, the iPhone 16e only comes in black and white. Personally, I miss the combination of black glass and silver metal, like the iPhone 4. The black color instead comes with dark metal around the edge. But I bet most people will miss the glorious pink, teal and ultramarine of the iPhone 16.
Apple’s position is that if you want to add a pop of color, you can add a case. It’s a fair point that only nitpicky weirdos like me use their phone naked. My counterpoint is that Apple’s cases aren’t especially fun, either. Fuchsia and winter blue are two good options, but the other three are black and white, again, and lake green, which proves about as exciting as pond scum.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The case itself is really nice. It feels incredibly soft in the hand. The buttons are a slightly more rubbery material and stick out prominently, so they’re easy to find and click in. Prior Apple silicone cases added a significant amount of tackiness that made it hard to pull out of tight jeans without taking the pocket liner out with it. They company refined the material so that doesn’t seem like a problem anymore.
Because the 16e camera is so small and thin, the case doesn’t need a lip on the back — it sits perfectly flat. It does still have a lip around the front display, so you can toss it down on a table without worry. The cutout for the USB-C port is large enough to fit even my thickest Thunderbolt cable.
If I were to own an iPhone 16e, however, I probably wouldn’t use the Apple silicone case. I would look for a case with a built-in unofficial MagSafe ring.
Missing MagSafe
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The lack of MagSafe is the iPhone 16e’s weirdest omission. I’d really love to know what the engineering trade-off was. The magnets aren’t very big and aren’t very expensive — otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many third-party cases with built-in MagSafe nor so many cheap MagSafe stickers. (The most expensive one I could find, on the first two pages of results on Amazon, was $14.)
Not everyone uses MagSafe, but once you’re in, you can’t go back. I have a MagSafe 3-in-1 charger on my nightstand, another in my office, a car charger clipped to my dashboard, the Apple wallet, a battery pack for traveling, a tripod mount and a handheld camera mount. All with MagSafe.
Thanks to the aforementioned MagSafe stickers, it’s easy to correct. Given time, you’ll probably be able to buy a case that is “MagSafe compatible.” I personally tried attaching a combination MagSafe ring/stand/pop socket, and I can confirm that if you line it up properly, the phone works with all my MagSafe accessories.
Granted, because this isn’t full MagSafe, it’s more like using a wireless Qi charger that happens to have magnets to perfectly align itself. It doesn’t detect what kind of thing you’re attaching, like a wallet or battery or a charger. It also doesn’t charge as fast; it’s capped at 7.5W rather than 25W.
The C1: Cellular connectivity
Image: Apple
The iPhone 16e is the first iPhone to get the Apple C1 chip for its 4G and 5G cellular connectivity, satellite communication and GPS.
When Apple switched the Mac from Intel to Apple silicon, the benefits were gigantic and immediate. Performance and battery life skyrocketed. By 2020, Apple had been designing its chips for over ten years; Apple silicon was mature by the time it came to the Mac. Intel had been losing its competitive advantage over the same period.
The C1 chip is getting a more modest introduction. Qualcomm makes the best cellular chips in the world — and still does. Apple was apparently driven to push the C1 chip into production due to a contentious business relationship, not because Qualcomm isn’t delivering the goods.
The C1 doesn’t support 5G mmWave, or millimeter wave — a high-speed (but limited range) cellular connection that’s as fast as home Wi-Fi. Granted, very few cellular towers in the world support 5G millimeter wave, so most people probably won’t notice unless they live in a major metropolitan area.
Other reviewers who live in big cities have reported it works exactly as expected — and no news is good news. I have the opposite situation, in a rural area with a perpetually weak signal. And it performs exactly as well as my iPhone 16 Pro. I did speed tests at home, sitting in my car inside my garage, and at the Polaris Mall Apple Store where I picked it up. It performed basically identically.
The C1: GPS and satellite connectivity
The C1 chip also handles the iPhone 16e’s GPS signal. Walking around my house with Apple Maps zoomed in all the way, both phones in hand, the iPhone 16e seems to perform just as well, if not slightly better, than the iPhone 16 Pro. Granted, a test in a dense urban city street would be a better stress test, where the iPhone 16 Pro’s dual-band GPS would probably come out ahead in reducing errors.
I was unable to strand myself in the woods to test the satellite connectivity, but I performed the Satellite Connection Demo in Settings > Apps > Messages. The 16e found a satellite noticeably faster than the 16 Pro — on a cloudy day, no less.
iPhone 16e camera review
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The iPhone 16e’s single camera is effectively the same main rear lens you get on an iPhone 16. It can take 24MP images, or 12MP images sensor-cropped to 2×. Optionally, you can enable full 48MP images in Settings.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
A vast majority of my photos are in the 1–2× range. I occasionally use the Ultra Wide and telephoto lenses when traveling, but I don’t think I would be brokenhearted giving them up. For a phone that costs $400 less than the Pro model, the single lens is remarkably capable.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
You can record video up to 4K60. This is all the resolution most people need to future-proof their photos for many, many years to come. Videos taken with the iPhone 16e look fantastic. You’d have a hard time buying a standalone camera for $599 that takes better videos.
I was surprised that the iPhone 16e supports Apple’s fancy new audio mixing feature with wind noise reduction and Spatial Audio. In some footage I recorded running around with my dogs in the yard, the sound of my feet crunching through the leaves sounds almost overbearing. (You can lower it to a quiet background noise.)
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
I’m also surprised how much I miss the Camera Control. I’ve really internalized that I can squeeze the right side to instantly open the camera no matter where I am. On the iPhone 16e, I try do that, remind myself that it doesn’t do that, take a second to remember how to open the camera, swipe down the Lock Screen and then swipe over. I wish the iPhone 16e at least had a simple “launch the camera” button, kind of like an Action button, but in the same place. (Actually, I wish that’s what it was like on all the iPhone 16s.)
What else is missing?
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The display is bright and clear, but it’s far from Apple’s best. The iPhone 16e comes with a notch instead of a Dynamic Island; I really miss being able to pause media playing in the background, watch running timers and keep an eye on turn-by-turn directions. It doesn’t support Always On, although I have that disabled on my iPhone 16 Pro already. The display also doesn’t have ProMotion — which I missed most of all.
The iPhone 16e only supports Apple’s old Photographic Styles, which can’t be edited after you’ve taken the picture. Instead, you go through a setup where you can choose to process your photos with more color saturation or with a specific tone.
You can’t take 3D spatial photos and videos, either. I don’t think there’s a significant overlap between Vision Pro and iPhone 16e owners, but that is technically a missing feature.
Conclusion: iPhone 16e review
From its announcement, I wasn’t expecting to love the iPhone 16e as much as I do. It’s beautiful, it feels great in the hand, and it seems perfectly modern. I think this will be a great phone to hold down the bottom of the iPhone lineup for years to come. It’s a shame Apple couldn’t sell it at a lower price and left out MagSafe, but at least the latter is easily remedied.
Personally, I’m excited for Apple to apply the learnings of the iPhone 16e to its Pro line of phones. Aluminum is so much lighter and feels nicer; stainless steel and titanium were always marketing gimmicks that made the phone heavier and worse. The camera being out of the way in the corner makes it easier to hold.
I’m not in the market for a budget phone. But I’m glad that the people who are will be getting something great with the iPhone 16e.
★★★★☆
Pricing
Apple's budget entry in the iPhone 16 lineup is the first device to use Apple's efficient C1 modem. It delivers long battery life and Face ID but skimps on key features, including MagSafe.
- High-end Apple design at a lower price point
- Apple C1 modem
- Longer battery life than other iPhone 16 models
- No MagSafe, Dynamic Island or Ultra Wideband chip
- Only two colors: black and white
Apple did not provide Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. See our reviews policy, and check out more in-depth reviews of Apple-related items.
D. Griffin Jones is a writer, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been a passionate computer enthusiast since 2002, when he got his first PC — but since getting a Mac in 2008, he hasn’t turned back. His skills in graphic and web design, along with video and podcast editing, are self-taught over 20+ years. Griffin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has written several (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His collection of old computers is made up of 40+ desktops, laptops, PDAs and devices, dating back to the early ’80s. He brings all of these creative and technical skills, along with a deep knowledge of Apple history, into his work for Cult of Mac.
