The new iPhone 16e repackages many features of the standard iPhone 16 while skimping on others to achieve its $200 cheaper price. If you’re considering upgrading, here are the high-end camera features from dual-lens iPhones that are missing from the iPhone 16e.
Lack of an Ultra-Wide Camera Is a Bummer
The ultra-wide camera is the most important feature missing from the iPhone 16e. The regular iPhone 16 models have a 12MP ultra wide camera, and the iPhone 16 Pros have a 48MP ultra wide camera. Some folks won’t care that the iPhone 16e lacks an ultra-wide lens, but those are the kinds of people who default to the standard lens (Apple calls it “wide”) instead of taking advantage of that wide lens (officially referred to as “ultra wide”).
If you’ve ever used an ultra wide iPhone camera to nail landscape and cityscape shots, take better panoramics, or snap up images of large groups of people, for example, the iPhone 16e probably isn’t for you because no ultra wide camera means no macro photography.
One downside to the Ultra Wide camera is image warping due to barrel distortion, which causes straight lines to appear as curves, especially around the corners of an image. To minimize the effect, try framing the subject so that it doesn’t extend near the edges of the lens or apply a crop after taking a photo.
Macro mode automatically kicks into action on iPhones with an ultra wide camera when you get very close to the subject. This lets you take stunning, incredibly crisp close-ups of flowers, insects, and objects as close as 2cm to the lens without distortion or blurring. It’s not just photos; an ultra wide camera allows you to take macro Live Photos and shoot macro videos, including macro slow-motion and time-lapse videos.
Once you realize macro photography opens up a whole new micro world, there’s no going back. Using my iPhone’s ultra wide camera for the first time evoked a similar amazement as using a microscope back in school.
Unfortunately, macro photography isn’t the only missing feature. Without an ultra wide lens, the iPhone 16e cannot take spatial photos or record spatial videos to view on the Vision Pro headset. Spatial capture requires a dual-lens design to get stereoscopic information from the cameras; therefore, it only works on the rest of the iPhone 16 lineup and the iPhone 15 Pros.
The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are the best choices for spatial photography thanks to a 48MP sensor on both wide and ultra-wide cameras.
2x Telephoto Zoom Is Not True Optical Zoom
Apple claims the iPhone 16e provides 2x telephoto zoom “with optical quality,” but that’s stretching it. The handset doesn’t have a dedicated 2x telephoto lens for that. Instead, the iPhone 16e crops the 48MP frame down to a 12MP picture in order to achieve 2x zoom. Apple even coined a new term for this: Fusion camera.
The iPhone 16 press release also calls this a “2-in-1 camera system.” Despite marketing hype, however, cropping a sensor to achieve a 2x zoom “with optical quality” won’t produce the same flattering images as a dedicated 5x tetraprism lens that has a different focal length—even if it lets less light in.
If true optical zoom is a must-have for you, you’ll want to buy an iPhone Pro with a dedicated telephoto lens. Regular models like the iPhone 16e, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 15, and iPhone 15 Plus all take advantage of sensor cropping.
If you only need 2x zoom instead of 5x, however, the iPhone 16 may actually be a much better choice. Don’t take my word for it; ask professional photographers who know a thing or two about high-end photography, like Sebastiaan de With, who co-created the excellent Halide camera app with Ben Sandofsky.
In his detailed iPhone 16 camera test, he found that the virtual 2x Fusion camera “produces better results than the physical 2× of the past.” For what it’s worth, we came to a similar conclusion in our own review of the iPhone 16 Pro.
Camera Control Is a No-Show
The iPhone 16e doesn’t have Camera Control, a dedicated touch-sensitive capture button found on every other model in the iPhone 16 series. Camera Control lets you quickly launch a designated camera app from the lock screen, open the visual intelligence feature of Apple Intelligence, use a DSLR-like two-stage shutter in the built-in Camera app, and take advantage of other helpful shortcuts in third-party camera apps that are compatible with Camera Control.
Visual intelligence is invoked by pressing and holding the Camera Control button. However, Apple has said that iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max owners will be able to bind visual intelligence to the Action button or launch it via a dedicated Control Center widget in a future update to iOS 18.
If you care about any of these features, the iPhone 16e probably isn’t for you. Even if you don’t find Camera Control helpful in its current form, you should take into account that Apple has been and will be expanding its utility with future software updates.
No Latest-Generation Photographic Styles
The iPhone 16e’s Photonic Engine (Apple’s computational photography algorithm) supports the regular Photographic Styles feature instead of the “latest-generation Photographic Styles” found on the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Both versions enable you to apply presets to quickly change the overall look of your photos, but the latest-generation photographic styles are much more versatile in terms of adjustments.
Photographic Styles are Apple’s response to some people’s complaints that photographs shot on an iPhone tend to look over-processed.
