iPhone 16e Review - E is for Expensive

0:01 so last week when Apple announced the iPhone 16e I think we had this Collective WTF moment because we were expecting a new budget replacement to the iPhone SE a $430 phone but instead surprise it's a $600 semi Flagship product that is just so much more expensive it's 40% more expensive than what we were hoping for uh compared to the previous SE product and I've had this for about a week I have a lot of thoughts but there's one thing that this phone does really well better than any other iPhone product in its class it has incredibly long battery life I think the best way to describe it is that this has the battery life of like a big phone A Plus product like a max type product except it's a normal siiz phone with a 6.1 in screen and I think in 2025 for an entry level product battery life is such

0:47 an important feature like how many people are really asking for faster phones and faster screens at that price point right they just want long ass battery life and this delivers it now the way they've achieved it is through a few things the first is through the size of the battery itself this is now a almost 4,000 Mah hour battery it's bigger than the battery in the iPhone 16 and bigger than the one in the 15 it's actually quite a bit bigger than the one in the iPhone 14 now I bring up the iPhone 14 because of all the iPhone devices out there the new 16e is most similar in shape and size to the 14 this has a almost identical frame in terms of the kind of dimensions and feel to the one on the iPhone 14 now one feature that is missing on the new 16e is mag safe and the theory is that you know

1:32 maybe they had to remove the magnets to make room for that bigger battery but when I pop off the lid of the 14 and just look at the magnets on this thing this is a very thin system of magnets like I feel like they could have easily put this in like it's maybe 0.2 0.3 millim thick they could have put those things in if they wanted to on the 16e but we'll get into that whole conversation of Mag safe in a second the second thing that contributes to the longer battery life is Apple's use of their new C1 5G modem and the modem determines how fast and how reliable your phone can connect to cell signals right so like 5G 4G 3G this modem was apparently incredibly difficult for them to produce this took them many years thousands of Engineers billions of dollars and even the acquisition of

2:18 Intel's cell modem Division and the end result is Apple's C1 modem that's supposed to be very energy efficient now I don't have the ability to just swap out modems on one device to be like a really control test but from my crude testing streaming and gaming on cell data is longer lasting on the 16e than the regular 16 even with the larger battery in mind now the signal strength and speeds on Apple C1 modem seem as good to me as qualcomm's modems but I live in Toronto it's a major city in Canada with cell towers everywhere so I don't feel like it's a difficult test for this modem uh one thing to keep in mind this C1 modem at least this iteration of it does not have millimeter wave support so if you want the fastest 5G speeds this can't deliver it to you but on an entry-level phone who really cares the third component as to why the

3:04 battery life is so good is the a18 chip that's in here it's the same chip in name as we see on the regular iPhone 16 but it's a bend down version so there's one GPU core that's less on the 16e but the performance is still fantastic both in benchmarks and in games it's just a killer chip and it's very energy efficient for everyday use now this phone also has 8 gigs of RAM which enables it to have apple intelligence but I would say personally that Apple intelligence is not nearly good enough enough nor powerful enough in its current state to really warrant a purchase decision around right it's a neat feature and I think their marketing around it is powerful maybe enticing to you so if it's something you're looking for it's available now at $600 this is no longer a budget phone from Apple it's in the realm of like mid-tier phone pricing and Apple has to be very strategic as to what features to strip

3:50 out or leave in on the 16 e to be able to have it fit into their phone lineup so the first thing I want to talk about is the screen so this is now a 60hz OLED panel so the OLED is nice it's something that the SE products never had and it's now in there uh it's not as bright at the top end as the iPhone 15 and 16 panels those go up to 1,000 nits this goes up to 800 for standard use but it's still a 60 HZ screen now I think when this was announced that it was a 60 HZ panel like all the internet comments were like oh my God here we go again another you know another iPhone at 60 HZ of course it was going to have a 60 HZ panel like how could this thing have a better higher refresh screen than the regular iPhone 16 that's not going to happen right so this is the 16e and then over here is the 16 and then lastly we

4:37 have the 15 so if you'll notice they have a Notch versus the dynamic Islands on the other two 16 and 15 but also the bezel is a little bit thicker than the other two I don't think it's a big deal but the island can be neat in some apps now the other component or feature that they've cut corners on is the camera this is a single lens camera system so we can do a 2X sensor Zoom shots on this camera look good even in tough lighting conditions but the lack of an ultra wide is really disappointing to me I feel like it's something a lot of people use like my parents even who don't care anything about photography they'll use that Ultra wide for like the occasional shot and also to like read labels because you don't have the macro shot anymore without the ultra wide lens right so they'll like punch in on things just to read like instructions and

5:22 labels it's a camera lens that I think so much of the world uses and I'm sure Apple knows this but they remove it on a $600 phone it feels intentional uh some thoughts about video it shoots 4K 60 good image quality but it does not have the sensor shift image stabilization it's I think one of Apple's best camera features where the actual sensor moves around to stabilize the footage and on bumpy shots you do miss that Tech now a feature that was removed that I mentioned before is mag safe and I think it's the strangest emission on this device so mag safe was introduced when the iPhone 12 came out and it was like it was a feature that seemed like would be baked into all Apple products going forward and it's just like a quality of

6:08 life thing right it's like a nice little bonus ad to be able to magnetically attach Chargers you can attach your phone to mag safe Car mounts you can use the standby mode so that you have this like alarm clock experience on your nightstand it's nice there's a lot of people that enjoy mag safe but on the 16e it's gone now you can always get a case that has magnets in it so this is the dbrand grip case and this has a series of magnets uh on the back here right in here so that if you want to you can use it as a MAG safe type product but it's just strange that they removed it now the really weird thing to me is that the official iPhone 16 e cases from Apple do not have a magsafe option these are the silicone cases that in the past Apple would sell two versions a pure silicone

6:55 rubber case or you pay a little bit more you get the mag safe ring like the magnet inside there so it works with magsafe accessories a little bit better they could have absolutely sold a magsafe version of this case who why wouldn't Apple want to do that right it's like extra money for them extra cases that they're selling but I think they're doing it because they don't want people using mag safe cases on this phone they just want people to come to the store be like oh this is a wonderful phone but it doesn't have mag safe Apple's like oh yeah that's that's unfortunate but we have a solution you just buy the more expensive phone it's an extra1 or $200 and I think the moment you you look into this and think about it it's like okay there's no way Apple removed the mag safe capability on this phone just for like reducing the cost they're doing it for product segregation

7:40 they're trying to make you buy the more expensive one if you have any interest in mag safe so in terms of the deficiencies on the 16e that I think are actually important there's actually not a lot the 16e obviously lacks that ultrawide and therefore the macro which some people might like uh 15 and 16 both had it there's also no sensor shift stabilization which I think is one of Apple's best camera features again 15 and 16 had it also I'm just going to put it out there there is no spatial Vision capturing with the single lens right if you're going to do 3D Vision you need two lenses for 3D Vision with one you just have like Cyclops Vision uh the front glass on the 16e is just ceramic Shield 1 so this has the same toughness as we see on the iPhone 15 the iPhone 16 has glass that's supposedly 50% tougher

8:27 and I think on a device that's supposed to last four five years maybe even more having that 50% stronger glass that that could be useful um no mag safe very divisive I think some people don't care about at all some people really love it and then the other thing is no Ultra wideband on the iPhone 16e so this is just for like that precise device finding or like certain key entry for cars like you can take use of it you don't need it for like the car passes to be able to get into cars with just your phone those use NFC and Bluetooth but the ultra wideband chip can make those uh car passes just a little bit more accurate and more easy to get into cars it's like again a nice little feature ad that is missing on the 16e now in terms of things that you do get that I think

9:13 are really noteworthy on the 16 e the big one is that battery life it's crazy long I think it's special you get a powerful chip you get a new OLED panel but also you get face ID this to this day is still I think the most secure and most convenient form of like biometric lockout for phone I really think it's the best in the business and you do get it now with the new iPhone 16e you also get the action button on the side of the phone this is like that customizable button so you can toggle between various functions uh and this replaces the toggle switch that we saw on the iPhone 15 which I really liked I miss it if I'm being honest but yeah action button now you do not get the camera control button that you get on the iPhone 16 which I

9:58 personally don't think it's super useful it launches cameras we' talked about in previous videos but for the average kind of normal person that just uses phones for normal phone things completely unnecessary so it's $600 for the 128 gig model now for me personally I like that they focused on battery life on an entry-level phone I think it's a really nice thing but to remove the mag safe capabilities and to remove the ultra wide lens at this price point is just it just makes the whole product less palatable to me also the fact that the hardware and all the server costs of running Apple intelligence is baked into the price of this phone it just hurts a little bit more now I do think that when the iPhone 17 device is launched this thing will come down in price as the 16s like the previous generation always does and at that point I think this is more appropriately priced but in the meantime

10:45 if you're someone who wants mag safe and you want an ultra wide and you don't really care about Apple intelligence like me I would just go for the iPhone 15 I feel like that just delivers a current day product that is just way better value than this okay hope you guys enjoyed this video