The iPhone 16e is a painful reminder of how great Apple can be

When reviewing a new device, as with so many things, it’s important to keep an open mind. But I could tell within a matter of hours that the iPhone 16e and I were not going to get on.

It was the end of the day. A long day: I was tired, having traveled to Apple’s London HQ to pick up the review sample (black finish, Winter Blue case: looks great) among a bunch of other jobs. Running on auto-pilot, I reached over to quickly attach the phone to the MagSafe puck by my bed, and then I remembered. The iPhone 16e doesn’t support MagSafe.

Ah, man.

I’m aware that this is going to sound like the first-worldest of first-world problems from a guy who just got presented with a free iPhone, and that the world’s smallest violin is probably tuning up as I type. But MagSafe is one of those features that showcases Apple at its best: it takes a small inconvenience and sands it away so frictionlessly that you forget the small inconvenience ever existed. Not including it in a 2025 iPhone is not a nice thing to do.

A few years back, wirelessly charging an iPhone was a mild faff because you had to place it on exactly the right part of the puck, check it was charging correctly, and then make sure not to nudge it with an inadvertent elbow. Get any of this wrong and there was a fair chance you’d wake up (possibly later than planned, if you were depending on an alarm) with an iPhone that was not charged, but dead. With the launch of the iPhone 12 in 2020, MagSafe changed all that overnight.

All you had to do was hold the iPhone somewhere in the vicinity of a compatible charging puck’s sweet spot and it would be sucked into the optimal placement by powerful magnets and held there securely. The screen showed you that it was charging with a neat animation and there was no doubt that your phone would be filled up the next time you reached for it.

For the first generation, it was a brilliant and helpful innovation and it became (at least for me) a totally standard aspect of owning an iPhone, something I benefited from without being conscious of that fact. It’s taken the arrival of the MagSafe-free iPhone 16e four and a half years later to remind me how essential and brilliant the feature is, and it really is a wrench going back to the old way of doing things. Not a disaster, of course, but a small, unexpected, and persistent annoyance. Like when you forget to charge your AirPods and are forced to deal with tangle-prone wired headphones.

The lack of MagSafe on the iPhone 16e is a clear backward step, and one that on the surface doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. There was a rumor initially that it had something to do with the C1 modem, but Apple quickly denied that, insisting instead that it had been left off deliberately because the target audience prefers to charge with a cable. Maybe that’s true; I haven’t seen the company’s customer research. But I’d venture to suggest that the real reason has more to do with product differentiation and upselling the phones Apple would prefer for you to buy.

I’m not going to pretend that Tim Cook will shed a tear every time someone buys an iPhone 16e. But he’d probably consider the transaction somewhat bittersweet: a sale gained, but a bigger sale lost. It’s hard not to think that MagSafe has been left off so potential buyers will think to themselves, “Maybe I should spend an extra $200 for an iPhone 16.” That’s also why there’s a stingy single camera on the rear when Apple has been selling phones with two cameras since 2016 and with three cameras since 2019. (You’d think it would be easier from a manufacturing point of view, given that the 16e appears to be based on an iPhone 14 chassis, to have two.) I’d even blame this strategy for the 16e’s limited range of color finishes: if you want pink, teal, or ultramarine, you need to get the 16.

If the “Mag” part of MagSafe is a dealbreaker for you—and it might be a considerably bigger factor for those with car mounts than it is for me—then you should note that there is a workaround: you can simply add a MagSafe case. It won’t get you MagSafe’s faster charging speeds or add much more than a magnetic connection, but that doesn’t make much difference when you just want to charge overnight. That’s what I’m planning to do, anyway. (Albeit under protest, since I’d rather use Apple’s Winter Blue case, but it obviously doesn’t have MagSafe.)

It’s not the end of the world, then, and I don’t expect the lack of MagSafe to guarantee the iPhone 16e a devastating hatchet job of a review. (You’ll have to wait and see if other factors lead to that.) But you’d have to say that it’s an odd strategy, reminding customers how good a feature is by removing it from a new product. Good job, Apple: You’ve taught me not to take MagSafe for granted. But can we please have it back now?

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

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The original Mac icon artist is selling a set of adorable silver and gold keycaps.

Oppo’s new folding phone transforms into a teeny-tiny MacBook.

Photoshop is finally available on the iPhone.

Podcast of the week

In the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast, we talk about the demise of the Apple product launch event. Why is Apple doing this, and is it the best way to go?

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Reviews corner

• iPhone 16e vs iPhone SE: Is it finally time to upgrade?
• Intego VirusBarrier Scanner review: Free, works well and meets almost all of your needs.
• Glyph Atom Pro review: Fast, down-to-business Thunderbolt 3 storage.
• MacPaw Setapp review: Excellent, well-curated alternative to the App Store.
• BenQ PD2730S 5K Designer Monitor review: Pixel perfect.
• Plugable 10-Port PS-10CC USB-C Charger review: Smarts and ports aplenty.
• Best MagSafe portable battery packs and power banks: Charge your iPhone 12, 13, 14, 15 or 16!

The rumor mill

Leaked iPhone 17 CAD images reveal three different camera designs.

The M4 MacBook Air is likely to arrive in mid-March. And it looks a lot like the M4 iPad Pro in early tests.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

Researchers hack Apple’s Find My network to track any Bluetooth device. That’s a little scary.

PSA: Your Mac will eventually install that macOS update whether you want it or not.

Mac security researchers expose two new exploits.

Apple removes Advanced Data Protection from U.K. iPhones following backdoor demand.

iPhone dictation feature reportedly swaps ‘Racist’ for ‘Trump’.

iOS 18.4 public beta begins with Apple Intelligence expansion but no new Siri.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.