After a lot of expectations, Apple finally Announced iPhone 16e yesterday. Check out its position in the company’s lineup, 16e is the head grab. My colleague Ian Carlos Campbell has written about how weird it is magsafe is missing on mobile phoneThis feature is generally loved by Apple users. However, the most prominent omission for me is that the iPhone 16e has no more omission than a single rear camera, and there is no 2x telephoto cropping that doesn’t count.
Of course, if you violate 16e’s predecessor, 2022 iPhone SEwhich is not surprising, but it is a clear weakness when you consider today’s wider smartphone market. $599, 16e Pixel 8aa device with two amazing rear cameras and an AI-capable processor (more later). 8a is also often sold $399. Some people hate pixel comparisons, so I’ll give you another one. Nothing released last spring $349 Phone 2A. Like the 8a, it has two rear cameras. Oh, this is a new design that hasn’t been borrowed since 2020. Nearly $200 more than the replacement phone, the 16e is not a mid-range device.
I know what you are thinking: As long as that camera is great, what’s wrong with a camera? As far as 16e is concerned, I think the problem is that Apple is misreading the market and what people want from the next phone. All consumer devices are tradeoffs to some extent. These become more obvious as you move along the market.
For most people, their phones are their primary cameras and how they record their lives and memories. Consider what the first thing you do when you upgrade to your current phone is. I bet it was the camera. In this case, it’s more of a better one, as they make it easier to capture moments that matter to you.
For equipment, some sockets are Described as “low-end”, The iPhone 16e has the most advanced chips. It might cut with less core than the GPU, but the 16E’s A18 is still a 3NM chip with 8GB of RAM to support the processor. Apple obviously believes the A18 is necessary to get its AI suite to run on the 16E. But that means that the rest of the phones have to suffer from the camera packaging.
I don’t know you, but if I buy a new phone in the market, I hope to make the best efforts. The SE series has many drawbacks, including an outdated design and a bland screen, but it makes sense for $429. Still, SE still feels like a bargain for 2022, as you get modern chips, access to iOS and all the great apps that come with it, and Apple’s excellent track record of software support. With iPhone 16e, your savings are not the price of a regular iPhone. Yes, everything I say about the strengths of the SE is still the correctness of the 16E, and even builds additions like better batteries and OLED screens on phones, but the smartphone market has evolved over the past three years Very big.
Again, I know people hate pixel comparisons, but 8a has much less compromises. It not only has a wider camera system, but also has high refresh rate OLEDs. The 8A tensor G3 chip is also fully capable of running Google’s latest AI capabilities.
I know that providing the best hardware features for the price is never Apple’s approach, but this approach only makes sense if the company has the best software experience. We can all agree that Apple intelligence has not met its usual quality standards. Just check out the notification summary, which is one of the main selling points of Apple Intelligence. apple Stopped recently All news and entertainment reminders generated by the system are designed to address their poor quality.
Currently, Apple Intelligence is not a compelling reason to buy a new iPhone, and it includes it on the 16E at the expense of other features, at best a cynical attempt to improve adoption of numbers. If the 16E is $100 cheaper, maybe I wouldn’t be very critical, but now I feel like Apple misses the trace.
