Wasn’t it great when you could grab a new iPhone with the latest chipset but a small form factor? I am talking about the good ol’ days of the iPhone SE. Yeah, those days are gone, and now we have the ‘e’.
In February 2025, Apple announced a new iPhone to the existing iPhone 16 lineup. It was called the iPhone 16e. Though, it made the headlines but for the wrong reasons. Now, we have the iPhone 16e, which is priced at 600 bucks. I thought it was unfair to judge a phone by merely other people’s reviews and reactions. Anyway, I ordered one and got my hands on the device in March.
I have been using this phone for a while now, and I am ready to give my review of the phone.
Sounds great? Great, let’s hop into the details.
Performance is (Almost) Like the Other iPhone 16s
I said almost, and let me explain why.
For regular usage of the iPhone 16e, you won’t be able to spot the difference between this and the regular iPhone 16. But when you play heavy multiplayer games like PUBG Mobile, you will definitely note the difference if you have previously owned the regular iPhone 16.
And I was using the iPhone 16 before it was delivered to my home. I put my SIM in the iPhone 16e, and the first thing I tested was its performance. “How was it?”, you must be wondering. Well, most of the time it was great, but when my gaming session was prolonged and the phone heated up, it started to struggle.
It wasn’t because of high pings or latency, because the phone was connected to my high-speed Spectrum Internet. It is one of the best internet providers in the US because of its network stability, affordable plans, and top-notch Spectrum customer service.
The reason for the throttle was one less core in the chipset. You heard it right. The iPhone 16e is missing one core from its Apple A18 chipset. Usually, the phone has eight cores, but the iPhone 16e has seven.
To be honest with you, it doesn’t make much of a difference until or unless you are pixel-peeping into the things. Only then will you be able to see the difference between this and the regular iPhone 16.
As I said earlier, for day-to-day use, the iPhone 16e is going to be a fine performer for you.
Camera is Great (When the Light is Enough)
Looking at the back of this phone, you will be unimpressed. But when you take photos and videos from it, you might be impressed. Starting with the specs, it’s a 48MP main shooter at the back and a 12MP selfie camera at the front.
How are the pictures coming out with this phone? I was traveling to the countryside the other day, and the pictures I took on that day were great. They had enough details, they were vibrant, and they looked natural, unlike the other upper midrange phones in this price range.
As for the videos, they were cool too. It can record 4K up to 60fps from both the back camera and the front camera. The videos were smooth, and I made one running – it wasn’t as shaky as I was expecting it to be. It was pretty stable.
The one thing where it started to struggle was the low-light camera performance, and let me tell you why it was like that. Even though it is a 48MP camera, this lens is smaller than the 48MP main shooter in the rest of the iPhone 16 series. When the lens is smaller, it doesn’t have the capability to capture enough light, and that is why it struggles when the scene isn’t properly lit.
Apart from that, it’s a solid camera and it takes overall good photos and videos.
Battery is Surprisingly Good
Remember the time when the battery used to be terrible on the cheaper iPhones? Yeah, I am talking about the SEs here. The iPhone SE had a small body, and it couldn’t fit a bigger battery. Apple had to go with a smaller battery but with a high-performance processor, which disturbed the overall balance.
Fast forward to the iPhone 16e, it is a bigger phone when compared to the SE of that time. So, it housed a 4000mAh battery. It might not sound great on paper, but this phone lasts me a whole day without compromising on performance.
Thanks to the 60Hz display, iOS efficiency, and a more efficient 3nm chipset, this phone has an easy 8-9 hours of screen-on time with WiFi on. This is impressive.
Should You Buy It?
Let’s address the elephant in the room now: Should you buy it? The answer is no, not because it’s a bad phone, but because it doesn’t fit right because of its price tag. This phone costs around $600, and in this price range, you can literally buy an iPhone 15 Pro, which offers more features, more cameras, a better display, and so much more. That’s why I think you should avoid that and buy a different iPhone.
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