Basic and advanced iPhone usage, do I need a new phone?

No magsafe, and no precision finding. Otherwise, it sounds like a decent phone.

absolutely no loss for me. I charge using a cable and if you want mag safe that bad there is cases out there that offer magnets in the cases. I am downgrading from a 15 pro max and had the precision finding and found it didn't make a difference. look at the huge savings.
Advantages are the bigger battery, the apple designed modem which reviewers say they couldn't tell a difference from a 16 with the qualcomm modem and the Apple modem. My biggest arguement for the 16E is four prong:
1 you get all the apple intelligence features for far less then a 16
2 bigger battery.
3 it has the best battery life of any 6.1 inch. If you read the reviews it is almost as good as the 16 pro and pro maxes.
4 The price you are getting an awesome phone at an excellent price.

For several reasons, I am only interested in Pro models.
1. LiDAR – It helps with object identification and obstacle detection.
2. Precise localization – I have AirTags and AirPods, which I can locate within a few centimeters. Thanks to this, I don’t have to tear the house apart looking for my keys, as my phone will guide me so precisely that I can place my hand directly on them.
3. Precise dual-band GPS – It is more accurate and usually takes me to the exact same spot instead of leaving me with a margin of error of several meters.

Of course, I could live without all these features, but if technology exists that can simplify my daily life, I want to take advantage of it. You can live without a dishwasher too, yet many people have one because it significantly speeds up the dishwashing process.

MagSafe should not now, nor ever be, a reason to buy, or not to buy, a device. With all of the aftermarket accessories to allow MagSafe on non-MagSafe ready devices, there really is no need.
All of the other aforementioned reasons I am totally down with, however. If you are ready to upgrade your iPhone, from an XR model, you could do a lot worse than a 16E model. 😉✌️

I asked a similar question the other day relating to my needs. I've decided on the pro personally for the next phone I get. And IPhoneski your post has just nailed it for me. I had no idea the pro models improve GPS! I like your analogy about the dishwasher, even though I don't want one. The more features the pro phones have and the more people tell me about them, the more I want to take advantage of them, even though the price is steep. At Khomus, if you want good GPS, I'd go for the pro like I'm going to do. I was worried about OCR because I need that, and people were telling me that even with only one camera the 16e would be OK, but when somebody mentioned about pro having a long-distance camera and how that could scan things from further away and possibly help more with identifying objects, I remembered about GPS apps and how I want to start using them. And if I'm going to use them, I may as well get the best out of them. I don't know about audio and video editing work. As for consuming media like ebooks, audiobooks, radio and sometimes TV and video, I prefer my iPad for that, because I don't want to use my phone for absolutely everything. Although I would say, if certain apps are getting sluggish, I would think about a new phone anyway.

no dynamic island? the 2023 entry level iphone 15 has it, it's 2025 now. every time you take out your phone, people immediately know you have a cheap phone.
no optical zoom? the 2022 cheap iphone mini has it.

if you dig further, you'll certainly find more; these are just something so obvious that i won't even buy it for my dear aunt.

Does it meet your needs? No dynamic island? Who cares. It supports most modern features so why not get the cost savings.

If what people think of your phone factors into your decision, I have news for you, you might have bigger problems than the lack of a dynamic island.

I agree with you Jim. I never let what someone else is going to think of what works for me influence my decisions.

