this $599 iPhone 16e There are many things, but you dare not call it Budget phone. I don’t even want to call it “cheap”. As the successor to the $429 iPhone SE, it’s hard not to see the 16E as a disappointment. Of course, it’s $200 less than the Vanilla iPhone 16 (I think it’s Large launch), 16e is also packaged in the latest A18 chip and supports Apple Intelligence. But this is no longer a small phone, it pushes Apple’s cheap iPhone options, far exceeding $500. That’s something we may never see again. (It could also be terrible news for future iPhone prices.)
Given the huge amount of new hardware in the iPhone 16E – including a larger 6.1-inch OLED screen, Apple’s first internal “C1” modem, and the aforementioned A18 chip – it’s easy to excuse the price. The 16e’s specifications are definitely much closer than the iPhone 16’s specifications than the third-generation SE than the iPhone 13. Reduce costs. (This is even a stranger Apple avoids Magsafe and fast wireless chargingthis is cheaper than large OLED displays and is arguably more useful. )
While it’s nice to have the A18 chip (although with few GPU cores) and full Apple Intellioncence support, I agree with my colleague Igor Bonifacic Users are not completely yelling For those AI features. But if we have to blame the price of the iPhone 16e, it might be Apple’s intelligence. After all, Apple is still trying to prove that it is not far behind Microsoft, Google and Openai. In any other year, Apple may have been able to justify putting older chips in the 16E, but in the middle of the AI Hype War, this is impossible.
Mostly, I’m sorry Apple has raised the fares for Walled Gardens again without much reason. There is something special about a $500 smartphone – aristocrats, even aristocrats. They remind you of the security era in the smartphone era when prices were lowered Phones like Moto G. These days, your remaining Android phone Pixel 8a (and Probably the upcoming pixel 9a), and $400 Samsung Galaxy A35 and $499 Galaxy A55.
Now that the dream of an iPhone that is under $500 is already good and is indeed dead, Apple is just laying the foundation for future price increases. The $600 or $650 iPhone 17e certainly looks like a deal, while the $850 or $900 iPhone 17 is. Just wait for the inevitable $2,000 iPhone to fold, which could be over $3,000.
Of course, you might be a smart Apple shopper and choose a used or refurbished iPhone. Recently, I bought the refurbished iPhone 14 Plus for $420 as an early Mother’s Day gift, and Amazon currently has a list iPhone 14 Professionals for less than $500. These devices don’t support Apple Intelligence, but I think the market that sticks to it is just a more useful form of smartness.
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