No MagSafe For iPhone 16e Because Apple Thinks Differently!

The iPhone 16e has gotten off to a controversial start. Quite unsurprising! If history is to be considered, the cheapest new iPhone has always faced heat owing to a long list of omissions. The 16e omits a lot too and hence, the community of geeks and nerds are going to express their dissatisfaction openly. 

Apple, however, loves to add fuel to the fire by making lame excuses for such omissions. Remember when ex-Apple CEO Steve Jobs told iPhone 4 owners that they were holding their iPhones wrong? 

In a similar fashion, Apple’s modern-day PR team came up with an equally lame excuse to justify the omission of some core ‘iPhone features’ from the new iPhone 16e. Be it the absence of MagSafe or a secondary camera, guess the reason that Apple stated to the public!

“You don’t need it,” Apple

In a detailed account of Daring Fireball’s John Gruber's experience living with the iPhone 16e, it is said that Apple’s representatives mentioned the reason behind the omissions. Gruber writes that the iPhone 16e missed out on MagSafe because Apple thinks its intended customers may not need it. Apple has apparently told Gruber that the iPhone 16e’s target audience “tend not to use inductive charging at all, and when they do, they might not care that the 16e is stuck with a pokey 7.5W Qi charging speed.”

Similar reasoning was provided for the lack of an Ultrawideband chip, the latest Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 and even the missing Ultrawide rear camera. 

Does that mean Apple considers iPhone staples like MagSafe and ultrawideband chips useless? If its essentials-focused iPhone doesn’t bother with these features, that hints at Apple not considering these elements to be important enough. Does that paint a grim future for the MagSafe and ultrawideband chip? Or worse, does that paint a dark future for a fast Wi-Fi modem and a secondary ultrawide camera?

iPhone 16e is ‘cost-cutting Pro Max’

Since Apple’s marketing team can’t explicitly say it, we will be of assistance here. The iPhone 16e misses out on MagSafe and all the other goodies to keep the manufacturing costs low. The binned A18 chip from the iPhone 16 is the major factor behind driving the costs up and hence, Apple had to trim features elsewhere. The display comes from the dated iPhone 14 whereas the 48-megapixel single rear camera uses a lower-spec image sensor with standard OIS. 

Surely, the power-efficient C1 modem and support for Apple Intelligence make the iPhone 16e desirable to an extent but you have to ask yourself – is this truly the iPhone 16 experience? Is Apple Intelligence that necessary to you?

This is why we advocate for the older iPhone 15 – a striking deal for someone seeking an affordable iPhone. It misses out on Apple Intelligence but the A16 Bionic chip doesn’t stop Google from offering its Gemini AI services! Heck, you can even use ChatGPT’s professional services on the iPhone 15 and still be better off than someone on a ‘new’ iPhone 16e. 

ALSO READ: Opinion: The iPhone 16e Screams That You Are Foolish On So Many Levels