Malcolm Owen
The iPhone 16e is now available, with shipments of the new budget smartphone starting to arrive on customer doorsteps.
Apple's reincarnation of the iPhone SE line, the iPhone 16e, was opened for preorders on February 21. One week later, and the smartphone is now actually available.
Customers who preordered the iPhone 16e will start to receive their orders on Friday, or will be able to pick it up from the Apple Store. It will also be available to purchase without preorder from Apple, major retailers, and carriers.
Unusually for an Apple release, it seems there isn't much of an order backlog to deal with. It is very likely that customers could simply walk into an Apple Store and pick one up from most retail locations.
Curiously, there's also less excitement about the iPhone 16e's availability on social media. At time of writing, there's one YouTube video in Indonesian and one in English from Australia, that show buying and unboxing the iPhone in-store.
iPhone 16e is here
— Mohit Kalra (@Mohit_Emkay) February 28, 2025
Unboxing on launch day in Melbourne, Australia #AppleLaunch
First look at its design and features. pic.twitter.com/pBJVScG60x
Available in a choice of Black or White, the iPhone 16e starts from $599 for 128GB, with 256GB and 512GB capacities also available for $699 and $899 respectively. AppleCare+ is available at $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year.
The update from the iPhone SE 3, the iPhone 16e boasts a new 6.1-inch OLED display. The Home button with Touch ID has been retired in favor of a notch and Face ID.
The back has a new 48-megapixel camera with a virtual 12MP telephoto thanks to selective cropping of the massive sensor.
As it is powered by an A18 chip, the iPhone 16e is also the cheapest smartphone on Apple's roster with Apple Intelligence support. This gives access to features like Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, summarizations, ChatGPT via Siri, and Visual Intelligence using the Action button.
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William Gallagher
Thomas Sibilly
Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
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12 Comments
the showing of apple employees and especially chief briber Cook greeting people at their stores with such enthusiasm is appalling.
And where is Tim Cook in this video?
Is the 16e running 18.3.1? 18.3.2? or 18.4?
Just wondering... thx
edit: 18.3 then 1st day update 18.3.1
You all can stop associating 16e with SE3 now. They are on very different markets. The SEs are gone.
Lame phone...