Apple’s iPhone 16e will start from $999 in Australia.Credit:Apple
For example,the 16e has close to the same sized OLED screen as the 16,but it has a significantly lower peak brightness and no support for Dolby Vision. The phone also lacks the Dynamic Island,opting for a regular camera cutout notch for Face ID and the selfie camera.
Around the back,it has a similar 48MP main camera but no ultra-wide for macro or spatial photography and no cinematic mode video recording. It supports wireless charging but has no magnetic MagSafe connector,and while it has a powerful A18 chip,it’s slightly different to the one in the iPhone 16,with less powerful graphics and a new 5G modem designed by Apple. There’s also no ultra-wideband chip,which is used for my precise Find My Phone.
Unlike the previous iPhone SE,the 16e does not feature a 3.5mm headphone jack. And since the iPhone 14 is also being removed from sale,this new device completes Apple’s transition away from both the old-school Home button and the Lightning connector,which is replaced here by USB-C.
Apple claims the 16e has the longest battery life ever on an iPhone this size,outlasting the current iPhone 16 by four hours in a video playback test. The company is also promoting the phone as a less-expensive way to get access to the latest features,including theApple Intelligence suite of AI tools and the satellite-powered Emergency SOS. The 16e also features the Action Button,a relatively new addition to iPhones that replaces the old ringer switch and can be set to perform a range of functions from muting the phone to opening the camera.
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The new device represents a shift in Apple’s approach to lower-cost models. Whereas the previous three versions of the SE supported recent features in a significantly smaller and less cool body,the 16e takes an approach similar to Google and Samsung;it’s a version of the most recent phone with some nice-to-haves stripped out.