The ‘e’ stands for ‘expensive’

The iPhone 16e. Image: Apple.

Apple on Wednesday announced an all-new iPhone model, succeeding the previous-generation iPhone SE but nevertheless carving out a new spot in the now-convoluted iPhone lineup. The new model, called the iPhone 16e, follows the same philosophy as the SE line of iPhones — the latest-generation processor with otherwise lackluster specifications —  and brings Apple Intelligence to Apple’s cheapest iPhone, but otherwise sports a recycled design from the iPhone 15, sans one camera lens and a few other features that make it sit weirdly within the lineup. But the most important detail is the price: the iPhone 16e costs 12 percent more than its predecessor, at an eye-watering $600. Among many of its other glaring omissions, I think the price instantly negates any reason to buy this iPhone. But that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting: For one, it’s Apple’s first iPhone with a custom cellular modem, called the Apple C1 — an interesting branding choice coming from a company typically coy about underlying technologies. The C1 makes the iPhone 16e one of Apple’s most interesting smartphones in a while, but I reckon its time will be short-lived, with the more flashy iPhone 17 Slim anticipated to be released later this year, along with the rest of Apple’s autumnal iPhones.

What Does ‘e’ Even Mean?

Up until Tuesday night, I was dead-set on the “fourth-generation iPhone SE” name. Apple refreshed the iPhone SE’s design drastically in 2018 and didn’t find the need to change the name, so I was positive the SE moniker would always designate Apple’s most affordable iPhone. There is even an Apple Watch named SE, too — it just makes sense to call the next cheap iPhone the iPhone SE. I was wrong, and Apple decided to go for “iPhone 16e.” I think the name has a few different meanings: it still sounds familiar, can be updated yearly to match the previous year’s flagship iPhones, and models the Google Pixel’s “A”-series naming scheme. The “e” could stand for many things — chiefly “economy” — but I truly believe Apple wanted to pick any letter other than A and landed on E because it sounded similar to “SE.” (SE stands for “special edition,” according to Phil Schiller, Apple’s then-marketing chief.)

Why a letter? If I had to guess, it’s probably because it’s easy to increment. In a way, I’m glad Apple is done with the “fourth-generation” nonsense. For most people, it’s too difficult to remember, and for journalists, it’s too cumbersome to write. Apple’s naming schemes vary across device lines: iPhones increment yearly (14, 15, 16, etc.), iPads have the “nth-generation” prefix that often goes into parentheses (“11-inch iPad Pro (fourth-generation)”), and Macs are known by their year (“2022 MacBook Pro”). The iPhone SE lineup has always been named by its generation, like iPads, but people usually choose to increment the number anyway, i.e., “iPhone SE 2, iPhone SE 3,” etc. Keeping the flagship iPhone number simplifies the name and allows Apple to update the device yearly around springtime. But e? It couldn’t do better than that? I still think “iPhone SE 4” is a perfectly fine name, especially because “e” adds ambiguity to the lineup. I despised the iPhone XR’s name for this reason, too — letters should mean something, and the “R for Retina” theory never spoke to me.

Time will tell if Apple sticks with the “e” name or if it goes the way of the “c” in “iPhone 5c” and “R” in “iPhone XR.” But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised when I read that the “e” was lowercase, not uppercase and subscript like the XR. The only case of this in the iPhone’s history is the iPhone 5c, which leads me to ask: Why didn’t Apple go back to 2013 and call this iPhone the “iPhone 16c?” Even “iPhone 16R” would make more sense than “e,” yet another letter to clutter the iPhone release timeline. Either of those names would also give Apple a nice excuse to offer the iPhone 16e in some snazzy colors — it’s only offered in a boring white and black now. Maybe it doesn’t want to adopt the name of a badly received low-end iPhone, but I recall the iPhone XR being very well-received for its time. The name stuck so well that it was rumored up until the last minute that the iPhone 11 would be called “iPhone 11R”; Apple ditched the letter for the “Pro” scheme the lineup carries now.

‘$600, Fully Subsidized?’

The iPhone SE’s price has steadily crept up over the years, and even the last generation’s $430 price tag was too unfathomable for me to recommend to anyone. By contrast, the iPhone 16e has a lot to offer, and I think a minor price increase is warranted: an organic-LED screen, (binned) A18 processor, Action Button, 48-megapixel camera, and USB Type-C port all are worth at most a $70 price increase. But anything over $500, and it isn’t a “low-end” smartphone anymore; $600 is flagship pricing for a below-average specification sheet. It doesn’t have the Dynamic Island, Camera Control, ultra-wide camera, or even MagSafe, a feature introduced in 2020 with the iPhone 12 mini that cost only $100 more than the iPhone 16e when it launched. Seriously, when I saw the newest iPhone in Apple’s lineup was missing MagSafe, a core feature of the iPhone, I was shell-shocked.

