> iPhone 16e has the best battery life ever on a 6.1-inch iPhone, lasting up to six hours longer than iPhone 11 and up to 12 hours longer than all generations of iPhone SE.
Their page comparing models claims the new 16e gets "26 hours video playback."
iPhone 16e: 26 hours
iPhone 16: 22 hours
iPhone 15: 20 hours
iPhone 14: 20 hours
iPhone 13: 19 hours
iPhone 12: 17 hours
iPhone 11: 17 hours
> Expanding the benefits of Apple silicon, C1 is the first modem designed by Apple and the most power-efficient modem ever on an iPhone, delivering fast and reliable 5G cellular connectivity. Apple silicon — including C1 — the all-new internal design, and the advanced power management of iOS 18 all contribute to extraordinary battery life.
Lots of people are mad about losing magsafe but in magsafe phones the magnets sit flush with the frame in a huge circular cutout just below the back glass. The hole weakens the frame so the frame has to be thicker because of it.
I don't think there is really a world where this phone gets 6 more hours of battery life while still having magsafe and fitting into the existing shape of the iPhone 14.
"Inside Apple’s Spectacular Failure to Build a Key Part for Its New iPhones"
>The 2018 marching orders from Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook to design and build a modem chip—a part that connects iPhones to wireless carriers—led to the hiring of thousands of engineers. The goal was to sever Apple’s grudging dependence on Qualcomm, a longtime chip supplier that dominates the modem market. The obstacles to finishing the chip were largely of Apple’s own making, according to former company engineers and executives familiar with the project. Apple had planned to have its modem chip ready to use in the new iPhone models. But tests late last year found the chip was too slow and prone to overheating. Its circuit board was so big it would take up half an iPhone, making it unusable.
https://kanebridgenews.com/inside-apples-spectacular-failure... [2023]
Otherwise what would a video playback time spec have to do with the efficiency of the cellular radio?
Part of it is certainly the modem, but part of it is also likely to be the larger battery.
I'm really curious to see both how the Apple C1 performs and also how they changed up the internals for a larger battery and how much larger that battery is.
However at $599, higher than the rumoured $499 or $549 pricing. iPhone 14 previously at $599 and iPhone SE at $429 are now gone. Getting rid of iPhone 14 and iPhone SE as they are both using Lightning and not USB-C.
The lineup is a little strange. Will iPhone 15, currently at $699 dropped to $599 when they announce iPhone 17?
The most interesting part is of course the Modem. We will have to wait and see how it perform.
800 nits typical brightness vs. 1000 for the 16, 1200 nits maximum brightness vs. 1600–2000 nits.
Notch vs. dynamic island, of course.
In addition, they are said to have replaced the WiFi/Bluetooth chip with one developed in-house.
> Apple Inc.’s ambitious plan to create in-house components for its devices will include switching to a homegrown chip for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections starting next year, a move that will replace some parts currently provided by Broadcom Inc.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-12/apple-nea...
The rumors called out improved battery life as an upside.
You see this in telecom a lot.
No MagSafe here
They have Macs they call Macbook Airs, but their Macbooks look like "Air" Macbooks, they really should have swapped the names on those models long ago.
Source:
Google shipped about 10 million Pixel phones in a year https://9to5google.com/2024/02/22/pixel-2023/
iPhone Mini accounted for about 3% of iPhone sales https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/21/cirp-iphone-13-best-selling-l...
iPhones sell about 200 million units per year https://www.demandsage.com/iphone-user-statistics/
200 million * 0.03 = 6 million iPhone Minis per year
[0] see: massive financial incentives, developer tooling to help maximize engagement, product design focused on extended use, notoriously useless screen time feature etc
[1] we don’t have exact mini sales, but estimates are they were around 6% of total iPhone sales (aka: low, but billions a year in revenue, enough to keep barring other incentives) - more revenue than many other Apple products or the SE, for example. Even if you’re Apple you don’t axe billions in revenue for nothing!
