If there’s one constant in iPhones, it’s that cameras get bigger every year. A peek at the backside of iPhone over the last few years showcases an almost alarming growth of the camera system, with the latest and — quite literally — greatest iteration of the camera system in the iPhone 16 Pro taking over more than half of the top half of its backside.
Surprisingly, this year Apple released an iPhone that bucked that trend. Last week, the iPhone 16e arrived in stores and at our West Coast headquarters* and I couldn’t wait to dig in. Was this a huge step back in usage compared to the cutting, large-camera-edge, or would this delightfully simple package actually hold up?
*(my home. We are just two people, we don’t really have HQs)
Let’s go deep into iPhone 16e’s camera and find out.
What’s in a camera
iPhone gains bigger and better cameras every year for a simple reason: one of the main reasons people upgrade phones is to take better photos and videos. We’ve gone from an introduction of the iPhone as an iPod and phone to it being more camera than almost anything else. Selling a phone without a camera today would be considered releasing a laughable dud for a device, whereas just 20 years ago we weren’t even sure it was all that important to have.
A key improvement that made photos so important was quality. That seems counter-intuitive, but let me explain: the cameras on smartphones became more important as they improved because they got good enough. Sure, my indestructible Nokia candy bar from the ancient age could arguably capture a photo, but it was a grainy mess. For capturing a meaningful moment I’d pack a ‘real camera’. This distinction between ‘real cameras’ and ‘phone cameras’ started to become far less important around the iPhone 4 or so, as apps making quick sharing of shots with a few adjustments or filters became popular and the cameras themselves started making huge leaps in image quality.
While some of that image quality came from making the actual camera bigger, you’ll notice that cameras were not all that huge in that generation. In fact, iPhone 4 and 4S, as well as 5 and 5S had no camera bumps to speak of. What they did pack in was the very first version of computational photography: a software process to improve the image from these tiny, tiny sensors and lenses through applying the processing power of the entire computer that is the phone in your pocket. It started with HDR, then Smart HDR and more technical sounding technologies like Deep Fusion in modern iPhones.
Software, more than hardware by a lot, is responsible for letting us take great photos that make us feel fine leaving big, bulky dedicated cameras at home when it comes to capturing life’s most important moments. If you propose to your love tomorrow and all you have is an iPhone 16 snap, you’re probably not terribly unhappy. The photo will be usable: you can frame it and enjoy it. The fact that that’s true even if you had done it by moonlight at night is a remarkable advancement on par with magic: there’s simply not a lot of light and sharpness you can get out of that small a camera, and things like Portrait and Night mode are genuinely superb.
In iPhone 16e, Apple promises to pair some of its best, smartest processing from the latest A-series chip with a somewhat smaller, older camera hardware component. The question that was immediately on my mind was whether or not the shots from the iPhone 16e would hold up, or if they would just look… kind of bad.
What you get — and what you don’t
You can speculate what the ‘e’ in ‘16e’ stands for, but in my head it stands for ‘essential’. Some things that I consider particularly essential to the iPhone are all there: fantastic build quality, an OLED screen, iOS and all its apps, and Face ID. It even has satellite connectivity. Some other things I also consider essential are not here: MagSafe is very missed, for instance, but also multiple cameras. It be reasonable to look at Apple’s Camera app, then, and see what comprises the ‘essential’ iPhone camera experience according to Apple.
The good news here is that it packs in a lot. Once you dig into settings to enable things, here’s some of the features it packs in:
- Single-camera Portrait mode with Depth Control
- 48MP sensor with 24MP default capture and optional 48 MP JPG/HEIC capture
- 2× ‘optical’ zoom by cropping the 48MP sensor’s center area
- Night mode (12MP, like all other iPhones)
- Very good video in Dolby Vision HDR, up to 4K/60fps
- Slo-mo video up to HD/240fps
- Spatial Audio capture in video
That’s nothing to scoff at. Compared to the last year’s flagship iPhones there’s little you miss out on.
To me, the most notable things lacking here that I enjoy (but do not find surprising omissions) are:
- ProRAW capture
- Apple Log capture (it’s not a Pro phone, so this all makes sense)
- Night mode Portrait mode
- Cinematic mode in video
- Action mode in video (this is just super nice, and missing out on it makes me sad)
- Macro mode
Some of these omissions are entirely predictable. For instance, macro mode has only ever existed on iPhones thanks to the extra-close focus distance of their ultrawide 0.5× cameras. ProLog and ProRAW has only ever been available on iPhone Pro models. It’s possible Cinematic mode requires multiple cameras to work right.
