Apple introduced the iPhone 16e globally, including India last week. The successor to the 2022 iPhone SE model gets a bigger screen, drops the Touch ID, and also comes with the A18 chip for Apple Intelligence. Here we have the first impressions of the phone.
Box Contents
- iPhone 16e 512GB model in Black
- USB-C To C Cable
- Documentation
- SIM ejector pin
The phone gets a bigger 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display, bigger than the 4.7-inch screen in the older SE model. This is also brighter, offering up to 1200 nits brightness, and also has a Ceramic Shield protection.
This gets an improved 12MP TrueDepth front camera that supports HDR video recording with Dolby Vision up to 4K at 60 fps. Since the Touch ID Fingerprint sensor is gone, the phone brings a notch that has Face ID enabled by the TrueDepth camera system. The earpiece also doubles up as a secondary speaker.
The A15 Bionic is replaced by a Six-Core Apple A18 chip that features a 16-core neural engine, optimized for running large generative models, and uses 2nd-gen 3nm technology. However, this has a 4‑core GPU compared to 5‑core GPU in the A18 present in the iPhone 16.
This is also the first phone to use Apple’s own C1 5G modem with all-new internal design and 7nm fabrication. In select countries it also has satellite features, but doesn’t it does not support mmWave 5G.
The phone has aerospace‑grade aluminium with flat sides and a matte finish, similar to the iPhone 16. This replaces the Ring/Silent button with the Action button. However, this doesn’t have Camera Control that is present in other iPhone 16 series phones.
You can also see the antenna cutouts. On the bottom there is a USB Type-C Port. You can see speaker grills and the microphone port on either sides of the port. The phone has IP68 water resistance, an upgrade from IP67 ratings in the older iPhone SE model.
It has a single 48MP camera with optical image stabilization, 4K video recording at 60 fps, Slo‑mo 1080p at 240 fps, HDR 5, Photographic Styles, Deep Fusion, and Cinematic mode up to 4K at 30 fps.
The back now has a matte finish to match the iPhone 16, so it is not prone to fingerprints. This has Ceramic Shield protection that was first introduced in the iPhone 12. The phone has a bigger battery that promises up to 26 hours video playback, which is 11 hours more compared to the 2022 SE model, yet it weighs 167 grams.
The new iPhone 16e is priced starting at Rs. 59,900 for the 128GB model compared to the Rs. 48,900 launch price for the iPhone SE 2022 model. It is available from Apple India online stores, other online stores like Amazon.in as well as offline retailers across India.