iPhone 16e battery and charging: Specs and upgrades
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Apple's new iPhone 16e is here, and one of the more exciting things about the newest Apple iPhone is its longer battery life. Apple puts a lot of emphasis on the endurance of the iPhone 16e, suggesting it achieves the best battery life among all 6.1-inch iPhones released so far. Promising!
Indeed, one of the primary downsides of the previous iPhone SE was its poor battery life.
Thanks to the larger design, the iPhone 16e houses a large 4,005 mAh battery and a more efficient chip on board, the fast Apple A18 Pro, which also ticks inside the regular iPhone 16 range.
In terms of charging, Apple has kept things mostly predictable. We get a USB-C port at the bottom, as well as 20W wired charging, but fairly slow 7.5W Qi wireless charging. What's more disappointing here, however, is the lack of MagSafe support on the iPhone 16e. You will most certainly have to get a case with MagSafe magnets to be able to use any MagSafe accessories.
iPhone16e battery upgrades
Larger body comes with a larger battery
For the most part, the iPhone 16e largely adopts the same design language as the iPhone 14.
The 4,005 mAh battery in the iPhone 16e achieves good results in our in-house battery tests, but it seems that a big part of the battery equation is also the power efficiency of the new modem. This is a thing that is much harder to measure in a battery test.
As for active use, here is the battery results we got.
PhoneArena Battery Test Results
On our lightest web browsing test, the iPhone 16e is indeed impressive, scoring nearly 17 hours and a half, ranking best among smaller iPhones of recent years.
For other tests, however, it was not quite as amazing. In our second test where we stream YouTube videos over a Wi-Fi connection, the iPhone 16e got around 7 hours, while we have seen up to an hour more in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 models.
OLED display
Another upgrade that has surely affected the battery life positively is the transition from an LCD to an OLED display. OLED's are generally considered more power-efficient because they don't require a backlight, meaning black pixels use no power at all. This means that unless you're viewing an all-white image at 100% brightness, an OLED will largely be more efficient than an LCD screen.
A18 Pro chipset
The iPhone 16e comes with the latest and greatest Apple A18 Pro chipset. The second-gen 3nm chip is extremely fast, and therefore, extremely efficient, which surely contributes to the potentially great battery life. The iPhone 16 generation typically enjoys some pretty decent battery life across the board, so our expectations are fairly high about the iPhone 16e's endurance.
New 5G modem
Another piece of the battery life puzzle is the 5G modem, which is entirely new on the iPhone 16e. The Apple C1 modem is the company's first custom modem, which could potentially deliver better efficiency in comparison with the modems on other iPhones, which were all Qualcomm-made.
How much battery does the iPhone 16e have?
The iPhone 16e has a massive 3,961mAh battery, the largest ever fitted on a 6.1-inch iPhone. Apple claims an official figure of 26 hours of video playback, which is a great figure. That's better than any other 6.1-inch iPhone, and is actually very close to the Plus-sized iPhone varieties, which is spectacular.
| Device | Battery Capacity | Official Battery Life Figure |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone 16e | 3,961 mAh | Up to 26 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 16 | 3,561 mAh | Up to 22 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 16 Plus | 4,674 mAh | Up to 27 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 15 Plus | 4,383 mAh | Up to 26 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 14 Plus | 4,325 mAh | Up to 26 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 15 | 3,349 mAh | Up to 20 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 14 | 3,279 mAh | Up to 20 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 13 | 3,227 mAh | Up to 19 hours of video playback |
| iPhone 12 | 2,815 mAh | Up to 17 hours of video playback |
As evident from the table above, the iPhone 16e has better battery life than any recent 6.1-inch iPhone. It even matches the battery life of the all iPhone Plus devices except for the last one, which is quite encouraging.
Does the iPhone 16e have wireless charging?
Yes, the iPhone 16e has wireless charging, but it's pretty slow at 7.5W. That's twice as slow as regular iPhone MagSafe wireless charging, which is rated at 15W (or even 25W on the iPhone 16 range).
And here's the kicker––the iPhone 16e doesn't support MagSafe, so you can't use any of your existing MagSafe accessories with it.
How fast does the iPhone 16e charge?
The iPhone 16e arrives with 20W wired charging. Apple promises 50% charge in 30 minutes. A full charge will probably take at least 90 minutes, but possibly longer.
When it comes to wireless charging, we expect the iPhone 16e to be terribly slow. It comes with 7.5W Qi charging, so topping the battery wirelessly will take a pretty long time.
As a comparison, the iPhone SE (2022) charged its 2,018mAh battery in four hours via wireless charging, which doesn't really inspire us about the potential iPhone 16e wireless charging speed.
Will the iPhone 16e have reverse-wireless charging?
No iPhone has reverse wireless charging capabilities, the iPhone 16e included.
What charger will the iPhone 16e use?
The best charger for the iPhone 16e will be any charger that has at least 20W of power output. Apple makes its own 20W charger, so that would be the safest choice, even though you can always go for a trusted third-party option that has good reputation.
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