iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17: Everything we know so far

The iPhone SE is no more. With the arrival of the iPhone 16e, the days of cheap(er) Apple handsets are well and truly over, with the entry-level device now starting at a much pricier $599.

At that price, it’s not that far off the $799 iPhone 16, leaving buyers on a budget with a tough call to make. But with the iPhone 17 expected in September, a potentially tougher decision awaits in a few months.

So just how will the iPhone 16e stack up against the iPhone 17? Here’s what we know so far.

iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17 specs

iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17 price and availability

The iPhone 16e is available to buy right now, with prices starting at $599 for the model with 128GB of internal storage, rising to $699 if you want to double that to 256GB. The 512GB model, meanwhile, will set you back $899.

The iPhone 17’s pricing is, as yet, unknown, but we can make an educated guess. The current iPhone 16 starts at $799 — the same as the iPhone 15, iPhone 14, iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 before that.

That pattern seems clear: Surely the iPhone 17 will also cost $799? Well, maybe, but five years without a price hike for the standard model feels like a streak waiting to be broken, and some expect that to happen this year. A rise of up to $899 certainly seems possible, but we’ll have to wait and see.

iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17 design and display

The iPhone 16e’s fresh new look is actually a recycled old one taken from the iPhone 14. Both have a 60Hz 6.1-inch OLED display and Face ID, house in the notch that Apple has abandoned on more recent models in favor of its floating Dynamic Island. In fact, the two are so similar that one teardown found you could install the 16e’s screen on an iPhone 14 and it would still work.

MagSafe has been taken out, however. Whether that will be a serious misstep or something people won’t notice remains to be seen.

The iPhone 17 will of course have MagSafe, and while the iPhone 17 Pro is tipped to get a radical new camera design, all signs point to the regular model sticking with a look that’s not too far removed from what’s available today, with the same vertical array seen on the iPhone 16.

While it’s expected to keep its 6.1-inch frame, the phone will have one key ace up its sleeve. Apple is finally rumored to be bringing its ProMotion 120Hz displays to regular iPhones, allowing for smoother animations and up to 120fps performance in apps.

iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17 performance

The iPhone 16e uses a slightly modified version of the A18 chipset found in the regular iPhone 16. Regular performance is indistinguishable, but as it has one less core in the GPU, it performs slightly worse in gaming benchmarks.

That gap is likely to grow larger with the release of the iPhone 17 and its presumed upgrade to the A19 chipset. While set to miss out on the upgrade to the 2nm production process, the A19 will use TSMC’s new enhanced N3P process, which should give a boost both to performance and energy efficiency. No benchmarks yet, but in general we get a boost of between 15 and 20% in performance between iPhone generations.

The iPhone 17 family will apparently also adopt vapor chamber technology, which could help the iPhones keep cooler under strain, theoretically boosting performance further.

iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17 cameras

While there has been talk of some serious upgrades for the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s triple camera array, we’ve heard nothing about the regular model. That might be because it’s unchanged or because nothing has yet leaked, but either way, we’re in the dark about the iPhone 17’s potential camera performance.

Despite this, we know it’ll be an improvement on the iPhone 16e because the iPhone 16 already has it beat.

While both phones use a 48MP fusion cameras, capable of taking 2x optical-quality zoom photos via pixel binning, the iPhone 16 adds to this with a 12MP ultra-wide sensor for taking wide-angle shots.

In other words, the iPhone 17 will beat the iPhone 16e for photography, even if it stands still this generation. However, if you don’t use the ultra-wide functionality, you may decide the upgrade isn’t worth the extra cash.

iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17 outlook

While a lot is still unknown about the upcoming iPhone 17, it feels like some of the improvements — notably the 120Hz screen and more powerful chip — will be worth paying more for when launch day rolls around.

That said, the biggest unknown of all — price — could yet make that decision less clear-cut. Given the iPhone 16e was $100 more expensive than most people expected, it seems possible that the iPhone 17 could add a similar premium this year. If that occurs, the iPhone 16e could still be the model to beat, even if it will lack that new phone sheen by September.