But then it hit me: The price increased 12 percent, just 2 percent more than President Trump’s 10 percent tariff on all Chinese-made products. Suddenly, everything made more sense — the material cost for the higher-end iPhone 15-era components cost Apple 2 percent more than the iPhone SE, but the rest is thanks to the Trump administration. That doesn’t explain why the phone is 730 euros (approximately $761) in Europe, but it is a possible reason for the higher component costs. I’m not willing to put the blame entirely on the Trump administration because of truly how outrageously overpriced it is in Europe — a relatively tariff-free land — but it’s something to consider for the fall. I think the most likely outcome is that the base-model Pro iPhone starts at 256 gigabytes of storage, and Apple bumps the price to $1,100, just like it did for the Pro Max model a few years ago, but I still don’t know how much the base models will go up. (I do still think prices will increase across the board, though.) This should serve as a word of caution for what Apple thinks is acceptable in the new regulatory climate.

Back to the iPhone 16e: The phone doesn’t make sense at its current price, not even in the slightest. Most people in the United States don’t buy their phones outright — they buy them in monthly installments on a two-year contract. Doing some rough math, that’s $25 to $27 a month over 24 months for a base model, 128 GB iPhone 16e. An iPhone 16 would cost $33 to $35 a month, which really isn’t that much more money, especially if carrier deals come by with any frequency, as they typically do. The standard iPhone 16 is a much better iPhone: a better camera, better screen, faster charging, MagSafe, and Camera Control all come at just $8 more a month. That’s the price of a reasonably sized Starbucks coffee. And people buying used iPhones are better off purchasing a refurbished iPhone 14 at $530 — $70 less for a better camera and only marginally worse chip — or, even better, waiting until September for the iPhone 16 to drop to $700. That’s the best option for anyone who cares about Apple Intelligence, the Dynamic Island, Camera Control, and the new Photographic Styles, the latter omission of which is the most disheartening because I think they’re the best feature of the iPhone 16 line. (As an aside, Visual Intelligence is demoted to an Action Button feature on the iPhone 16e.)

I don’t think Apple deserves any accolades for increasing the base storage to 128 GB — it is 2025, for heaven’s sake — but it certainly deserves blame for charging nearly $800 in Europe for a phone with a single camera lens. (Well, two, if we’re being pedantic, thanks to the 2× binning feature first introduced in iPhone 14 Pro; I believe it’s the same sensor as found on iPhone 16.) It’s telling that the only iPhones Apple compares the iPhone 16e to on its website are the iPhone 11, iPhone 12 and 12 mini, and the older iPhones SE — it bests none of Apple’s recent flagship handsets.

Apple C1

After years of development, Apple finally debuted an in-house, custom cellular modem to replace Qualcomm’s models still used in higher-end iPhones. I’m surprised Apple even mentioned the C1 beyond a footnote in its press release and “event” video, knowing it doesn’t usually disclose what modems its devices have, but I don’t blame the marketing department for this one. Apple C1 truly is a big deal because it opens up a new paradigm for success (and failure, but most likely success). The C1 is a 5G modem — but with no millimeter-wave functionality, which is fine by me — that Apple says provides sizable efficiency gains, but I reckon it’ll be even more impressive if 5G is turned off or in the “Auto” mode as it is by default. Time will tell if the C1 is unreliable garbage or not, but I have confidence in Apple, and I’m excited for when a higher-end, more advanced C2 or C3 is added to the flagship iPhones, perhaps in 2026.

I anticipate the C1 serving as a test run of sorts. If it fails catastrophically, Apple will go back to the drawing board and ship the C2 toward the end of the decade, cutting its losses on a relatively low-yield, low-production iPhone. But if it goes well, it’ll start adding the C1 to the iPads, maybe go up a generation to the C2, and then slowly introduce it to the flagship models in a few years. That’s why I thought the C1 would be nothing more than a footnote — because understating it would allow Apple to pause the rollout with minimal scrutiny or even try shipping some iPhones with the C1 and others with a Qualcomm modem, as it did with the iPhone 7. My only hesitation is that modem switches haven’t gone well for Apple; the iPhone 7’s Intel modems were bad, and the company quickly had to shift back to committing business with Qualcomm, one of its archenemies. (Bear in mind Intel and Apple were friends in 2016.) This time, Apple can’t pawn off the responsibility for bad modems to Intel — it’s all or nothing.

I truly believe Apple doesn’t want to renew its contract with Qualcomm come 2026, which is as long as it’s valid for now, but for that dream to be realized, the C1 better be up to snuff. Any media fiasco for this otherwise subdued technology is bad news, just like iPhone 4’s “Antennagate” scandal. I think it’ll be fine, but don’t be surprised if it ends up in the news a lot over the coming months. The modem is one of the most fundamental parts of the iPhone, and the launch of the C1 needs to go well for Apple’s processor division to have another triumph post-Apple silicon Macs.