iPhone 16e review – I’ve secretly tested Apple’s cheapest mobile and I love the new button but that’s not the best bit

APPLE is trying to tempt you with its thrifty new iPhone 16e – and I’ve already had a go. I’ve spent about a week testing the new mobile, which is currently the cheapest in Apple’s line-up. The iPhone 16e is a sort of spiritual successor to the old iPhone SE series – best-known for small, budget-friendly handsets.

But this model has had a massive makeover (and a slight price hike), and is brimming with handy upgrades and clever features. It’s part of the iPhone 16 line-up, which launched with four phones last September starting at £799/$799. But this new model undercuts the lot with a £599/$599 price tag.

Now long-time Apple fans will know that that’s about £180/$180 more than the old iPhone SE. But Apple has clearly tried to tack on a bunch of bells and whistles to make that price feel fair – and I reckon the job’s a good 'un. So, what’s new?. The Home button is gone. That’s the big shock.

Or it will be for some shoppers who were using the old iPhone SE. Of course Apple ditched the Home button on its main smartphones back with 2017’s iPhone X. So for some – myself included – it’s a distant memory. We had some good times with the Home button, but it’s been sensibly culled.

So much more space is freed up, allowing Apple to squeeze in a generous 6.1-inch display. Note: the display is a gorgeous OLED panel. Usually screens use an LED backlight to illuminate the crystals that make up your display, showing an image. But OLED panels have self-illuminating pixels, and don’t need a big backlight running constantly.

This is better for battery life, but it also means individual pixels can be switched off to show true black. So you end up with improved contrast and a wider range of colours. It looks gorgeous, and it’s a decent win on an iPhone at this price point. Here's how iPhone screen sizes have changed over the years – as measured in inches diagonally from corner to corner...

Picture Credit: Apple / The Sun. Anyway, back to the Home button. You may remember that it used to house the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Well that’s gone too, replaced with a Face ID sensor that scans your mug. It’s easier, faster, and the lasers that make it won’t have more uses than just unlocking your iPhone.

So, that’s two ticks. Apple has also binned the old Lightning port that first appeared with the iPhone 5. (Remember the old 30-pin connector before that? Ugh.). Now we’ve got USB-C, in line with the main iPhone series – and almost every other modern gadget.

It’s a versatile cable that doesn’t just belong to Apple. You’ll find it on MacBooks and iPads, in cars and hotel rooms, and even on Android phones and Windows laptops. We really are in the future. Also dead is the old Mute switch near the volume buttons.

I appreciate that I’m am listing off things that have been killed, which might sound bad. But these are all extremely welcome upgrades. The Mute switch has been replaced with an Action Button, which was first seen on 2023’s iPhone 15 Pro. You can use it for switching between ring and silent, sure. But it can also open your camera, turn on the torch, or do something else entirely. Your choice. Much better.

The iPhone 16e comes in two colours: white and black. They’re safe, popular options that get a nice upgrade courtesy of a matte finish that looks great. I’ve been using the white one and it’s beautiful. It reminds me a bit of meringue. Anyway, this tasty iPhone is also very lightweight. If you’ve ever used a Pro Max device, this feels like lifting up a feather.

The last thing to note on the iPhone’s outside is the camera. There’s just one, but it’s actually two. Sort of. You’ve got a 48-megapixel camera that takes lovely and impressive snaps – and seems to fare well even in rubbish lighting. But Apple has also made it so that the middle 12 megapixels of the camera can be used as a telephoto camera. This gives you a handy 2x zoom.

And the 2x zoom even works on Portrait mode, so you can take those lovely pictures where the subject is sharp and set against a soft focus. By contrast, the old iPhone SE used computational fakery to create this effect. The camera is also very capable at recording video.

It can manage 4K Dolby Vision footage at up to 60 frames per second. And it can even deliver Full HD slow-motion video at 240 frames per second. I always think video capture doesn’t get enough appreciation on iPhone. This is an incredible camera squeezed into a relatively small and cheap device. And in the video era we now all live in, it does a brilliant job.

Better still, you’ll now have a lovely OLED screen to watch them on. It might even be better than your living room telly if you haven’t upgraded in a few years. This feels like a good point to talk about what’s powering the iPhone. The innards. It’s shipping with the A18 chip, which gadget fans will know is the same Apple processor inside last year’s iPhone 16.