Meet the iPhone 16E, Apple’s newest “cheap” iPhone

Note: You can read our review of the iPhone 16E here.

The iPhone SE is dead. Meet the new iPhone 16E – Apple’s latest entry-level iPhone.

As it so often turns out these days, the rumours were mostly right. The iPhone 16E has a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display and a design that’s mostly based on the iPhone 14, which isn’t a bad thing considering how archaic the old iPhone SE looked.

This means two things. The Touch ID button is gone, and we have a notch at the top of the display that houses the Face ID module.

The body is aluminium and on the side, you’ll find an Action button, which can be customised to do just about anything. However, the iPhone 16E does not come with the Camera Control button – that’s reserved for the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. It'll also have a USB-C port that supports speeds of up to 480Mbps.

As expected, the iPhone 16E comes with a single camera – a 48MP Fusion camera that has a 2x telephoto mode. It has Night Mode (missing in the iPhone SE) and can take 4K Dolby Vision videos.

There are big changes inside. Powering the iPhone SE is Apple’s A18 chip. However, it’s not quite the same as the one found in the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus. The iPhone 16E’s variant of the A18 has just four GPU cores, whereas the ones found in the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus have five. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s worth pointing out. Crucially, having the A18 chip means the iPhone 16E will support Apple Intelligence, including features like Writing Tools, Image Playground, Visual Intelligence, and more.

Also new inside is Apple’s C1 chip – the company’s first in-house 5G modem. Apple says it’s the most power-efficient modem ever in an iPhone and it enables the iPhone 16E to achieve an incredible battery life of up to 26 hours. Interestingly, that’s 4 hours more than the iPhone 16, which has nearly identical dimensions and weight.

On paper, the new iPhone 16E looks like a solid phone and it will be intriguing to see if its starting price of S$949 is compelling enough and how the market will react.

Availability and pricing

Prices of the iPhone 16E will start at S$949 and pre-orders will begin on 21 February, 9pm, SGT. It will be available in stores on 28 February, Friday.

You can find it on Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.

Here are the prices of the iPhone 16E:

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