Great cameras, not Apple Intelligence, is what people want from an iPhone 16e

After much anticipation, Apple finally announced the iPhone 16e yesterday. Looking at its position in the company's lineup, the 16e is a headscratcher. My colleague Ian Carlos Campbell already wrote about how strange it is that the phone is missing MagSafe, a feature universally loved by Apple users. However, the omission that stands out the most to me is that the iPhone 16e doesn't come with more than a single rear camera, and no, 2x telephoto cropping doesn't count.

Sure, if you put the 16e against its predecessor, the 2022 iPhone SE, it’s not a surprising omission — but when you consider today's broader smartphone market, it's a glaring weakness. At $599, the 16e is $100 more than the Pixel 8a, a device with two amazing rear cameras and an AI-capable processor (more on that in a moment). The 8a is also frequently on sale for as little as $399. Some people hate the Pixel comparison, so I'll give you another one. Last spring, Nothing released the $349 Phone 2a. Like the 8a, it has two rear cameras. Oh, and a fresh design that's not borrowed from 2020. At almost $200 more than the phone it replaces, the 16e is very much not a midrange device.

I know what you're thinking: what's wrong with one camera, as long as that camera is great? In the case of the 16e, I think the problem is that Apple is misreading the market and what people want from their next phone. All consumer devices are a compromise in some way. Those become more pronounced as you move down the market.

For most people, their phone is their primary camera and how they document their lives and memories. Think about what was the first thing you tested when you upgraded to your current phone. I bet it was the cameras. In that context, more are better, because they make it easier to capture moments that are important to you.

For a device some outlets are describing as "low-end," the iPhone 16e features a state-of-the-art chip. It might be cut down with one less GPU core, but the 16e's A18 is still a 3nm chip with 8GB of RAM to support the processor. Apple clearly felt the A18 was necessary to get its AI suite running on the 16e. But that means the rest of the phone had to suffer as a result, starting with the camera package.

I don't know about you, but if I were in the market for a new phone, I would want the most bang for my buck. The SE line had its share of drawbacks, including a dated design and a lackluster screen, but at $429, they made sense. For all its faults, the SE still felt like a bargain in 2022 because you were getting a modern chip, access to iOS and all the great apps that come with it and Apple's excellent track record of software support. With the iPhone 16e, you're not saving nearly as much off the price of a regular iPhone. Yes, everything I said about the SE's strengths is still true of the 16e and it even builds on that phone with additions like a better battery and an OLED screen, but the smartphone market has evolved so much in the last three years.

Again, I know people hate the Pixel comparison, but the 8a makes far fewer compromises. Not only does it feature a more versatile camera system, but it also comes with a high refresh rate OLED. The 8a's Tensor G3 chip is also fully capable of running Google's latest AI features.

I know offering the best hardware features for the price has never been Apple's approach, but that approach only made sense when the company had the best software experience. We can all agree Apple Intelligence has not met its usual quality standards. Just look at notification summaries, one of the main selling points of Apple Intelligence. Apple recently paused all news and entertainment alerts generated by the system to address their poor quality.

Right now, Apple Intelligence is not a compelling reason to buy a new iPhone, and its inclusion on the 16e at the expense of other features feels, at best, a cynical attempt to boost adoption numbers. If the 16e was $100 cheaper, maybe I would be less critical, but right now it feels like Apple missed the mark.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/great-cameras-not-apple-intelligence-is-what-people-want-from-an-iphone-16e-130041307.html?src=rss https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/great-cameras-not-apple-intelligence-is-what-people-want-from-an-iphone-16e-130041307.html?src=rss