- The new iPhone 16e lacks Apple’s latest Photographic Styles feature
- It also only has one lens and is missing the Camera Control
- It has a lot to offer, but might not be best for serious photographers
There was a lot to digest from Apple’s iPhone 16e announcement, with the device potentially being the most significant budget iPhone in years. But if you’ve got a sharp eye, you might have noticed that it lacks a few key photography features, including Apple’s latest Photographic Styles.
Photographic Styles are essentially tweaks that are applied to things like image tone and contrast as you’re taking pictures on an iPhone, making them more intelligent than regular filters that are pressed onto flat pictures after they’re shot. They’ve been present in all the best iPhones since the iPhone 13, but Apple totally revamped them with the launch of the iPhone 16 range in 2024 – they now store more data in each photo, letting you apply Photographic Styles after the image has been taken.
Yet if you go to Apple’s iPhone comparison page and put the iPhone 16e up against any other device from the iPhone 16 lineup, you’ll notice that the iPhone 16e is just said to come with “Photographic Styles.” For any other iPhone 16 device, the feature is labeled as “Latest-generation Photographic Styles.”
That means that if you’re hoping to try Apple’s latest looks when shooting photos on the iPhone 16e, you’re out of luck. Past-generation Photographic Styles still give you plenty of ways to enhance your images, but they lack some of the features that the latest styles give you.
Missing features
That’s not the only way the iPhone 16e falls behind the other devices in the iPhone 16 range. Most clearly, it only has one camera lens, meaning it lacks the ultra-wide lens you’ll find in the other iPhone 16 products and the telephoto lens present in the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Elsewhere, the iPhone 16e is also lacking the Camera Control. This touch-sensitive strip can be found along the side of every other iPhone 16 and lets you quickly jump into your chosen camera app, switch photographic settings like zoom level, depth of field and exposure, and take photos.
Ultimately, some of these decisions probably come down to cost. With the iPhone 16e being Apple’s most affordable iPhone, Apple had to exclude some features to keep the price down. The lack of new Photographic Styles might also be a marketing decision on Apple’s part to maintain some distance between the iPhone 16e and the iPhone 16 and to ensure that the budget phone doesn’t cannibalize sales of the regular iPhone 16.
Regardless of the reasoning, the missing camera features mean the iPhone 16e might not be the iPhone for you if you’re into photography, and it certainly won’t be a contender for the best camera phone any time soon. It still has a lot to offer in other areas, but more serious photographers might want to look elsewhere.
