The iPhone 16e is worth $ 599, but it is not dared to call it a budget phone. I hesitate to name it “cheap”. As a successor to the IPHONE SE of $ 429, it is difficult not to see 16e as disappointment. Certainly $ 200 is less than the iPhone 16 (which I argued was large at all), and the 16E packages are in the latest A18 chip with Apple Intelligence support. But it is no longer a small phone, and it pays the IPhone option cheaper than Apple to more than $ 500. This is a possible thing we will not see again. (It is likely to be a terrible news of future iPhone prices as well.)
Given the huge amount of new iPhone-16E-including 6.1-inch OLED, the first “C1” modem in Apple and the above-mentioned A18 slices-easy to make excuses for the price. Certainly 16e is much closer to the specifications to iPhone 16 to the third generation of SE was on iPhone 13. But I claim that Apple did not need exactly the OLED screen for this model, and there are likely to be other ways so lowering costs. (It is even strange that Apple kept Magsafe and fast wireless charging, which would have been cheaper for implementation, and it can be said that it is more useful, than a large OLED screen.)
Although it is good to have the A18 chip (albeit with a lower GPU) and full support for Apple Intelligence, I agree with my Igor Bonifacic colleague that users are not completely demanding those AI features. If we have to blame one of the perpetrators at the iPhone 16E pricing, it is possible that Apple Intelligence. After all, Apple is still fighting to prove that it is not very far from Microsoft, Google and Openai. In any other year, Apple may have been able to justify throwing an older chip in 16E, but this is not possible when it was in the middle of the noise war of artificial intelligence.
Mostly, I am only sad because Apple again raises the admission rate in its walled garden without much justification. There is something special-noble, even-about $ 500 of smartphones. It is a reminder of Snerer from smartphones, when prices are reduced by phones like Moto G. 400 dollars Samsung Galaxy A35 and $ 499 Galaxy A55.
Now that the dream of the iPhone has become $ 500 well and a truly death, it seems that Apple is just going to put the way to jump future prices. The iPhone 17E will look $ 600 or $ 650 as a deal compared to $ 850 or $ 900 iPhone 17. Watch only a foldable amount of $ 20, which could exceed $ 3000.
Of course, you may be a smart shopping in Apple and chose the iPhone used or renewed devices. I recently picked up the iPhone 14, which was renewed as a gift on the early Mothers’ Day for $ 420, and it currently has Amazon lists of iPhone 14 Pros Rise $ 500. These devices will not support Apple, but I claim that sticking to the used market is just a more useful form of intelligence.
This article originally appeared on Engadget on https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones