The oddest omission in the iPhone 16e is the lack of support for MagSafe. Indeed, the scale of the surprise at this led Apple to issue an explanation of sorts.
But the position becomes all the stranger, thanks to the discovery that the phone comes so close to supporting it …
The three benefits of MagSafe
As we noted at the time, you do get a lot of flagship features in the iPhone 16e, but MagSafe wasn’t one of them – and that seems a fairly big omission given the three benefits it offers.
First, MagSafe makes wireless charging easier by only having to position your phone close to a wireless charger before it snaps easily and securely into place. Gone is the need to have to feel around for the right position.
Second, wireless charging becomes much faster. While the original Qi wireless standing charge maxed out at 7.5w, MagSafe and Qi2 doubled that to 15w, and the rest of the iPhone 16 line-up further increases that to 25w if you also upgrade to the latest MagSafe charger.
Third, MagSafe opened up a whole new world of accessories, from combined car mounts and chargers to MagSafe wallets and camera gimbals.
Apple offered circular reasoning for its omission
Apple’s explanation for the omission in the latest iPhone is that the target market doesn’t use it.
According to Apple representatives, most people in the 16e’s target audience exclusively charge their phones by plugging them into a charging cable. They tend not to use inductive charging at all.
As we pointed out, though, that’s circular reasoning. Apple appears to be arguing that the phone will be bought by owners of iPhone SE models, or those with an iPhone 11 or earlier, and they don’t use MagSafe. But those people didn’t use MagSafe because … their phones didn’t support it.
The iPhone 16e almost supports MagSafe
Macworld’s David Price noticed that the new iPhone does in fact have MagSafe magnets – just not enough of them to properly stick.
But then I took my iPhone 16e out of its case to get some photos with my old MagSafe charging puck for illustrative purposes (showing that it can charge from such accessories, but won’t have that handy magnetic attachment) and I made a surprising discovery: the magnets inside the charger do attach to the iPhone 16e. It’s a weak connection, but it’s there.
He posted a video in which he positioned the phone just above a MagSafe charger, and the charger lifted from the table and audibly snapped to the phone. It then remained magnetically in place when he lifted the phone.
The reason this had seemingly gone unnoticed before is that the magnetic connection is too weak to work through a case. He also cautions that you shouldn’t expect a vertical magnetic dock to hold the weight of the phone.
But it does further add to the mystery of why Apple came close to offering MagSafe without actually doing so.
Image: 9to5Mac collage of images from Apple and Yuriy Kovalev on Unsplash
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