The iPhone 16e, Apple’s most affordable iPhone from the iPhone 16 family, is available to pre-order in India beginning today, 21st February. Potential buyers can order the iPhone 16e in advance before its official release on February 28. The iPhone 16e price in India starts at Rs 59,900 for 128GB, going up to Rs 89,900 for 512GB. It comes in two colours: white and black.
Launched on February 19 through a pre-recorded keynote event featuring Apple CEO Tim Cook and Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide iPhone Product Marketing, the iPhone 16e is being marketed as the “newest member of the iPhone 16 family.” It also—probably—marks the end of Apple’s special edition branding which has existed since 2016. With no new SE launch in three years, the writing was on the wall. The discontinuation of the iPhone SE 3 soon after the launch of the iPhone 16e, is also a big signal. But we digress.
iPhone 16e pre-order date, time details
In India, the iPhone 16e will be available to pre-order from 6:30 PM on February 21. Broader availability is pegged for February 28. Alongside India, it will simultaneously go on sale in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, China, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, Türkiye, and the UAE.
iPhone 16e variants
There are three memory variants to choose from. These are 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. While not explicitly confirmed, the iPhone 16e is widely expected to have 8GB of RAM.
iPhone 16e price
The iPhone 16e base variant with 128GB storage is priced at Rs 59,900 in India. The 256GB model is priced at Rs 69,900. The top-end version with 512GB storage will set you back by Rs 89,900. For complete prices in the US, UK, China, Dubai, Canada and more, you can refer to this iPhone 16e buying guide here.
iPhone 16e full specs, top features and more
The iPhone 16e has a body made of glass and metal. The back uses “toughened” glass while on the front Apple is using its “ceramic shield” cover for added protection. The phone has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. It has a customisable Action Button and an iPhone 14-style notch housing a 12-megapixel TrueDepth camera system enabling Face ID biometric authentication.
The display is a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED with a 1.5K resolution and up to 800 nits of peak brightness (1200 nits for HDR). The refresh rate is 60Hz.
Apple is using a binned version of the A18 chip to power the iPhone 16e. It has one less GPU core (4 versus 5) compared to the chip inside the iPhone 16. The CPU and NPU appear to be unchanged as far as core count is concerned. Running the show is iOS 18 and support for Apple Intelligence AI features is available.
The iPhone 16e packs Apple’s first in-house modem called C1 which, per the company, is the most power-efficient on any iPhone yet and should entail long battery life—this is said to be up to six hours longer than iPhone 11 and up to 12 hours longer than all generations of iPhone SE. Fast wired and wireless charging are available tough MagSafe charging is a strange omission. Apple’s most affordable iPhone also lacks an Ultra-Wideband chip and doesn’t support the Thread protocol.
Connectivity options include 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. Charging and data syncing are handled by a USB Type-C port. For photography, you get a single rear camera with a 48-megapixel sensor behind an f/1.6 lens with optical image stabilisation.
Follow FE Tech Bytes on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