Action mode, on the other hand, is a genuinely fantastic feature I’ll miss. I suspect that it is missing because the camera itself lacks one of the best camera hardware enhancements of the last years: sensor-shift camera stabilization.
But — one could argue the ‘essentials’ are all here.
How does iPhone 16e compare?
Remember that I said, however, that the camera itself is actually physically smaller. It stands to reason then that these features that *are* available might be worse if the software brains of the iPhone 16e fail to compensate for it. Is it comparable to the latest and greatest iPhones, or just a literal crap-shoot?
I pitted it against the iPhone 16 Pro to get some shots, and here’s my impressions. Let me preface that by saying that I think this is an unfair comparison: most people that are the target audience of iPhone 16e aren’t the type to buy the top-end iPhone, most likely. But I am sure they do care about getting great shots.
Let’s compare a capture from iPhone 16e to the iPhone 16 Pro.
iPhone 16 Pro left, iPhone 16e right
Notice anything a little different? Aside from color (iPhone 16e consistently took pinker, warmer shots) — the iPhone 16e gives you a slightly narrower field of view. Its camera isn’t quite as wide angle as the iPhone 16 Pro’s, by about a 2mm focal length (26mm vs. 24mm equivalent). In practice, that felt nice to me — you lack a separate zoom lens, so a little bit closer of a zoom is a nice trade-off.
Crop things in close and you see that the smaller sensor on iPhone 16e does have less detail and a bit more ’smudging’. This gets more aggressive in lower light. It’s really not a shabby shot detail-wise, though — this camera packs a punch.
In all, the iPhone 16e has times where it shoots great shots — not quite on par with iPhone 16, but certainly on par with previous non-Pro iPhones or even the iPhone 14 Pro, a previous favorite of mine.
Recall that lack of the sensor-shift stabilization, though? I found that that — not its smaller sensor — is what is limiting the iPhone 16e most of all. Shots that a Pro-iPhone user would get steady and sharp will be a bit blurry, and that happens a lot more often when the sun begins to set or you are in darker indoor settings.
On the left, a typical low light run and gun: raise phone, snap, move on. iPhone 16e in low light will not give you a sharp shot where an iPhone 16 Pro would due to its lack of sensor-shift stabilization. On the right, holding the iPhone 16e more steady still gives a crisp capture.
Another good point of comparison is the ‘2×’ lens that is included. Since its sensor is somewhat smaller and lower quality, the resulting image should be a bit less great too. I found it to be a bit ‘crunchy’ in its processing and appearance.
Software rules this camera
OK, yes: it’s worse than the flagship of iPhone cameras. But the story really doesn’t end there. Remember when I said that the iPhone 16e offers the essentials of an iPhone? That includes iOS and its apps. What really makes the iPhone 16e shine, then, is how thoroughly enjoyable it is as a single-lens camera with apps unlocking some of those extra ‘skills’.
Neural Macro mode in Halide enabled some of the following shots, which while not nearly microscopic like the Pro-series and iPhone 16 are are still a nice closeup:
You can capture RAW shots with Halide or other third party apps too, which (surprise!) were what I used for several of the shots in this blog post, with either minor edits or Halide’s minimal ‘Process Zero’ processing.
It’s what let me to discover that the iPhone 16e’s sensor has a unique quality and rendering to it that I enjoy; it’s a bit grainy, somewhat different in color, but entirely moody.
In fact, if shot at night, an edited RAW file gave me nice low light results that I preferred over the regular HEIC shots out of camera without Night mode.
The shot on the left is a standard HEIC capture with no adjustments (and no Night mode). Right: a native RAW file shot with Halide with color processing done in Lightroom — no noise reduction.
As the kids would say today, it’s a vibe. Well done, Apple.
If you really miss the 3× (and wow, did I miss a 3× / 5× while using this phone) you can even get that via some ML enhancement — though not nearly as sharp as a dedicated camera, obviously:
And the apps are plentiful: you can set a separate camera on your Lock Screen to make up for the Camera Control — which I found myself going for and missing a lot — or add widgets from great apps like Sunlitt to catch the light just right.
Overall, the iPhone 16e is a very interesting way to take in what is the essential experience of iPhone photography: and it makes sense that it’s a wealth of apps and options in iOS that truly make it sing.
If you focus on the essentials and love shooting RAW, this one-camera wonder will be a delight to chase the light with - just take it slow, and handle it with care.
