iPhone 16E: all the news on Apple’s new $599 phone

Following months of rumors, Apple has finally announced the iPhone 16E, a spiritual successor to the last-gen iPhone SE that’s set to launch on February 28th. Preorders for Apple’s forthcoming handset start at $599 with 128GB of storage and began Friday, February 21st.

Like the most recent iPhone SE models it’s replacing, the iPhone 16E offers flagship-level performance in an older form factor at a cheaper price than its contemporaries. Apple outfitted an iPhone 14-like body with the Apple Intelligence-ready A18 chip from last year’s iPhone 16. That means it’s lost the physical home button but gains a bigger edge-to-edge 6.1-inch OLED display with a notch to house the front-facing camera and Face ID sensors.

The iPhone 15 Pro will get Visual Intelligence, Apple’s Google Lens-like tool that lets you point your phone’s camera at things in the world to learn more about them, in a future software update, Apple representatives told John Gruber of Daring Fireball.

Visual Intelligence was originally introduced with the initial iPhone 16 lineup in September, and Apple showed it off as a feature that you launched from the Camera Control button. But yesterday, Apple announced that Visual Intelligence would be available on the iPhone 16E, which does not have the Camera Control button, through its Action Button.

Apple’s goal with the new iPhone 16E seems to be the same as with the iPhone SE: offer a very good, cheap smartphone to entice price-sensitive shoppers to either leave Android or upgrade from a much older iPhone. From what we’ve seen so far, the company seems to have succeeded — but maybe a little too well: there’s not a whole lot of space differentiating the 16E from the pricier iPhone 16. That’s something Apple will have to remedy the next time its flagship phone updates come around if it wants that model to stand out.

There used to be a large gap between the iPhone SE and the standard model iPhone. The SE had an old design with thick bezels and a home button. It had a small screen, a slower processor, and less storage. If you bought the SE, you knew you weren’t getting the latest and greatest.

For the first time since the iPhone’s debut in 2007, Apple no longer sells a smartphone with a home button. The iPhone 16E announced yesterday removes it. The removal was long overdue, having been surpassed by all touchscreen controls many years ago. But while the home button’s time is over, it leaves behind an important legacy.

The home button was crucial to the first iPhone, but it was also jarring; no other phone at that time had basically no buttons. It was both a gamble and a necessary innovation.

Apple has launched its new iPhone 16E with an updated design, additional features, and no home button or MagSafe charging. This revamped version of the company’s budget phone will be going for $599 and will include a USB-C port, a notch, a customizable Action Button, a fast A18 chip, and lots of extras. So what does that do for those who might have been looking forward to a smaller phone? Is the new Action Button a good thing? Will you miss MagSafe?

We asked the staff of The Verge for their first impressions of the iPhone 16E. Of course, we will be running a full review of the phone, which will ship on February 28th. But meanwhile, here are some of the feelings that the news has generated in some of our iPhone users.

Apple has stopped selling new iPhones with Lightning ports with the launch of the iPhone 16E and the removal of the iPhone 14 and the third-generation iPhone SE from its website. All new iPhones have a USB-C port. Finally.

This change isn’t a surprise. Apple has slowly migrated its products to USB-C from Lightning, which it introduced more than a decade ago with the iPhone 5, with updated iPads and newer accessories like the Magic Mouse and keyboard. Even the Siri Remote for Apple TV is available with a USB-C port.

If the iPhone 16 is out of your budget, Apple now has a more affordable, pared-down version for you to consider. The company on Wednesday announced the new iPhone 16E, a budget-friendly option that costs $599 and features Apple’s first in-house 5G modem, the C1. It will be available on February 28th, though you can preorder it starting on February 21st.

Like the iPhone 16, the 16E comes with a 6.1-inch OLED screen, Face ID, and a USB-C port. It also runs on the A18 chip, which allows the phone to support Apple Intelligence features. It has the same customizable Action Button on the left-hand side. And Apple claims it offers even better battery life, with up to 26 hours of video playback — four hours more than the iPhone 16.

Apple just announced the long-rumored iPhone 16E. With a starting price of $599 (up from the $429 SE), it’s now the most affordable smartphone in the iPhone lineup and offers the company’s latest A18 processor, Apple Intelligence software features, and a much better OLED display.

But if you’re mulling an upgrade from the now-discontinued iPhone SE or another smartphone, there are a few key points to consider — and some of them aren’t obvious.

It’s official: the home button is dead. Apple has launched the iPhone 16E with an updated design and killed off the iPhone’s classic Touch ID interface. Instead, the 16E moves to a Face ID-enabled notch and adds the latest A18 chip and support for Apple Intelligence under the surface, with a starting price of $599.

The 16E is a kind of iPhone SE successor based on the design of 2022’s iPhone 14, meaning it fits the front-facing cameras required for Face ID (and selfies) into a notch that cuts down from the top of the phone rather than the Dynamic Island design found on the company’s latest flagship phones.

Apple has just introduced the iPhone 16E, a spiritual successor to the iPhone SE line that has a significant first: it introduces Apple’s long-awaited in-house 5G modem called the C1. The chip, which Apple says is the most power-efficient modem in a phone, is Apple’s bid to end its reliance on Qualcomm’s 5G chips.

Apple says the chip contributes to the 16E’s longer battery life. The company says the phone’s internal design is optimized to support a larger battery, giving it up to 26 hours of video playback. According to Apple’s technical specifications for the iPhone 16E, its new chip covers much of the same low-end 5G spectrum as the iPhone 16 but lacks mmWave — that’s the 5G with gigabit-territory throughput.

Apple appears to have stopped selling the iPhone 14. The device, first released in 2022, seems to have vanished from Apple’s website following the launch of the iPhone 16E.

Apple removed the mention of the iPhone 14 from its website’s navigation bar, and it doesn’t show up when you search for it, either.

Apple may not have given the full launch event and keynote treatment to the iPhone 16E, but it dropped a launch video for the new affordable iPhone that shows it off. The video was uploaded to YouTube and added to the company’s iPhone 16E launch page.

Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the “new member of the iPhone 16 family,” before handing it over to vice president of iPhone marketing Kaiann Drance, who explains the phone’s key specs. The 16E is equipped with Apple’s A18 chipset, the same chip as the rest of the 16 line, which gives it enough power to run Apple Intelligence, something that even 2023’s iPhone 15 can’t do. It also includes Apple’s first-ever in-house 5G modem, the C1.

Apple has confirmed that it’s launching a new product today, and we think it’ll be the new iPhone SE. It could mark a major shake-up to the company’s affordable iPhone line, adding in Face ID and killing off the classic home button.

We don’t expect Apple to hold a full launch event for the new SE, instead simply announcing the phone on its website. We don’t know what time, but when the company has done this in the past, it’s tended to favor announcements in the morning, so whatever’s coming will likely arrive within the next few hours.