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A new “entry level” iPhone

Truthfully, I originally didn’t plan on covering the new iPhone 16e, Apple’s latest “entry-level” phone preceded by three generations worth of iPhone SE devices.

I knew a fourth-generation offering was coming (and sooner vs later), since European regulations had compelled Apple to phase out the SEs’ proprietary Lightning connector in favor of industry-standard USB-C. The iPhone SE 3, announced in 2022, had already been discontinued at the end of last year in Europe, in fact, along with the similarly Lightning-equipped iPhone 14, both subsequently also pulled from Apple’s product line across the rest of the world coincident with the iPhone 16e’s unveiling on February 19, 2025. Considering the heavy company-wide Apple Intelligence push, the iPhone SE 3 was also encumbered by its sub-par processor (A15 Bionic) and system memory allocation (4 GBytes), both factors suggesting the sooner-vs-later appearance of a replacement.

But how exciting could a new “entry-level” (translation: cost-optimized trailing-edge feature set) smartphone be, after all? Instead, I was planning on covering Amazon’s unveiling of its new AI-enhanced (and Anthropic-leveraging, among others) Alexa+ service, which happened earlier today as I write these words on the evening of February 26. That said, as Amazon’s launch event date drew near, I began hearing that no new hardware would be unveiled, just the upgraded service (in spite of the fact that Amazon referred to it as a “Devices & Services event”), and that what we now know of as Alexa+ would only beta-demoed, not actually released until weeks or months later. Those rumors unfortunately all panned out; initial user upgrades won’t start until sometime in March, more broadly rolling out over an unspecified-duration period of “time”.

What those in attendance in New York (no virtual livestream was offered) saw were only tightly scripted, albeit reportedly impressive (when they worked, that is, which wasn’t always the case), demos. As we engineers know well, translating from curated demos to real-world diverse usage experiences rarely goes without a hitch or few. Then there were the indications of longstanding (and ongoing) struggles with AI “hallucinations”, another big-time technology hit. Add in the fact that Alexa+ won’t run on any of the numerous, albeit all geriatric, Amazon devices in my abode, and I suspect at last for a while, I’ll be putting my coverage plans on hold.

Pricing deviations from prior generations

Back to the iPhone 16e then, which I’m happy to report ended up being far more interesting than I’d anticipated, both for Apple’s entry-level and broader smartphone product line and more generally for the company’s fuller hardware portfolio. Let’s begin with the name. “SE” most typically in the industry refers to “Special Edition”, I’ve found, but Apple has generally avoided clarifying the meaning here, aside from a brief explanation that Phil Schiller, Apple’s then-head of Worldwide Product Marketing (and now Apple Fellow), gave a reporter back in 2016 at the first-generation iPhone SE unveiling.

And in contrast to the typical Special Edition reputation, which comes with an associated price tag uptick, Apple’s various iPhone SE generations were historically priced lower than the mainstream and high-end iPhone offerings that accompanied them in the product line at any point in time. To accomplish this, they were derivations of prior-generation mainstream iPhones, for which development costs had already been amortized. The iPhone SE 3, for example, was form factor-reminiscent of the 2017-era, LCD-based iPhone 8, albeit with upgraded internals akin to those in the 2021-era iPhone 13.

The iPhone 16e marks the end of the SE generational cadence, at least for now. So, what does “e” stand for? Once again, Apple isn’t saying. I’m going with “economy” for now, although reality doesn’t exactly line up with that definitional expectation. The starting price for the iPhone SE 3 at introduction was $429. In contrast, the iPhone 16e begins at $599 and goes up from there, depending on how much internal storage you need. Not only did Apple ratchet up the price tag, as it’s more broadly done in recent years, it also broke through the perception-significant $499 barrier, which frankly shocked me. In contrast, if you’ll indulge a bit of snark, I chuckled when I noticed Google’s response to Apple’s news: a Pixel 8a price cut to $399.

Upgrades

That said, RAM jumps from 4 GBytes on the iPhone SE 3 to (reportedly: as usual, Apple didn’t reveal the amount) 8 GBytes. The iPhone SE 3’s storage started at 64 GBytes; now it’s 128 GBytes minimum. The 4.7” diagonal LCD has been superseded by a 6.1” OLED; more generally, Apple no longer sells a single sub-6” smartphone. And the front and rear cameras are both notably resolution-upgraded from those in the iPhone SE. The front sensor array also now supports TrueDepth for (among other things) FaceID unlock, replacing the legacy Touch ID fingerprint sensor built into the no-longer-present Home button, and the rear one, although still only one, includes 2x optical zoom support.