This feature is more than just a filter; it directly affects the image processing pipeline. When you apply a photographic style, the image processing pipeline intelligently enhances particular characteristics in the scene, as opposed to tweaking the image in post-production.
No Sensor-Shift Stabilization
Apple started using sensor-shift optical image stabilization instead of regular optical image stabilization across all models starting with the iPhone 13 lineup (2021) after testing it on the iPhone 12 Pro Max the year before. The iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro lineups use the second generation of this technology. Sensor-shift stabilization is the clear winner because it produces sharper and smoother images.
For handheld videos with quick panning movements, you’ll want to use any recent iPhone but the iPhone 16e, which uses the old optical image stabilization.
Optical image stabilization, also referred to as in-lens optical stabilization, moves the whole lens barrel to atone for camera shake. By contrast, sensor-shift stabilization, also known as on-chip sensor stabilization, moves the actual camera sensor which captures photons in relation to gyroscope data.
Because the camera sensor itself is much lighter than the lens barrel, sensor-based stabilization is more precise than traditional video stabilization—even though both methods are optical as opposed to digital.
The iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro lineups are already on Apple’s second-generation sensor-shift optical image stabilization
Cinematic and Action Modes Are Missing
The iPhone 16e doesn’t support the Cinematic and Action Modes in the built-in Camera app. This isn’t a big deal because both features are designed for very specific situations. Only die-hard iPhone photography fans will miss them; if you’re among them, plenty of third-party camera apps on the App Store offer similar or better shooting features.
Cinematic Mode automates focus changes to help you record Hollywood-style videos of people, pets, and objects with a much more pronounced depth-of-field effect than you’d typically see from a smartphone camera. As great as it is, I’m sure I won’t miss Cinematic Mode on the iPhone 16e.
I only shoot regular boring videos because I’m not an influencer and have yet to encounter a situation where I’d want to make use of rack focus. As a matter of fact, I only have a couple of Cinematic Mode videos on my iPhone that I shot as a test, which clearly tells you a lot about how frequently I use Cinematic Mode on my iPhone.
On the other hand, I’m going to miss Action Mode. After realizing Action Mode does wonders for shaky handheld videos, I don’t use a gimbal on my iPhone. I typically move around a lot when recording videos. Action Mode uses a tight crop to cancel violent camera shakes when jogging or running. As a result, Action Mode has a maximum capture resolution of 2.8K, but I don’t mind it because Action Mode clearly does wonders for video stabilization.
You’d think the handset would be able to handle both modes without breaking a sweat, more so given that the imaging pipeline has a very capable camera sensor and certainly more than enough processing power. Case in point: Cinematic Mode debuted on the iPhone 13 family (2021), while Action Mode has been around since the iPhone 14 lineup (2022).
This appears to be a case of Apple intentionally turning off features to differentiate between the new iPhone 16e and the existing models in the lineup. From a hardware standpoint, the iPhone 16e runs the latest Apple A18 chip that has more than enough oomph to process Portrait Mode images and 4K HDR Dolby Vision videos captured at 60 fps.
It’s possible Apple didn’t have time to optimize Cinematic and Action Modes in time for the iPhone 16e’s launch. If that’s what’s happening, we might eventually get these features via a future software update. But don’t get your hopes up.
Both Cinematic and Action Mode have been around for years now, and adapting them for what is basically a stripped-down iPhone 16 shouldn’t be a problem. Besides, the company would have already publicly clarified that Cinematic and Action Modes would arrive later if it hadn’t intentionally turned off these features in software,
No Next-Generation Portraits
The iPhone 16e supports the classic Portrait mode with depth control instead of “next-generation portraits with focus and depth control” found on all the other iPhone 16 models and the iPhone 15 lineup. According to Apple, next-generation portraits bring sharper detail, more vivid colors, and improved low-light performance.
You don’t even need to manually select Portrait Mode in the Camera app; the device automatically captures depth information, so you can turn regular snaps into depth-of-field photos and adjust the focus point after the picture is taken. If high-quality portraiture photography is at the top of your priorities, consider an iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 instead.
If you need the latest camera features, an iPhone Pro is a better choice than a non-Pro model. And to folks who just want to take great photos without too much fuss, I’d wholeheartedly recommend a regular iPhone 16 or even an iPhone 15 over an iPhone 16e.
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iPhone 16e
The iPhone16e is an affordable addition to the iPhone 16 line, costing $200 less than the base iPhone 16.
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Apple iPhone 16
Apple’s newest iPhone featuring a camera button, programmable action button, and artificial intelligence features.
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Apple iPhone 16 Pro
A version of Apple’s newest iPhone with a larger screen featuring a camera button, a programmable action button, and artificial intelligence features.
