Apple’s iPhone 17E is officially out at a $599 price, bringing a nice set of upgrades to its more affordable iPhone. If you own an iPhone 16E, you might be wondering whether the changes here are enough to justify buying the newer model. 

Apple has made two key upgrades, not just in specs but also in durability and quality-of-life features, like introducing MagSafe and increasing base storage.

Here’s what you need to consider before deciding on an upgrade. 

Display and build

The iPhone 17E and iPhone 16E both have the same dimensions. They are both 5.78 by 2.82 by 0.31 inches, and they both have a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display. The resolution works out to 25,312 by 11,700 at 460 pixels per inch, so there isn’t much of a difference here, and both have a peak brightness of 1200 nits for HDR content and a typical max brightness of 800 nits. Overall, this will translate into an equally crisp and bright display for both models, with the same notch. 

In terms of overall design and appearance, including the button layout and aluminum frame, the two phones are essentially identical. Neither is going to be as hand- or pocket-busting as the iPhone 17 Pro Max with its 6.9-inch screen. However, the iPhone 17E is slightly heavier at 5.96 ounces compared to the 16E’s 5.88 ounces.

 
This difference likely comes down to Apple’s durability upgrades for the newer model. The 17E uses Ceramic Shield 2 for the front glass, which offers three times the scratch resistance of the plain old Ceramic Shield on the iPhone 16E. 

Both phones are also IP68 rated, offering water resistance up to 6 meters for up to 30 minutes.

There’s a slight difference with color options. The iPhone 17E comes in three colors — black, white and the ever-popular pink color — while the iPhone 16E limits you to black and white. 

Ultimately, nothing in the hardware we’d say really moves the needle, aside from the added screen durability, though you could always get a screen protector and case if you’re worried. 

Hardware, battery and storage 

The big changes with phones start when you take a peek under the hood. The iPhone 17E has a newer A19 chip. It comes with a six-core CPU with two performance and four efficiency cores, as well as a four-core GPU with Neural Accelerators. It also has a 16-core Neural Engine and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This is a step above the A18 chip in the iPhone 16E, which has the same core configuration but lacks the Neural Engine that comes with the GPU.

We haven’t run performance benchmarks or tested the iPhone 17E’s A19 chip yet, but we expect the newer chipset to offer a performance boost over the A18.

Worth noting is that in our review of the iPhone 16E, it performed well in its CPU benchmark, scoring higher than the iPhone 16, iPhone 15, and iPhone SE. In graphics performance, the iPhone 16 had an advantage over the iPhone 16E thanks to its extra GPU core, but we expect that will be a different story with the A19 on the iPhone 17E since it has the same chip as the iPhone 17, just with one less GPU core. 

That means in benchmark tests, we expect the iPhone 17E to outperform both the iPhone 16E and iPhone 16 in graphics performance, but it’s likely to fall short of the iPhone 17. 

«Benchmark tests for the CPU in Geekbench 6 place the iPhone 17 above the iPhone 16 Pro Max, as well as the full iPhone 15 lineup,» said Abrar Al-Heeti, CNET senior technology reporter, in her iPhone 17 review. «In a graphics test using 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme, the iPhone 17 exceeded the performance of the entire iPhone 16 series, but was topped by the Galaxy S25 lineup.»  

In real-world use, we don’t expect any performance issues with the newer iPhone 17E since it’s likely to fall right between the iPhone 16E and iPhone 17 in terms of performance. 

 
«In everyday use, the phone had no issues playing video games, editing and saving videos and using Apple Intelligence,» said Patrick Holland, CNET managing editor, commenting on his day-to-day use of the iPhone 16E. 

The other significant change comes from the storage upgrade. The iPhone 17E starts at a higher base storage model: 256GB for $599 and 512GB for $799, with the 128GB option dropped from the iPhone 16E. This is a pretty nice change, especially for those who were often brushing up against the storage limit of the entry model. 

The truly substantial improvement between generations comes with the addition of MagSafe to the iPhone 17E, which was one of our big gripes when we tested the iPhone 16E. MagSafe being included in this generation means you now have support for a vast array of MagSafe cases, mounts, chargers, docks and other accessories.

This also bumps wireless charging support to Qi 2 at 15W, up from the 7.5W Qi wireless charging on the iPhone 17E. However, neither is as good as the iPhone 17, which supports 25W Qi charging. Both phones come with USB-C ports for charging and data, so that hasn’t changed, with a 50% charge in 30 minutes. 

Cameras 

The cameras haven’t seen a substantial change either. Both the iPhone 17E and 16E feature a 48-megapixel Fusion camera system as their primary rear sensor. That’s not unexpected, since Apple usually reserves its multisensor setup for the mainstay line, like the iPhone 17 and iPhone 16. 

You get optical image stabilization for both 1x and 2x optical zoom, True Tone flash, Photonic Engine, Deep Fusion, Smart HDR 5, Night mode, Portrait Lighting and more.

One minor note: The iPhone 17E Portrait mode includes Depth and Focus controls, while the iPhone 16E Portrait mode had only Depth controls. 

With the front camera, again, the setup remains the same. A 12MP TrueDepth camera is used for Face ID. For video recording, both support 4K Dolby Vision up to 60 frames per second and 1080p Slo-mo video at 240fps. Naturally, you get OIS and spatial audio and stereo recording too.

 
Looking at our iPhone 16E review should give you a fairly good idea of how well the iPhone 17E snaps pictures, though naturally, we’ll be testing it ourselves. 

«The 16E’s main camera takes lovely photos, even when using night mode,» said Holland about the iPhone 16E. «It has a 48-megapixel sensor, which has enough resolution for sensor cropping to offer a 2x magnification, and the results are decent. Images look sharp, have a nice dynamic range (good for high-contrast lighting like sunrises/sunsets), and colors are attractively subdued.»

Apple software and connectivity 

On the software end, you should expect essentially identical software. Both support Apple Intelligence and Siri and will get the latest iOS updates. The iPhone 17E comes with iOS 26 installed, while the iPhone 16E launched with iOS 18.3 but also supports iOS 26.  

When it comes to connectivity, both the iPhone 17E and iPhone 16E have a nearly identical load out. They support 5G (sub-6 GHz) with 4×4 MIMO, gigabit LTE, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. You also get NFC, VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling. Both also support dual eSIMs and storage for 8 or more.

The sole difference is that the iPhone 17E comes with the C1X modem, while the iPhone 16E has the C1 modem.  

Should you upgrade?

There are two reasons you might consider upgrading from the iPhone 16E to the iPhone 17E. First, if you’re often running out of storage space on a 128GB iPhone 16E, you can get the iPhone 17E for $599 starting at 256GB. Or you can spring for the 512GB model for $799 if your needs are more substantial. 

The other big reason is MagSafe. We won’t lie: There’s a pretty significant improvement in quality of life with MagSafe if you’ve had to worry about plugging or unplugging a cable. MagSafe-compatible accessories also make it easy to use cases, phone mounts, wallet attachments and other accessories. However, worth noting is that you can pick up third-party cases that add magnets to give you MagSafe compatibility. 

Now, are those two reasons enough to pay $599 for a phone that you probably paid the same price for just a year ago? We’d say probably not. You’d likely be better off with the iPhone 17 base model if you’re looking for a more substantial performance and feature upgrade. 

However, if you have a much older model or you’re an Android user looking for a cheap entry point into the Apple ecosystem, getting an iPhone 17E might be worth it.