Another aspect that I think is often missed is that the Mini physically cannot offer the same battery life as other iPhones. Many say they don't mind this, but over time as the battery life deteriorates, it becomes a pain point all the same. I think that is another aspect of why they don't like the small form factor.
I plan to use it, until I need to charge the battery every 15 minutes.
I have a 13 mini and will use it until it dies...just like the SE before it.
So many people are interested in which phone I have. It’s a 12mini. Won’t upgrade to 13mini bc that doesn’t make any sense.
I simply don’t want a bulky phone.
In other words whatever size the audience is for a mini phone they are further fragmented into people who want a flagship phone vs mid range phone vs budget phone.
And those market segments are too small to make it worth Apple or even most android manufacturers effort.
Part of the problem with Mini was its battery life. It seems 16e is improving on exactly that. Although I think it wont be 5.4" again since it was too small compared to the rest of the line up where it is usually 20% bigger screen to next size up.
May be 5.6" or even 5.8" as the original X.
That is literally what happened.
So keeping that in mind, regarding the modem, I remember prior comments about it being near-impossible or extremely difficult for Apple to cut out Qualcomm because of the decentralized network of mobile towers, operators, proprietary information, legacy cruft, edge cases, hardware and geographical testing, etc., which Qualcomm handles as part of its value-add. If Apple starts spearheading changes in how phone modems work, could we imagine mobile towers playing along and converging? Or is it more entrenched than that?
Prior discussion
it was extremely difficult, they have been working on this since at least ~6 years, maybe longer and involved buying intel 5G modem business
it also is lacking UWB which either Apple has given up on or is bringing back with future revisions of their modem
Do You mean Telco Equipment vendor converging? Well first thing is that 4g / 5G or 3GPP is an open standard so anyone could implement it. Second is that there are only a few Telco Equipment vendor left already. There will still be insane amount of testing required to be done even if everyone were to use the same equipment. The amount of variables such as spectrum, regulations requirements, physical space and density as well as weather difference.
4G and above are open standards, and Samsung, Huawei and MediaTek have all previously created their own cellular modem implementations.
It's not easy, but if your market share is big enough, you come out ahead.
Apple's own comparison tool is useful: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-16e,i...
But not for 600 USD, that's a bit too much.
Traditionally, the amount of RAM in your device is the limiting factor that controls how many years of updates you get.
So far, 8 years for the OG iPhone SE is the standing record for years of updates.
I dunno, the old SE wasn’t a mini by any means - this is .3 inches taller and .2 inches wider, so yes bigger but not like a different size class altogether
Now with C1 that API is designed at apple and in a way that their soc team wants to get the best battery life along. So the modem can be turned off / on updated request data signals etc in a more efficient manner with the soc. On top of that apple probably cleaned up parts of the modem that they probably didn’t feel were needed for their iPhones that maybe QC were obligated to include because of the way their modems had to be designed and sold.
Now do this to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and put everything in the soc and you are going to be getting solid gains sooner than later.
This transition is very exciting cause I’m hoping this happens to MacBooks as well.
Would love a 5G MacBook with a data plan.
Massive chunks (millions of lines) of Qualcomm modem firmware (the part running on Hexagon DSP cores) are even leaked on github for anyone to see.
Apple is bound to have uptodate and probably even completely source available Qualcomm firmware at its engineers' fingertips. And they have more leverage than random Chinese IoT manufacturer, to request ability to modify it as they see fit. And they'll certainly have at least the parts that are relevant for the control you're talking about.
The decision most likely comes down to politics (any help optimizing qualcomm modems directly benefits everyone using them, and that's a lot of android phones out there), and not these kinds of technical issues.
I thoroughly enjoyed the ATP podcast discussion on this.
Sounds like the base assumption is Apple is incapable of having decent tethering even as they control the whole ecosystem, including special protocols in-between their product they design 100% from hardware to software.
