Rarely do electronic devices become synecdoches. The iPhone and smartphones have been synonymous since 2007. At times noticeably slimmer and occasionally trifle smaller but it’s always powerful and future-proofed. That brings us to the new iPhone 16e, which, once again, proves it’s not the size of the phone in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the phone.
Talk about innovations, there is plenty to point out in the iPhone 16e, be it hardware or software. It’s something Bob Borchers, vice-president, worldwide product marketing, Apple, touched upon time and again when we met in Mumbai.
Battery optimisation and C1
The phone is not about cosmetic upgrades. There is the promise of excellent battery life, camera enhancements and support for software features that Apple is known for, including Apple Intelligence. Perhaps the biggest update involves the switch to the first cellular modem designed by Apple. Called C1, it’s a component we are seeing on an iPhone for the first time.
When it comes to a new chip or processor, users can easily distinguish between the old and new by the time taken to complete tasks. Modem is a different game. It is in many ways responsible for putting the ‘phone’ in the iPhone. Most users have no idea what kind of modem their phone has. They just want to be assured that they enjoy strong network signals to make voice or video calls sound good. A well-designed modem can offer more than only stable connectivity.
“I think the biggest thing that they (users) will feel, and it’s a hallmark of iPhone 16e, is battery life, which takes a huge step forward, especially when you compare it to, say, the iPhone SE family or to older iPhones. We’re talking many, many more hours of use throughout the day. That’s a huge advantage for every customer. C1 is a big contributor to that because of the way in which we’ve been able to design the entire system and focus in the same way that we have with our A series chips or M series chips on performance per watt. Drive as much performance with the most efficient design that we possibly can, and that’s something that we have done incredibly successfully across the system. We are essentially using 25 per cent less power for the same tasks with C1 than we have on previous iPhones. This is the most power-efficient modem that we have ever put into an iPhone,” said Borchers.
To offer perspective, Apple has been working on its modem for many years. In 2019, the company acquired Intel Corp’s old cellular modem division for $1 billion. Designing a new modem is not a simple task since it needs to be tested among several carriers in a large number of countries.
“When you think about performance… for a consumer, that’s one of the key things… how is this delivering the capabilities that I need and giving me great battery life. In addition, modems are incredibly complex systems and we have, in our typical way, worked very carefully and thoroughly to build software, firmware, silicon, tools, technologies… tested it around the globe with over 180 carriers and (in) more than 55 countries, 2G to 5G support, including in India. I think one of the great things that most customers want is they just want it to work well when they’re multitasking, when they’re texting or streaming video or getting directions, all of that needs to come together. When people are looking at C1, what they’re going to see is incredible performance, and they get it with incredible power efficiency, which results in great battery life,” added Borchers.
Power of choice
The new phone fits well into the iPhone 16 family, especially on performance charts. The secret sauce here is the A18 chip that also powers the rest of the iPhone 16 lineup. It’s the chip that can handle Apple Intelligence or the company’s bouquet of artificial intelligence features smoothly.
iPhone 16e on display at Snowball Studios in Mumbai
The Apple veteran said: “The fact that we can bring the core and essential features of our flagship line of products at an incredible value is amazing, and that’s why we’re so excited. It really delivers that iPhone 16-level performance, because you get the A18, you’ve got this incredible battery life, you’ve got the 48MP Fusion camera system, you’ve got a 6.1-inch OLED display, USB-C, Action button… those are the things that define the iPhone 16 family. The fact that we can extend that now, make it even more accessible, is awesome.”
On the A18, the 6-core CPU is up to 80 per cent faster than the A13 Bionic chip on iPhone 11, handling both everyday and intensive tasks with ease. The 4-core GPU helps with top-of-the-line graphics performance and unlocks next-level mobile gaming on the go, allowing graphically demanding AAA titles and hardware-accelerated ray tracing for realistic lighting and reflections. The 16-core Neural Engine is optimised for large generative models and runs machine learning (ML) models up to 6x faster than A13 Bionic.
It is also interesting to see what Apple has done with the iPhone camera. Not everyone needs an iPhone 16 Pro-level camera and then there are those who simply want the phone to handle all the heavy-duty camera tasks on its own. The iPhone 16e does that.
