Apple releases iPhone 16e with A18 chip and Face ID

After a few weeks of intense rumor, Apple has announced the iPhone 16E, bringing Face ID and Apple Intelligence to the A18-powered cheapest iPhone.

The SE is dead; long live the e series! And while we’re at it the Touch ID interface has gone as well as Apple brings its entry level iPhone model up to date with the iPhone 16e. That means the addition of a Face ID-enabled notch and an A18 chip, the same that sits at the heart of the current top-range iPhone 16.

Presumably that means it will launch a 17E and an 18E at the same point in the calendar in the future, even potentially in lockstep with the new models, though that might cannibalise lower end sales. Certainly makes the new naming convention a lot more digestible than the clunky generational SE was.

The new phone is based on an iPhone 14 body and has a list price starting at $599. That A18 chip provides access to Apple Intelligence features, while Apple is going big on impressive new battery life, in part enabled by the equally new Apple-developed C1 cellular modem.

It features a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display and Apple says it has the best battery life ever on a 6.1-inch iPhone, lasting up to six hours longer than iPhone 11 and up to 12 hours longer than all generations of iPhone SE.

It includes the customizable Action Button, but not the new Camera Control you’ll find on the 16 series. Nor is it MagSafe.

Apart from the TrueDepth camera hiding in the persistent notch, the main downgrade users will notice from the already released 16 series is with what Apple refers to as a 2-in-1 camera system. This is basically a single 48MP camera with a 2x Telephoto, though it comes with enough computational bells and whistles to be able to still take fairly impressive images. 

It can record video in 4K with Dolby Vision up to 60 fps, as well as recoding video in Spatial Audio. And it starts at 128GB so there’s space to record everything. RAM also presumably starts at 8GB, as this is the minimum spec for Apple Intelligence to run.

All in all it’s an interesting proposition. It aligns with most of the features that users want to see with a modern device, the Face ID being a particularly welcome addition, though perhaps many would have liked it to come in at $100 cheaper. It is notable that while Apple has managed to hold the price of the mainstream models static for the past year or so, the 16E is $100 more than the 128GB model of the 2022 SE was when it was introduced. And you can’t imagine it will sell many of the $899 512 GB models when that is the same price as a 256 GB iPhone 16.

tl;dr

• The iPhone 16E features Face ID and the A18 chip, marking a shift from the SE series and its Touch ID interface, starting at $599.  
• Built on the iPhone 14 body, it boasts a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display with improved battery life, lasting up to six hours longer than the iPhone 11.  
• The camera system includes a single 48MP camera with 2x Telephoto capabilities and can record 4K video in Dolby Vision and Spatial Audio.  
• While it meets modern feature expectations, the 16E is priced $100 higher than the 128GB model of the 2022 SE.