But somehow pushing the modem in the MacBook solves this...because Apple is then good at managing transient network connections in macos, hooking to complex mesh networks on protocols they don't control ?
To my eyes Apple being unable to realize these dreamlike expectations is probably the very reason MacBooks don't have modems.
Low Data Mode would need to be better enforced at the OS level (maybe with even per-app prompts and data usage tracking - safari and music can use 5G but maybe Arq backups shouldn’t)
Maybe UWB, NFC, GPS too, right?
Noob question: these things have software defined radio something DSP something angry pixies. And the just add Rx/Tx stuff as needed. Right?
AM, FM, CB, whatever support would be cool.
This has been a long time coming since Apple bought Intels modem division several years ago.
I’m also interested to see if it enables cellular in laptops. Afaik the limiting factor has been that Qualcomm charge a percentage of device rate , which would be exorbitant for a laptop. Having it be in house might allow for it now.
Are WWAN cards not a thing already? I've never looked much into them at all, but they do seem to exist, at least (and seem to be around $20-$50 and plug into M.2 slots)
My current iPhone (and I had to check which one I have...) actually is much more sticky to satellite. It wont switch back to cellular immediately.
I am guessing that's the end of the small phone line at Apple.
That really ended with the 13 mini on which I'm typing this comment and that I'll hold onto till it's no longer supported.
Can someone explain why they are pushing USB 2 speeds via USB-C connector in 2025? Can't believe it's cost... It's a shame.
It's maddening but it is a question of cost; it's just pennies, and Apple is for sure not passing on the savings to us.
why wouldn't it be cost? even if it's only a few cents per unit, they're still going to sell millions of these, it all adds up and the best place to cut costs is in the places where most people don't actually care.
I wish though they would ship some beefy apple tv/mac mini/router with 32GB RAM that can work not only as private llm but also private iCloud, vpn, router, pihole, etc
I think being able to cram this amount of new tech (a new camera, a new modem) for a new device is good for apple. I believe this will play out well, and this tech will graduate the so-called flagships in a couple of years.
Some people may care a little extra for an ultrawide lens and spending more for the cheaper iPhone 16 with 2 lenses of regular + ultrawide is enough for that. Don't have to get the more expensive Pro model.
The Pro model adds a 3rd lens for optical "true" telephoto instead of digitized "fake" telephoto and increases the resolution on the ultrawide.
It's also not clear from from the Apple press release if the 16e has a macro mode. The regular iPhone 16 (not Pro) has macro.
Which is also why we will probably see the discontinuation of the regular iPhone 16 this Fall when the iPhone 17 is introduced, with this 16e staying on at the same price for an extra year.
The new modem is interesting. How much power around the world is being wasted because Qualcomm's code sucks? Apparently gigawatts per day.
I don't see much in favor of the vanilla iPhone 16. Is the extra camera lens useful for anything beyond portrait mode?
Con(?): 60 Hz
And the price hike again shows that Apple is the master of the "for just a few hundred dollars more, you can get...“ upsell to bigger iPhones.
Anyone who disagrees should try teaching an older relative with less than youthful fine motor control how to use a FaceID equipped iPhone.
This is the biggest announcement IMHO, it's been a long time coming for them to ship something after buying the patents from Intel. It makes sense to ship the first new radio in "not your flagship" and a good way to test it out.
I wonder if the iPhone 17 will have it or if they will wait another year to see how it does. I would imagine the 17 is pretty much locked down as of now so it's not like this phone is meant to test in the wild then use the tech in 17 since there isn't enough turnaround time.
I used to think 4.7” was a bit too much. Holding onto SE 2016 till death do us part.
Wait a sec. 24 * 24.95 = $598.80
They'll pay you twenty cents to take the financing?
Unless interest rates drop to 0% they're obviously still losing money, but if you follow the logic of everywhere that allows BNPL[0] you make it up by having more purchases than you would otherwise.