Turning now to the internals, there are three particularly notable (IMHO) evolutions that I’ll focus on. Unsurprisingly, the application processor was upgraded for the Apple Intelligence era, from the aforementioned A15 Bionic to the A18. But this version of the newer SoC is different than that in the iPhone 16, only enabling 4 GPU cores versus 5 on the mainstream iPhone 16 (and 6 on the iPhone 16 Pro). Again, as I mentioned before, I suspect that all three A18 variants are sourced from the same sliver of silicon, with the iPhone 16e’s version detuned to maximize usable wafer yield. Similarly, there may also be clock speed variations, another spec that Apple unfortunately doesn’t make public, between the three A18 versions.

In-house 5G chip

More significant to me is that this smartphone marks the initial unveil of Apple’s first internally developed LTE-plus-5G cellular subsystem. A quick history lesson; as regular readers already know, the company generally prefers to be vertically integrated versus external supplier-dependent, when doing so makes sense. One notable example was the transition from Intel x86 to Apple Silicon Arm-based computer chipsets that began in 2020. Notable exceptions (at least to date) to this rule, conversely, include volatile (DRAM) and nonvolatile (flash) memory, and image sensors. As with Intel in CPUs, Apple has long had a “complicated” (among other words) relationship with Qualcomm for cellular chipsets. Specifically, back in April 2019, the two companies agreed to drop all pending litigation between them, shortly after Qualcomm had won a patent infringement lawsuit, and which had begun two years earlier. Three months later, Apple dropped $1B to buy the bulk of Intel’s (small world, eh?) cellular modem business.

Six years later, the premier C1 cellular modem marks the fruits (Apple? Fruit? Get it?) of the company’s longstanding labors. Initial testing results on pre-release devices are encouraging from performance and network-compatibility standpoints, and Apple’s expertise in power consumption coupled with the tight coupling potential with other internally developed silicon subsystems, operating systems and applications are also promising. That said, this initial offering is absent support for ultra-high-speed—albeit range-restrictive, interference-prone and coverage-limited—mmWave, i.e., ultrawideband (UWB) 5G. For that matter, speaking of wireless technologies, there’s no short-range UWB support for AirTags and the like in the iPhone 16e, either.

Whose modem—Apple’s own, Qualcomm’s, or a combination—will the company be using in its next-generation mainstream and high-end iPhone 17 offerings due out later this year? Longer term, will Apple integrate the cellular modem—at minimum, the digital-centric portions of it—into its application processors, minimally at the common-package or perhaps even the common-die level? And what else does the company have planned for its newfound internally developed technology; cellular service-augmented laptops, perhaps? Only time will tell. Apple is rumored to also be developing its own Wi-Fi transceiver silicon, with the aspiration of supplanting today’s Broadcom-supplied devices in the future.

Wireless charging support

Speaking of wireless—and cellular modems—let’s close out with a mention of wireless charging support. The iPhone 16e still has it. But in a first since the company initially rolled out its MagSafe-branded wireless charging capabilities with the iPhone 12 series in October 2020, there are no embedded magnets this time around (or in future devices as well?).

Initial speculation suggested that perhaps they got dropped because they might functionally conflict with the C1 cellular modem, a rumor that Apple promptly squashed. My guess, instead, is that this was a straightforward bill-of-materials cost reduction move on the company’s part, perhaps coupled with aspirations toward system weight and thickness reductions, and maybe even a desire to otherwise devote the available internal cavity volume for expanded battery capacity and the like. After all, as I’ve mentioned before, anyone using a case on their phone needs to pick a magnet-inclusive case option anyway, regardless of whether magnets are already embedded in the device. That all said, I’m still struck by the atypical-for-Apple backstep the omission of magnets represents, not to mention the Android-reminiscent aspect of it.

Future announcements?

The iPhone 16e isn’t the only announcement that Apple has made so far in 2025. Preceding it were, for example:

• Apple TV+ service support for Android (Messages next? I jest), and
• The second-generation Beats Powerbeats Pro (again, unlike Apple-branded earbuds, with Android support)

And what might be coming down the pike? Well, with today’s heavy discounts on current offerings as one possible indication of the looming next-generation queue’s contents, there’s likely to be:

• An M4 upgrade to the 13” and 15” MacBook Air, and
• An Apple Intelligence-supportive hardware update to the baseline iPad

Further down the road, I’m guessing we’ll also see:

• Next-generation AirTags
• The third generation of the AirPods Pro
• The aforementioned iPhone 17 family, reportedly including an “Air” variant, accompanied by next-generation Apple Watches
• M5 SoC-based devices (leading with the iPad Pro again, or back to the traditional computer-first cadence? The latter would be my guess), and
• Maybe even that HomePod Hub, aka HomePad we keep hearing rumors about

You’ll note that I mindfully omitted a Vision Pro upgrade from the 2025 wishlist Stay tuned for more press release-based unveilings to come later this spring, the yearly announcement-rich WWDC this summer, and the company’s traditional yearly smartphone and computer family generational-upgrade events this fall. I’ll of course cover the particularly notable stuff here in the blog. And for now, I welcome your thoughts on today’s coverage in the comments!

—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the company’s online newsletter.

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