Nice to see such excellent responses in this thread. To support work on my free ebook, a very generous group of people invested in an iPhone 16 Pro for me. I would never have taken a chance on one if I had to make that purchase. Being unemployed and on a fixed income, the price difference is quite substantial. Needless to say, I'll be hanging onto this iPhone for as long as it's at all useful. I'm still paying for my iPhone 15 and will be until October of 2025.
I've finally had a chance to read about the iPhone 16 E and go over the specs. Rather than getting one of these, my personal choice would have been to get the basic iPhone 16 with 512 gb of storage. I've come to very much appreciate MagSafe charging now that it's possible to charge at 25 wats. I know that the charging coil is in exactly the right place which increases charging speed and prevents overheating. Like a previous commenter, I appreciate the precise location with AirTags and GPS. I strongly suspect that having a Pro iPhone does give me more stability thanks to the slightly more advanced chips. However, I can't be certain that I'd notice any difference in that department between a 16E and basic 16.
So far, I've found the Lidar to be occasionally quite useful. It can locate furniture among other things reasonably precisely. However, I don't use it as extensively as someone would with a job where they had to travel. I could see such people really benefiting from the Lidar and live recognition features. The point and speak feature seems very fiddly to me. I would sooner ask a sighted person for help with a vending machine, for instance, than rely on this feature to try and get what I wanted.
My iPhone is basically serving as my computer replacement. For everyday tasks like writing emails, playing music and soundscapes while writing, playing games, communicating with family and friends, identifying objects, etc, you'd do quite well with a 16E. You would definitely want to invest in a charging solution which let you charge it easily while using the USB C port for something else. Your battery will remain healthy longer if you don't go through cycles needlessly.
I've noticed that I'm getting better descriptions of pictures I take with my Pro iPhone. I also don't have to put as much effort into precisely aiming the camera. That really wouldn't be a deal breaker for me though. It's helpful but not a massive difference for everyday object detection and finding. I have no doubt that a blind professional photographer with a deeper understanding of how these cameras work would substantially benefit from the cameras and perhaps the camera control surface which the basic 16 and Pro models have. I don't tend to use that button when taking pictures and might even have been happier without that control present.
It's hard to anticipate what you'll want to do with an iPhone if you're a complete beginner. You'll be pretty much stuck with decisions you make at the time of purchase for years afterwards. Your level of skill and life circumstances might both change drastically over that time. Apple has somewhat reduced the risk of buyer's remorse by setting the base level of storage at 128 gb. The average person doesn't need more than this for basic tasks but would quite possibly want to subscribe to a larger iCloud Plus subscription to meet any increased need for storage. There are also flash-drives which might fill this potential lack down the road. Personally, I'll ever get an iPhone with less than 512 GB of storage again because I like to have my book collection, a large music library and other audio and references which all take up storage. Even if the net goes down and I'm totally offline, my iPhone will still be very useful to me. To a large extent, this is because of what I store on it. Investing in that extra storage is worth it to me. You can do that with a basic 16 or 16 E.
The difference in price between a 16 E and basic 16 iPhone isn't all that steep so I'd feel more comfortable recommending the basic 16 iPhone than the 16 E. I'm less certain that buying a Pro iPhone makes sense for the average blind person. Especially if they're unemployed. You'd typically get such a device on contract and paying that each month would take a substantial bite out of your income. That would mean you couldn't take advantage of as many subscription services which can really add to an iPhone's usefulness over its lifespan. I've really appreciated having the Apple 1 suite of services. Endless music on tap, wonderful streaming shows from Apple TV Plus, access to news articles and magazines, etc. There are also several wonderful apps like Ulysses that I get tremendous value from subscribing to. You don't need to be an absolute expert to take advantage of this wealth of resources. Getting the most out of an iPhone Pro depends largely on lifestyle and needs. If you make such an investment, please put in the time to learn about what you have and how to use it. I keep meeting people who walk around with all of this power in their pockets and have no idea about even basic capabilities they could be using. I'll go over all of this in more detail in the third edition of my book which will hopefully be ready at the end of May or possibly, the end of June. Meanwhile, I hope this is helpful to people considering a purchase.

Hi Michael,
Right, so you've confirmed my theory. I thought that logically, you would get better pictures thus better image descriptions with a pro phone because it has more cameras and probably better quality ones. I want better image descriptions for things. Thanks for the info.

Hi Khomus,

First, thank you for giving the blog a read and for your feedback.

When I think of the target audience of the iPhone 16e, I think of someone who just wants a modern and reasonably affordable iPhone to do ordinary things--check email, send messages, FaceTime with family and friends, order food deliveries, browse social media, listen to music and audiobooks, watch videos, etc. If any of the Pro features mentioned above are of interest or use to you, I would recommend another of the iPhone 16 models instead. Finally, if your current phone is okay and you are okay waiting, another option would be to wait for the iPhone 17 line to be released in September and invest in the latest and greatest at that time.

sure i do, but i can ignore it if it's in my best interest. in this case, i would care, because this phone is clearly not good for my money. add that to what others would think, it just makes the whole thing more devastating.

https://www.macworld.com/article/2615098/the-iphone-16e-disappoints-me-and-its-all-apple-intelligences-fault.html

If you want a real review of the 16E check his review. He trash the E and suggest you get 15 pro or 15 pro max for the same price if you can find it. Check the review.

Mostly to get live notification for Uver, and apps similar to that.

We already have live activities that do the same as far as I know.
My experience. I was more or less convinced to upgrade from my xs to the base model 14. I gained a slightly faster chip, a battery at 100% health after I changed my battery once in 4 years and at the end the second battery was more or less at the same percentage than the first battery in 2021 (81%). The most valuable things for me are the magsafe and the u1 chip which can be very helpful when it works properly to find airpods pro for example (I don't have airtags). I've learned a lot about lidar and other features on the pro in this thread, thanks everyone, you confirmed what I was already suspecting.
I am sorry, but if AI is overhyped in general, apple intelligence is the next level and it's the worst thing I've seen from apple in a very, very long time, equal to the downgrade of airpod max2 with usbc and no wired audio. This should absolutely not be a reason for blind to buy xy model as for real useful task you already have chatgpt, be my eyes and other 3rd party apps that already work on most phones. If you really need it, then try to find a 15 pro or similar at that price point, it's truly a better deal in every way possible. I have a couple of friends who have AI and are blind and they find it quite useless after the first 20 minutes demo hype, and not to mention the language, although on my mac I do have the latest dev beta so I can finally try this thing in french, something that gpt 3.5 in december 2022 was already doing, and doing it better.
Honestly, we have more than enough compute power for most tasks average people describe as "pro" especially blind. The only real factor should be the size of the phone which correlates with the battery. With how we use our phones, battery, especially for us, is a real factor and can ruin or save the day for us, if not more.