“The camera system is really a marvel and has many amazing features to it, whether it’s the ability to capture 48-megapixel photos or access Night mode, the Photonic engine, Dolby Vision, and so on, these are incredible capabilities customers are going to value.”
For India, the Apple roadmap is unwinding effectively. The company has two retail stores of its own in India — Mumbai’s BKC and Delhi’s Saket — and four more are on the way.
Apple CEO Tim Cook during the company’s first-quarter earnings call a few weeks ago said: “India set a December-quarter record during the quarter, and we’re opening more stores there. We’ve announced that we’re going to open four new stores there. The iPhone was the top-selling model in India for the quarter, and it’s the second-largest smartphone market in the world and the third-largest for PCs and tablets, so there’s a huge market, and we have a very modest share in these markets, and so I think there’s lots of upside there, and that’s just one of the emerging markets.”
It ties in with what Cook told The Telegraph when the first Apple retail stores opened in India in 2023: “What we are is a toolmaker…. It wasn’t too many years ago when you would kind of (get) pushed into a career path of an engineer, or a doctor maybe. And now it’s so great that there’s a creative community that’s blossoming out there. It’s quite alive in India.”
Borchers agrees with the vision. He said: “The thing that is great about iPhone 16e is it creates this flagship experience and delivers amazing value. We do think it’s going to be a great opportunity for people who have maybe an older iPhone to upgrade because they can now take advantage of Apple Intelligence or some of the camera innovations — or any of the other amazing features that come with it. Or for people who are coming from another platform to have their first iPhone experience. It is the complete experience; it’s got all of those flagship capabilities.
“Our expectation is that people are going to pick it up and fall in love with it. We hope that means that we will be able to earn them as customers for a long time to come. Most importantly, we want that first experience to be amazing, magical, and all of the things that really define the iPhone experience.”
The power of having choices cannot be overemphasised. Over the years, the iPhone has encouraged casual photographers to take the hobby seriously and improve their skills. The same is happening for videographers.
“We’re offering choice. We’re creating different systems for different people. I think for creators, for example, who are just starting out, iPhone 16e is a great platform because it’s flexible, it’s robust. It’s got amazing video capabilities. The audio capture is great and you’ve got a number of things that you’ll be able to take advantage of and create amazing content with. As they go on in their careers and want to do more sophisticated things and capture even more different kinds of content, we give them a way to choose… where they want to go. We are offering value at every step of the way.”
Gifts keep coming
A key feature users will be able to experience with iPhone 16e is Apple Intelligence. More and more features are getting refined. For example, the Clean Up tool can remove distracting elements in images, and natural language search in the Photos app allows users to search for just about any photo or video by simply describing what they are looking for.
There is Image Playground to express oneself creatively or create the perfect emoji with Genmoji. Writing Tools are dynamic and have several access points in the system.
iPhone 16e can handle all the Apple Intelligence tasks, including Visual Intelligence
Even with all the AI, there is zero compromise on privacy. With on-device processing, many of the models that power Apple Intelligence run entirely on device. For requests that require access to larger models, Apple’s Private Cloud Compute extends the privacy and security of the iPhone into the cloud to unlock even more intelligence. When using Private Cloud Compute, users’ data is never stored or shared with Apple.
April will be a big month when expanded language support will arrive as part of the 18.4 update. Users will be able to update the primary iPhone language to Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu or Urdu. The implementation is deep into the system and includes Health, Settings and Apple apps.
All of that brings us to a question many are asking — what does ‘e’ stand for in iPhone 16e? “When naming a product, you want it to reflect what’s important about it. So for us, first and foremost, having iPhone 16e was critical because it is part of the iPhone 16 family. It’s delivering those core, essential iPhone 16 flagship features at an incredible value. Then we also want it to represent that this is an extension to that family. It’s something that’s incredibly exciting. It delivers the essential features. It’s for everyone. We’ve had ‘e’ in our lexicon before. So when you look at it in its entirety, we felt like it helps deliver a really strong message,” said Borchers.
It would have been the moment when Stephen Fry would have added “and Bob’s your uncle”. But we want to keep it for the reply to one more question we had for Borchers: His favourite feature. “The battery life. I still marvel at it. The other thing is the scripts with 10 new languages (coming in April); it’s beautiful. It marries many local elements with our love of typography.”