iPhone 16e vs iPhone 16: Danger! Danger!

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Get the iPhone 16 to experience Apple Intelligence and save up to $630 with eligible trade-ins. The promotion is available at the official Apple Store.

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$899

$630 off (70%)

Enjoy Apple Intelligence on a larger screen with the iPhone 16 Plus. This bad boy is available for up to $630 off with eligible trade-ins at the official store.

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The last two iPhone SE generations exploited the iPhone 8 design and felt really outdated, especially the iPhone SE (2022). The iPhone 16e gets its mojo from the iPhone 14 and it's kind of why Apple decided to rebrand the model and say good buy to the SE moniker.

We still don't have official information on what the "e" stands for, but if we were to guess, it'd be something along the lines of "economical" or "essential." The design is unique in the way that it looks like an iPhone 14 from the front but with a tweaked camera bump on the back.

The ultra-wide is missing, and there's just one main snapper with an LED flash next to it. Other than that, the front uses the old notch layout, while the iPhone 16 utilizes the Dynamic Island idea, where the selfie camera and all the Face ID sensors float in a pill-shaped cutout.



Going around both phones, we find another omission, and it's the Camera Control button. This new interface can be found on the iPhone 16, while the 16e gets only the Action Button. Both phones use the now-mandatory USB-C port, and when it comes to dimensions and weight, both are in the same ballpark. If we have to nitpick, the regular iPhone 16 is 0.1 mm wider and 3 grams heavier than the 16e, but we reckon no one will be able to feel such a difference.

The departure from the SE moniker comes with another big change and it lies in the display of the iPhone 16e. It's an OLED panel now with the same specs as the iPhone 14. Now, this puts the new 16e very close to the vanilla iPhone 16, with some very minor differences.

In terms of display size and resolution, both phones feature the same 6.1-inch, 1179 x 2556 pixels panels with the same pixel density of around 460PPI. The new iPhone 16e sticks to the same 60Hz refresh rate as the other non-Pro models in the iPhone 16 family, which is understandable.

Where these two differ is the front-facing cutout for the selfie camera. The iPhone 16 comes with the Dynamic Island design, where the selfie camera and FaceID sensors are nested in a pill-shaped cutout, while the iPhone 16e employs the notch.

Another potential area where these might differ is display brightness, as the iPhone 16e can do 800 nits in high brightness mode and 1200 nits peak, while the regular iPhone 16 is listed at 1000 nits HBM and 2000 nits peak. 

Display Measurements:

The display tests above show that the panel inside the regular iPhone 16 is superior to the one on the iPhone 16e in every meaningful way. The regular iPhone 16 is brighter, it can go lower in minimum brightness, it has better gamma, and color temperature. This should be one of the areas that could justify that $200 price bump from the 16e to the regular 16.

As far as biometrics go, both phones rely on the same FaceID system, with the iPhone 16e marking the end of the TouchID, last found on the previous SE model.

The new iPhone 16e features almost identical silicon to the regular iPhone 16 lineup. We say almost, because the graphics chip inside the 16e has one less core, compared to the other non-Pro models.

Other than that, it's the same Apple A18 chipset, and we should be getting very similar synthetic benchmark scores out of these two phones. The caveat here is that 3D Mark results might be lower on the 16e model, due to the different GPU configuration. Let's check out the scores.

Well, it doesn't look like the extra core inside the GPU of the regular iPhone 16 is doing much, at least in this test. The results are very close, with a 2-3% difference in favor of the iPhone 16. We call this one a tie.

Apple also made sure to pack enough RAM inside the 16e, it mimics the 8GB found inside the regular iPhone 16, mainly to tackle all Apple Intelligence requirements. Speaking of which, Apple Intelligence first made its debut with iOS 18.1, but Apple’s been slowly rolling out features, with more expected to drop in iOS 18.2 and 18.3. By Match 2025, we’ll see a major Siri upgrade and all the new features will land on the 16e as well. Great news.

This is a huge surprise because it seems that the iPhone 16e delivers more or less the same hardware AND software experience as the iPhone 16 and also comes with the same support cycle. The single big difference lies in the camera department. Which is coming up next.

Remember how back in the day phones used to have just a single camera? Well, welcome to the past. The iPhone 16e features a single camera, and even though, it's a high-megapixel-count one, it's still just a single camera.

On the back of the new iPhone 16e we find the same 48MP F1.6 wide-angle camera as the one found on the iPhone 16 (with the same fancy name as well). It can do 24MP images by default and also snap some high-resolution 48MP photos.

The iPhone 16 has pretty much the same sensor and optics, with the aforementioned fancy name Fusion Camera. It's really interesting how these two stack against each other, as this the only area where the vanilla iPhone 16 could have an advantage thanks to the additional ultra-wide camera onboard.

It's also worth noting that the iPhone 16e lacks the brand-new Camera Control button, relying only on the Action button for different mapped actions. However, the 16e supports Visual Intelligence, so the difference in the end boils down to the ultra-wide camera (or the absence of it on the 16e).

The results are very close, but there are some minor differences. It seems that the regular iPhone 16 does a better job with exposure and dynamic range—the photos look a tad more natural, while the 16e overexposes and makes the image brighter. But again, the differences are minor.

Another interesting observation: the iPhone 16 creates a shallower depth of field on its main camera, and the background displays a certain level of blur, while the iPhone 16e keeps everything in the frame in focus.

Both of these devices use crops of the main sensor to allow 2x optical-like zoom. And both samples look again very similar. However, there's a noticeable difference in color temperature between the two—the zoom shot from the iPhone 16e looks warmer, and there's some oversharpening, while the image from the vanilla iPhone 16 preserves a tad more detail, and the white balance looks better too.

This is where these two are almost identical. Selfie samples from the front camera look indistinguishable from one another, and in a blind comparison, we doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. If you snap a lot of selfies and you don't care for the ultrawide camera, then the 16e could tick the camera box for you.

Apple doesn't list the battery capacity of its iPhone models, but we've had the first teardowns of the iPhone 16e, so we know it comes with a pretty hefty 3,961 mAh battery. It's actually bigger than the one found in the regular iPhone 16, and it will be pretty interesting to see how the 16e will perform battery-wise.

Our battery test returned interesting results. The overall score is in favor of the regular iPhone 16, despite it's smaller battery and one additional GPU core. Where the iPhone 16e was able to last longer (around 40 minutes longer, to be precise), was the browsing test.

As far as charging is concerned, things are doomed to remain abysmal on this front, as Apple doesn't seem to care much for faster charging. The iPhone 16 comes with 25W wired charging support, and the iPhone 16e mimics these charging speeds and the wired charging results are almost identical. 

One big omission is the MagSafe support on the new mode, so if you love your MagSafe accessories this might be a big hit for you.

Here's how the iPhone 16e vs the iPhone 16 specs stack against each other. For a deep dive, check out the detailed iPhone 16e versus iPhone 16 specs comparison.

This is shaping out to be a very interesting battle, as the recently unveiled iPhone 16e shares too many similarities with its much more expensive relative, the iPhone 16. We're looking at pretty much the same size, screen, chipset, a similar main camera, and identical charging. The battery is actually bigger, but overall the differences are less than the similarities.

At $599 it seems that the new iPhone 16e is a good budget option that focuses on the "essential" iPhone experience. The additional $200 that Apple is asking for the regular iPhone 16 will get you one ultra-wide camera with the Camera Control button, a brighter display, and MagSafe functionality. Whether or not it's a fair trade remains to be seen.