iPhone 16e. Courtesy, Apple, Inc.
On Wednesday, Apple introduced “a new member of the family.” Tim Cook last week had teased that the company would be launching something, and it turns out it’s a new iPhone. Or, it’s a new version of an old iPhone, but with a new name.
The iPhone 16e, as it’s called, replaces the iPhone SE as the entry-level iPhone. There’s a lot to the idea that Apple is ditching the iPhone SE branding, but I imagine it has to do with the fact that the iPhone 16e marks the end of an era. Apple is no longer selling any devices with what might be its most iconic iPhone design feature: the Home Button.
Sure, the higher-end iPhones have had Face ID for years at this point, but there is no question that the Home Button is one of the most recognizable and innovative features of the original iPhone design. There are still iPads with Touch ID, but they all ditched the Home Button several years ago. It was just the iPhone SE holding on for all of these years until now.
Honestly, as nostalgic as I am about the original iPhone design and the fact that the Home Button endured for all these years, I think it was probably time to get rid of it in favor of Face ID. It had a good run, but the current iPhone design language ditches the chin in favor of more screen real estate. You can’t have both a Home Button and a 6.1-inch screen and Apple knows that far more people care more about the latter.
It makes sense then that Apple ditched the SE branding at the same time. The two things actually go together. The iPhone SE form factor was essentially stuck in a previous era of iPhone design. It was basically an iPhone 8 with better internal components. Now, however, the design is clearly a peer to the iPhone 16 series.
The iPhone 16e has the same display and A18 system on a chip as the iPhone 16 (albeit with one fewer GPU core). It also has the same 48MP Fusion main camera, which means it will do some computational stuff when you zoom in to 2x to give you better quality photos than just cropping the middle of the sensor. And perhaps what’s most important for a lot of people: the dramatically increased battery life compared with the iPhone SE (12 more hours, according to Apple).
It’s also the first iPhone to use Apple’s in-house cellular modem, which it is called C1. Apple says it is more efficient, contributing to that better battery life. Apple purchased Intel’s modem business in 2019, and I assume it would like to stop using Qualcomm’s modems eventually. It makes sense that you roll it out in a lower-cost, lower-volume device to work out the problems before you put it in your flagship.
One important distinction is that the iPhone 16e doesn’t have MagSafe. It’ll charge wirelessly, but doesn’t have the magnets that snap to a MagSafe charger. The SE didn’t have MagSafe either, but it was a smaller phone. It’s curious that Apple left it off of this device. Perhaps it was a cost thing, but there is such a huge ecosystem of MagSafe accessories designed for iPhones of this size that it seems strange not to take advantage of it as a selling point.
I think there’s an interesting lesson here, which is that it’s okay to let go of ideas once they’ve run their course. As iconic as the Home Button is, it’s no longer the best design for an iPhone.
To be clear, the Home Button might be one of the best user interface ideas of all time. It was simple, and anyone could instantly figure out how to use it. It served its purpose well, but Apple has had better ideas about unlocking your Phone and getting to the Home Screen. If they had insisted on sticking with the Home Button just because of nostalgia, the overall experience would be worse for users.
When you make things that people use, your job is to figure out the best ideas to make the experience better. Sometimes, that just happens to mean letting go of a good idea as iconic as the Home Button.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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