The Dynamic Island is one of those niche market things where some people will swear by it, and others will swear against it. I have read posts from sided folks, who have asked Apple to make a toggle to enable/disable this feature, of course that has not happened as of yet.
Also, and has been mentioned above, it really is not needed. We have Live Activity in Notification Center, and for older devices, we still get the same level of notification interaction that you folks with Dynamic Island get, without having a Dynamic Island.

Is also good for weather at the moment. Some like it some do not. Some feel like a nut some do not. Had not use it yet. No reason at this time.

I argue the price is fair for all your getting.
https://www.cultofmac.com/reviews/iphone-16e-review?utm_source=newsletters.cultofmac.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=reviewed-new-iphone-16e&_bhlid=6734ad32ef310339dcf8aabe6f9f9b3518b5a1e2

I knew before I even left the Apple store with my 15 Pro that I would love the DI because I could track my Lyft just by touching the top middle of the screen. It's also nice for things like when I have music playing and am doing other things on my phone.

The thing is that not a lot of devs are using it. I loved it for tracking Door Dash deliveries, which took a long time to roll out, but now doesn't seem to work anymore.

I think these lines between basic and advanced, power users and average consumers etc are kind of arbitrary and pointless. That's not meant as shade on Michael's fine review, it got the point across but everyone's use cases are so different. Like I have a whole bunch of custom braille display commands set up for web browsing and the like on my 2022 SE which in some ways runs circles around my much more expensive android flagship, if the XR mostly suits your needs still that thing might exceed them ... unless you need a big screen, big battery, multiple cameras etc. I personally find the 16e confusing, I get inflation drove the price up but my cynical side says it exists to push people to more expensive phones, no other reason. Too expensive to be budget, almost as expensive as the base model. At least with the old SE models you knew all the massive compromises, the price justified them and it was still absolute banger performance. Like I'm an android guy and android flagships just barely got the same raw cpu horsepower my little SE's has this whole time, it was a super fair tradeoff ... now I can't figure out why even "average consumers" wouldn't just spring for a used 15 pro with better pretty much everything.

@Holy Diver,

One reason is because Apple thrives on the consumerism trend that is, "buy the latest as soon as it becomes available", regardless of whether or not last years, "Pro", model is considered by many to be superior. Perfect example would be all the consumers who went out and bought an iPhone 16/Pro/Max when they became available even though their 15/Pro/Max was less than 1 year old.

Consumerism for the win! 🫵🏻😎

Yes, Apple does that, also all those who make phone. They get away with it because of us. If we just purchase a phone after 2 years, Apple and others would release a new phone every 2 years instead of 1. If I own apple would do so to make monye, is all about the money, the more I get the more I am happy.

Flossy Carter ruined this phone for me. I just finished listening to his review, and I have to agree with what he says regarding the price, you can get last years Pro Max for the same price, if not cheaper. Of course on the flipside, you can just wait a little later this year for the iPhone 17 to be released.

if you buy a used phone you can't get apple care most likely. Also if it has been dropped or handled carelessly you take that risk. In my opinion better to get the 16E. Remember these "reviewers are trying to get clicks so they will say what they think their listeners want to hear. The more clicks they get the higher their videos rank on Youtube.

Yet. Amazon tend to have the 15 pro or pro max refurbish. Also he trash the phone and I agree with him 100%. Those who want to get the E, need to watch the video and if they still want it, get it but probably they will not.

My only issue was price, or more importantly price versus storage. 😎

Hi all,

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Thanks,

Michael

Let us first consider two pertinent points: 1. Battery life, which is comparable to the Pro and Pro Max versions of the iPhone 16 in terms of performance.
2. Storage capabilities and the prospect of future updates. In terms of price, the iPhone 16 Pro with 256 GB is priced at $1000, while the 512 GB version
is available for $1300. Therefore, there is a savings of anywhere between $400 to $600, simply depending on the choice of upgrades. If we consider the
base model, again, a savings of $400 can be expected. It's important to note that this is not a trivial amount. Additionally, the purchase includes the
advantage of Apple's software upgrades for future years.

Is that a saving if you could not use the many features the phone come with it? Also future releases features? Most time now you can get a deal from your phone company or change to one that will do so or fine nice deal on amazon for iPhone. My 16 pro max will be able to take advantage of future features.

Yes it is still a savings No one said you get all the bells and whistles. However Your phone company locks you into anywhere to 24 or 36 months so you are still saving.