There is no midrange inside the Apple garden walls
24 Feb 2025
This one is personal. I speak as someone who has owned every iteration of the lower cost iPhone SE – even bought the first one twice – and trust me when I tell you that the new Apple iPhone 16e is definitely not part of the SE family. This is a successor in the line of odd additions to the main line (think iPhone 5C and iPhone XR) and is probably not for you. I will, however, make a case to my wife to add the R16,000 device to the collection.
iPhone 16e is available in South Africa on 28 February.
I missed out on the iPhone XR because it broke the sequence of “S” releases, and the two year upgrade cycle I was on.
When Apple reset the iPhone line with the X, it used the iPhone 8 as the foil for the price increase associated with the novelty of the OLED screen and FaceID sensor array.
By the next year production costs on the FaceID modules levelled out and dual sourcing of OLED panels also reduced those costs.
This allowed the supply chain some flexibility to source an LCD for the mainstream iPhone and keep the high end model and prepare the production lines to limit price shock for the next year’s iPhone 11.
iPhone XR was a weird hybrid of the new iPhone FaceID silhouette alongside the single camera and LCD screen from the previous number series.
No dynamic island
Apple has since moved the entire main line to the Dynamic Island front face on the iPhone 15 with a significant price increase that continued to the iPhone 16.
So it makes sense to bring in a hybrid of the older design language and the new main features at a more affordable price to combat the possible sales loss to midrange Android devices.
Enter the iPhone 16e with its FaceID notch, single rear camera and one fewer GPU core. Oh, and it doesn’t have magnets for the MagSafe attachment.
iPhone 16e picks up the baton where the much-maligned iPhone XR ended up being the world’s best selling phone in 2019 – doubling its sales from its launch year and outselling the iPhone 11– and, ultimately, reaching number eight on the all-time list.
Understanding the midrange market
My current daily iPhone is the 13 Mini because I have an unhealthy obsession with small phones (see iPhone SE history above).
In a perfect world, Apple would’ve taken that chassis, updated the internals and added a USB-C port for the single camera SE successor.
But Tim Cook didn’t do that and, instead, delivered an iPhone to go directly against the Honor 200, Xiaomi 14, and undercut the diminutive by Android standards Samsung Galaxy S25.
Now there is a new phone at the R500/month contract price with wireless charging, secure face unlock and a premium main camera.
Compromises, but not dealbreakers
The premium, lag free iPhone experience is now priced in line with the best sellers from competing brands and I don’t think the South African market is ready for it.
The midrange market was defined by the Chinese phone makers by their eagerness cut bigger corners in user experience (tap-to-pay and wireless charging were usually the first to go), in favour of massive batteries and high resolution sensors.
Now that model of success will be stress tested by the social cachet of the iPhone.