[0]: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/buy-now-pay-later/
> The last month’s payment for each product will be the product’s purchase price, less all other payments at the monthly payment amount
>Available space is less and varies due to many factors. A standard configuration uses approximately 12GB to 24GB of space, including iOS 18 with its latest features and Apple Intelligence on-device models can be deleted if Apple Intelligence is turned off and use approximately 7GB of space. Turning on Apple Intelligence will download the models again. Apple apps that can be deleted use about 4.5GB of space, and you can download them back from the App Store. Storage capacity subject to change based on software version, settings, and iPhone model.
I use chatGPT while driving in the car to get things done & as a knowledge base, but I have to open the app to use it (not safe when driving).
I have an iPhone 15 Pro and still with Siri's Apple Not-Intelligent I can only ask Siri one question at a time and I always have to say Hey Siri ask ChatGPT xyz and then to continue to learn more have to say that again with a follow-up question. It's such a terrible UX when compared to opening chatGPT and talking to it, yet again not safe to do so when driving!
I think Apple's selling point is the app ecosystem, but I personally don't use apps all that much. Just a few big ones and they're all just for communication: FB Messenger, WhatsApp, SIM, SnapChat. And the web browser, maps. I'm 27.
Why can't someone just manufacture a screen, some buttons, little computer, then software for communication and make some good money?
Just seems Apple is a dinosaur nowadays Google too.
A few lower end black and white screen Android phones exist, and that seems closer to what you want.
I have some other obligations to handle, but the iPhone 16e looks perfect for me. You can replace so much music production gear with an IOS device. Can legit plug in a microphone and record a full album, which just isn't really their on Android.
It's beyond frustrating, but on IOS you have amazing music production, and Android is like 10 years behind. I wish Apple would offer a musicians edition with a headphone jack ( I'd literally pay an extra 150$) , but that's never going to happen...
It's not like the status quo phones are too expensive, too small or too slow compared to the average user's use case. There is a phone for every price point, and at worst you'll be stuck with a bad camera or a laggy chipset.
There are already phones running Linux and de-Googled OSes (Purism, Librem, LineageOS). They won't ever get big enough to challenge Apple/Samsung, but maybe be big enough to have a stable enough OS to not scare off people looking to switch.
It's unfortunate jumbotrons sell so well to the mindless masses that live on a phone. Otherwise the two main sizes would be the 5.42 and 6.3. Both reasonable for daily carry in a pocket. The 6.7 and 6.9" sizes are what are silly.
I'm taking this as a sign from Apple that I use my phone too much and should probably stop.
Somehow I see using phone less as a benefit.
The idea of having a normal screen on the front but then a second foldable screen inside is a great tradeoff between form and function.
Unfortunately I can’t see Apple releasing this because it harms their tablet sales. Hopefully I’m proven wrong though.
I suspect the real reason they haven't released a foldable yet is that foldables still need to have a soft plastic screen and a crease/bump in the middle, and Apple's design neuroticism would never permit them to ship such a thing.
Putting aside the biggest issue which is a creased and more fragile screen, I’m not really convinced it’s a better experience. Having more real estate for movies seems useful, but it’s otherwise difficult to type/hold/tap on such a large screen without a full commitment to tablet usage (which often includes a stand). I’m also not really sure how often I’d use the larger format.
Whoah! Maybe Apple can now figure out how to put a cellular modem in a MacBook Pro.
You can always easily tether to your iPhone. It’s hard to imagine people who own a Mac but don’t have a phone — I assume Android can also provide tethering? Aside from the BOM price increase and physical real estate, do want to pay $10/mo or whatever for an additional line?
That the only reason Apple never included a cellular modem in MacBooks is because it would raise their prices because they'd have to pay Qualcomm.
Now that they won't, it seems inevitable.
The day this new one came out, I went and bought a brand new SE. I'll keep it in the box until my current SE dies and then I will swap it out for a (new) old SE.
