The iPhone 16e is struggling in one key area and yikes, it's kinda sad

GeekerWan has run some gaming tests on the newly announced iPhone 16e and found some surprising performance limitations that may disappoint mobile gamers.

The iPhone 16e is officially hitting the shelves today, Friday, February 28. Probably the first real mid-range phone by Apple (I mean, do dated-looking iPhone SE models really count?), but also equipped with an A18 Pro, 8 gigs of RAM, and Apple Intelligence support, it managed to get a lot of people hyped.

Get iPhone 16e at Apple for up to $630 off

$599

The latest budget-friendly iPhone model, the iPhone 16e, is here! You can buy a unit at the Apple Store for up to $630 off with eligible device trade-ins. Open sales begin on February 28. Carrier promotions are also available at the Apple Store.

Buy at Apple

Now GeekerWan, who's known from his in-depth smartphone tests, has taken the iPhone 16e for a spin and has discovered some interesting details about its config and its performance when it comes to gaming.

Curiously enough, despite the iPhone 16e being advertised as sporting the same chip as the iPhone 16, there are some unexpected trade-offs. In CPU speeds, differences aren't huge, but then, GPU speeds on the iPhone 16e have been hit by a hammer... or two.

The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is crucial when it comes to gaming, and GeekerWan tests show something you won't like if you're a gamer: the iPhone 16e has a weakness (and it's not lack of mmWave support or MagSafe, which are relatively minor things in my opinion).

In fact, the iPhone 16's GPU sports 5 cores, while the 16e's 4 cores. And before you frown at me, this one missing core can mean a noticeable dip in graphics performance, especially in demanding games. Here are the numbers.

First, we have the game Honkai Impact 3. The game has not been adapted to the iPhone 16e and all of its resolution settings appear to be... well, too high for that poor phone. Even in the lowest setting possible, the iPhone 16e just barely manages an average of 42 frames. The iPhone 16 pulled off an average of 49 frames.



Curiously, the iPhone 16e can provide only 4W of power, nearly 1W less than the iPhone 16. The Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Xiaomi 15 delivers 5.5W, while the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 in the Vivo X200 Pro Mini - 6.9W. But that's not all: the heat dissipation isn't ideal either.



As you can see above, the iPhone 16e seems to run overall relatively cool. However, the heat appears concentrated probably around the processor, which isn't great. A well-dissipated heat pattern should spread more evenly across the device to prevent thermal throttling. The Vivo and Xiaomi phone managed better heat distribution here.

In another game, Wuthering Waves, the situation is similar, with the iPhone 16e achieving sub-optimal average frame rates while getting even hotter than during Honkai.



As for Genshin Impact with 5G connectivity, the iPhone 16e manages to narrow the gap a little bit. But still, the 16e is overtaken in terms of performance by the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Pro. Curiously though, it performs better than the iPhone 15 Pro.



GeekerWan mentions another interesting fact. Previous iPhone SE iterations had the same results as the more premium iPhones with the same chip. However, this isn't the case this time around and it seems Apple has decided to downgrade the A18 chip a bit to differentiate it from the more expensive iPhone 16.

Probably, this would be the strategy going forward, now that we don't have the design element to differentiate between the 'mid-range' iPhone and the 'standard' iPhone. So, if you're a gamer, maybe you'll need to look elsewhere.


However, this comparison is interesting given the fact that Apple's marketing tricks make it sound that the 16e's chip is identical to the iPhone 16's, and this isn't really the case, as shown above.

If that makes you feel better though, the iPhone 16e managed to outperform the iPhone 16 when it comes to 5G power efficiency, and also has a surprisingly big battery. To each their own, I'd like to add.