With iPhone 16e, Apple Kills iPhone 14 Lineup: Cheapest iPhone Now $599

Apple’s newest iPhone is a rebranded—and more expensive—iPhone SE, and its launch means the end of the iPhone 14 and previous-gen iPhone SE.

The iPhone section of Apple’s website now highlights the iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 15, and the new iPhone 16e. The iPhone 14 series no longer shows up in searches on Apple.com. From Google, the iPhone 14 page now redirects to Apple’s main iPhone hub.

The iPhone 14 is also not available new on Best Buy or Amazon; the latter is selling refurbished versions of the smartphone.

This means the cheapest iPhone is now $599, a pretty big bump over the iPhone SE’s $429 price tag. In theory, the SE line was supposed to be Apple’s low-cost iPhone. But this is Apple we’re talking about, so it was never going to compete with the sub-$300 or sub-$200 budget phones from the likes of Samsung or Motorola. Carrier deals and trade-ins could help lower the cost of the iPhone 16e, though.

The iPhone 16e’s USB-C connector also means that Apple’s lineup has officially ditched the Lightning connector. Under pressure from European regulators, Apple switched to USB-C with the iPhone 15 lineup, but Lightning remained on the iPhone SE and iPhone 14.

The move is a little unusual. Per MacRumors, Apple has never discontinued a mainline iPhone in the middle of a release cycle like this. Typically, older models are discontinued when new flagship models are released. However, in this case, the move makes sense as the iPhone 16e seems to be taking over the iPhone SE and iPhone 14 in one fell swoop and tightening up Apple’s iPhone branding in the process.

Apple packed quite a few upgrades in the iPhone 16e, including a more powerful A18 processor that will give the phone access to Apple Intelligence, something that the iPhone 14 didn’t have. That’s the same processor as the standard iPhone 16.

Other upgrades include Apple’s first in-house modem, dubbed the C1. The chip works with most low- and mid-band cellular spectrum in North America and includes support for legacy protocols down to 2G. It also supports 4×4 MIMO and the latest Wi-Fi standards which the iPhone 14 did not.

The iPhone 16e is available for preorder starting Feb. 21 with retail stores getting stock on Feb. 28. It’ll come in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB models for $599, $699, and $899, respectively.

About Joe Hindy

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Hello, my name is Joe and I am a tech blogger. My first real experience with tech came at the tender age of 6 when I started playing Final Fantasy IV (II on the SNES) on the family’s living room console. As a teenager, I cobbled together my first PC build using old parts from several ancient PCs, and really started getting into things in my 20s. I served in the US Army as a broadcast journalist. Afterward, I served as a news writer for XDA-Developers before I spent 11 years as an Editor, and eventually Senior Editor, of Android Authority. I specialize in gaming, mobile tech, and PC hardware, but I enjoy pretty much anything that has electricity running through it.

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