1. Is there a terminal equivalent like termux?
2. Is there an open source wireguard client like the official wireguard client for Android?
3. Is it possible to upload mp4 videos to it to watch offline?
4. Is it possible to upload some of my mp3 collection to it to play offline?
5. I believe syncthing isn't officially supported. Are there any alternative syncthing implementations or workarounds?
I plugged it into my MBP expecting to be able to copy media over, but you can only copy it into the sandboxed filesystem of one app. So choose wisely.
Downloading media using Plex etc sucks. As soon as the phone locks or you move to another app, it stops. On Pixel, I could queue up a load of downloads or SMB transfers, lock my phone on the side and expect them to be complete when I come back.
As for a terminal or using it like a computer, fuhgeddaboutit.
If anything I've said is wrong, please correct me. I want to like this phone, the camera is out of this world.
2. There's the official wireguard client
3. iOS has native mp4 support. You can play mp4s from files stored on the phone, or from gdrive or dropbox, etc. or just import to your photos/videos library.
4. Yes.
5. yes, the Möbius Sync app
2. I use the official Wireguard client.
3. Yep.
4. Yep.
5. People grouse about it, but iCloud works brilliantly if you use it with other Apple gear. There are also the usual suspects like Box, Dropbox, GDrive, etc.
You’ll have to pry the 13 mini from my cold dead hands…or just stop supporting it
My iPhone 12 Mini has seen better days, and I will need a new phone soon. It is disappointing that there is no alternative to the iPhone 12/13 Mini in 2025.
The smaller form factor is more comfortable in my hand, and fits better in my pockets. With the slim bezels, I have never felt that the screen was too small.
It is funny to think that the screen size on the iPhone 12 Mini is very similar to the screen size on the older plus models.
sigh
At this point one of these SE type devices is on my list for any future upgrades. I've gone to carrying a pocketable camera with me pretty much anywhere so having a good camera on my phone is no longer necessary, which means no more Pro model for me.
If your concern is pocketability this new phone is only 0.25 inches larger in the diagonal.
The 16 at first felt freakishly huge after years of the 13 mini, but I’ve gotten used to it.
For them: more control, lower marginal costs.
The segmentation is very visible.
It's a bummer, because it means that in case of need (broken phone) i cannot buy any new phone, drop my sim in and go.
It's a HUGE step back.
Xiaomi Poco X7 & X7 pro were released in Janunary, for example. Don't see a post about that.
A Mini would not have been a diminished experience/purchase even with lesser features. This is a diminished experience even for what it would cost.
This is a sad day and not progress in any meaningful way (social engineering away physical SIM, causing loss of flexibility when traveling).
With medical conditions affecting my muscle strength, I wish phones would get a bit lighter. Glass sandwich form factor is unnecessarily heavy and fatigues my arms.
Not sure if I want to upgrade.
(Grammatically, I mean. I'm not asking for legal advice.)
Edit: Nope. What's different from the 16? Action button? 1 less GPU core? Same camera but no ultra wide? Ahhh, it's just a cheapened 16.
Welp rip any interest a bunch of us had in an iphoneSE4.
What a fucking waste of time. The sad thing is I can accept that apple continually wants miserable storage base tiers, that ship has sailed and they will never see 256gb as logical starting points on a phone so damn expensive when their computers start at that horrid storage point.
If it was $499 I would have contemplated finally upgrading. At $599 I'll let everyone else beta test apples new modem in case its another 'you're holding it wrong' type of response if it underperforms in speed, connection quality, etc.
iPhone 16e: $599, 6.1-inch display, 5.78 x 2.82 x 0.31, 5.88 ounces
This is a major downgrade in every way for people who want the smallest possible iPhone.
Mostly I just want a phone that is comfortable in my hands.
That said, if this is their "first gen" then there could be teething issues.
It would be nice to put the last few years of developments since his death into a silicon brain and ask the digital Steve Jobs his thoughts on the current state of affairs.
Will be interesting to see how Apple and Nvidia's approaches to AI compare and contrast over the coming months/years.