iPhone 16e looks great, but ...

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There’s one feature missing from the new iPhone 16e that makes it a big “no” for me, dog.

Looking over the specs of the iPhone 16e — the brand-new budget iPhone introduced by Apple this morning — it mostly looks pretty great.

The first thing you notice is that it’s a good-looking phone, with the same impeccable industrial design as the current iPhone 16 lineup.

It boasts a bunch of great trickle-down features, too: A larger screen and no Home button, Face ID (double, no triple, yay!!) a pretty good 48MP camera, a chip fast enough for Apple Intelligence, and a USB-C connector.

Plus, it sports Apple’s new in-house 5G modem, called the C1. The C1 is the result of billions of dollars of investment and many years of rocky development, and it sounds impressive. It incorporates 4G, 5G, satellite and GPS radios all into one chip, and is the most battery-efficient modem ever used in an iPhone, according to Apple.

OK, yeah, Apple cut a few corners to make the 16e cheap.

There’s no Dynamic Island (just a blank, non-dynamic notch); no ultra-wideband chip (so no precision AirTag finding); and no Ultra Wide camera or Camera Control button.

None of these are deal-breakers for me, and they likely won’t be for many potential iPhone 16e buyers, either.

But there’s one huge missing feature that is a total head-scratcher and completely unforgivable — MagSafe!

MagSafe ranks right up there with mankind’s greatest inventions: fire, the wheel and lifesaving vaccines.

Why Apple didn’t add a few crummy magnets to the back of the iPhone 16e will possibly be the biggest blot on Tim Cook’s otherwise stellar career!

Why, Tim? Why??

Otherwise, the 16e looks like a great starter iPhone.

Also in today’s newsletter:

• Apple’s new C1 cellular modem reportedly went through development hell — but it looks very impressive, and extends Apple’s mastery of silicon into communication chips, hinting at exciting things ahead.

• I’m looking forward to trying this out: Google is bringing Android’s great Circle to Search feature to iPhone.

• The iPhone 16e only comes in black or white, so naturally Apple trotted out several cases in different hues, including the ugliest green case I’ve ever seen.

• Running out of storage is as inevitable as death and taxes, but Koofr’s lifetime 1TB plan helps stave it off with some of the cheapest cloud storage around.

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

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Results from yesterday’s poll: If the iPhone 17 Air looks like the renders, would you buy it?

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