I Tested the $599 iPhone 16E and Its Good but Also Kind of Odd

After testing the iPhone 16E for six days, I was surprised the most by how wonderfully uneventful it was to use. Along with all the standard iOS 18 functions and goodies, like iMessage and FaceTime, I used Apple Intelligence, made calls on 5G, took a bunch of share-worthy photos and videos and played video games like Resident Evil 4.

What more could you want, right?

I can also do all of these things on the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro, but don’t need to pay as much to do so with the 16E. I wouldn’t call the iPhone 16E a budget or cheap phone. But it does plenty to earn that $600 price, even if it does miss that $500 sweet spot other affordable phones like the Google Pixel 8A hit.

If you can get a discount or a carrier deal to lower the price, the iPhone 16E’s value becomes even better.

iPhone 16E: Should you buy it?

The iPhone 16E’s flat-sided design is similar to every phone Apple launched since the iPhone 12, aside from the SE. The back glass has a sophisticated textured matte finish, which looks understated and gives the iPhone 16E a more premium air. There’s no camera bump sticking out of the back, just a single lens, which makes the black iPhone 16E I’ve been testing have some serious 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith vibes.

The iPhone 16E’s screen reminds me of the one on the iPhone 14. It’s 6.1 inches and has an old school-style notch at the top to house the selfie camera and FaceID tech. The notch didn’t bother me in use, but I did miss having the Dynamic Island and seeing background activities, like a timer at the top of my screen count down as I’m cooking. The iPhone 16E seems aimed at folks with older iPhones that don’t even have the Dynamic Island. So they won’t know what they’re missing.

The iPhone 16E has a single rear camera. I’ve said it before, but I’d rather have one really good camera than the two or three mediocre ones that can often be found on budget phones. The 16E’s main camera takes lovely photos, even when using night mode. It has a 48-megapixel sensor, which has enough resolution for sensor cropping to offer a 2x magnification, and the results are decent. Images look sharp, have a nice dynamic range (good for high-contrast lighting like sunrises/sunsets), and colors are attractively subdued. 

Is the iPhone 16 more versatile with its second rear camera that’s an ultrawide lens? Yes. Does the iPhone 16 Pro take better photos? Yes. The iPhone 16E is great for someone who just wants to document a moment and share it with friends and family or post a quick selfie to Instagram or a video on TikTok.

The iPhone 16E’s actually has a new feature that no other Apple phone does: a modem. Most people have no idea what kind of modem their phone has and just want assurance that they get a signal and can reliably make voice or video calls that sound good. And the iPhone 16E delivers on both accounts. Phone calls sounded clear and video calls over 5G never froze.

Technically, it’s impressive that Apple designed the C1 modem (it’s first), and the calls I made on the iPhone 16E (indoors, outdoors around San Francisco on AT&T) sounded good and clear.

I was able to use 5G to download apps on the go like PGA Tour Pro Golf (2.4GB) in less than a minute. I was also able to stream Severance on the Apple TV Plus app over 5G with no problem.

I ran tests side by side with an iPhone 16 Pro Max that was also on AT&T using the Speed Test app by Ookla, which is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis. And while the 16 Pro Max had faster download speeds, the 16E’s results were still good. In fact, its upload speeds beat the 16 Pro Max, which means selfies and videos post quickly to Instagram and TikTok, while video calls look and sound good without any freezes.

iPhone 16E battery, iOS and services

The iPhone 16E is powered by Apple’s A18 chip, just like the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus. The only difference is the version in the 16E has four GPU cores instead of five. In everyday use, the phone had no issues playing video games, editing and saving videos and using Apple Intelligence. In benchmark test for the CPU, the iPhone 16E scored higher than the iPhone 16, iPhone 15 and iPhone SE.

In benchmark test for graphic performance, you can really see the difference that the iPhone 16’s extra GPU core has over the iPhone 16E. It’s also notable that the iPhone 15 bests the iPhone 16E in terms of graphical power.