Apple introduced the iPhone 17e globally, including India last month. The successor to last year’s iPhone 16e gets a faster A19 chip, starts at 256GB, and finally gets MagSafe wireless charging support. Here we have the first impressions of the phone.
Box Contents
- iPhone 17e 512GB model in Black
- USB-C To C Cable
- SIM ejector pin
The phone retains the 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display with up to 1200 nits of brightness and has Ceramic Shield 2 protection, an upgrade from Ceramic Shield, so it includes an anti-reflective coating to reduce glare and offers a claimed threefold increase in scratch resistance over the previous.
It also retains the 12MP TrueDepth front camera that supports HDR video recording with Dolby Vision up to 4K at 60 fps. There is Face ID enabled by the TrueDepth camera system, and the earpiece also doubles up as a secondary speaker. You can see the bottom bezel that matches with the side and top bezels.
The A18 chip is replaced by an Apple A19 3nm chip and gets an Apple-designed C1X modem, an upgrade from the C1 modem that is reported to be up to twice as fast as the C1 modem found in the iPhone 16e. It also uses 30% less energy compared to the modem in the iPhone 16 Pro.
The phone has aerospace‑grade aluminium with flat sides and a matte finish, similar to the predecessor. You can see the action button on the left. However, this doesn’t have camera control that is present in other iPhone 17 series phones.
You can also see the antenna cutouts. On the bottom there is a USB Type-C port. You can see speaker grills and the microphone port on either sides of the port. The phone has IP68 water resistance.
It has a single 48MP camera with optical image stabilization, 4K video recording at 60 fps, Slo‑mo 1080p at 240 fps, HDR 5, Photographic Styles, Deep Fusion, and Cinematic mode up to 4K at 30 fps. Check out some camera samples.
The back has a matte finish, so it is not prone to fingerprints. It promises up to 26 hours of video playback and weighs 170 grams.
Look-wise, the phone is identical to the iPhone 16e.
The new iPhone 17e is priced starting at Rs. 64,900 for the base 256GB model compared to the Rs. 69,900 launch price for the iPhone 16e 256GB model, making it cheaper. It is available from Apple India online stores, other online stores as well as offline retailers across India.