- 14 hours ago
Is Apple’s iPhone 17e a budget-friendly alternative to their top-of-the-line model? WIRED’s Julian Chokkattu weighs in as the iPhone 17e and iPhone 17 Pro Max go head-to-head. Julian compares all of the essential differences you need to know to make the right choice for you… and your wallet.
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TechTranscript
00:00So you're in the market for a new iPhone. Well, Apple just introduced the iPhone 17e,
00:06and it has a lot of the same features as the flagship iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro,
00:11but it starts at $599 rather than nearly double the price at $1099. So let's discuss the details
00:17and get into the specs and see what you're sacrificing if you go for the cheaper iPhone.
00:24Starting with the iPhone 17e, this is a smaller, more compact phone. It is a 6.1-inch screen.
00:30It's still a Super Retina XDR display, which is shorthand for OLED, and it can get really bright.
00:36It's very sharp. It's colorful. So you're not really losing a ton here on the display front.
00:41You will notice that there is a single camera here, though. Now, the camera, Apple calls it a 48-megapixel
00:46camera, and you might think that's almost the same as the camera on the iPhone 17 Pro. Its main
00:51camera is also 48-megapixels. But actually, there's different sensor sizes that aren't
00:56quite easily noticeable if you look at just the specs. But there are actually kind of a few
01:00differences in the sensors. So the sensors on the Pro version is much larger, so it can take in more
01:06light. Your images are going to be sharper and overall much better than the results from this
01:1148-megapixel camera. Also, there's more cameras here, so you can go up to four times optical,
01:16zoom with one of them, and you can do ultra-wide, where you just can't really do that here.
01:20The iPhone's cameras have come a long way, but at the end of the day, between these phones,
01:24you're either choosing a single camera system or a triple camera system. So let's put these to the
01:30test and see what you're really sacrificing by going with the single system.
01:36I have a human subject next to the camera, and I'm going to be taking a standard picture with the
01:4248-megapixel camera. And now let's do the same shot with the iPhone 17 Pro.
01:49I just zoomed in on these pictures that I just captured, and you can tell that the image from the
01:55Pro Max is significantly sharper. Overall, there's a little bit of a fuzzy look on the 17E's image,
02:02and that's because it's not the brightest scene here, and it's struggling a little bit more in that
02:07lighting, whereas you get far more detail in the shirt, the hair, the face, all around in this
02:13picture, and it's overall just better exposed. And again, even if they have 48-megapixel sensors,
02:19that doesn't actually mean that they're same exact camera. The Pro Max has a larger image sensor,
02:24so again, it can capture brighter images, more data, and overall, you should have a sharper,
02:30clearer picture. Now, also, you are getting those two extra cameras on the back. So what that enables
02:35is the ability to go super ultra-wide, and you can get far more of the scene in the shot,
02:41something you just can't get with the 17E. Personally, my favorite is the ability to zoom
02:46in, and the iPhone 17 Pro enables four times optical zoom. I can zoom all the way in and get
02:52a
02:52pretty decently sharp photo of something really far away, which, you know, isn't necessarily something
02:58for photographers, but even for, you know, you want to just capture your kid accepting their diploma
03:02on stage or your kid at the soccer match. Interestingly enough, this phone actually can
03:07take eight times optical-like quality. So at eight times, it is technically a digital zoom,
03:13but you're getting a sort of a cropped sensor, and so the quality should be similar to optical
03:19quality. So let's try that zoomed of the same subject. Again, the setting is still relatively dark.
03:25These ultra-wide and the telephoto work best in brighter light conditions, but you can still get a
03:30pretty detailed, sharp shot, whether that's with the four times optical zoom or the eight times
03:37optical zoom and still have that little horse head pretty sharp. So low light is, again, one area where
03:43the Pro camera will perform significantly better than the 17E. So if we can dim the lights. Now let's
03:50take the same shot again with the main camera. At the end of the day, when you look at these
03:55two results,
03:56you're still getting much clearer, nicer skin tones even on the Pro image, rather than what you get
04:02with the 17E, which is, you know, in its own right, still a good shot, but just not at the
04:08level of
04:08quality that you're getting with the Pro Max. Triple cameras are very important, but another big part of
04:14why you would want a Pro iPhone is a wealth of Pro-grade filmmaking tools. This iPhone has features like
04:21Genlock and support for advanced filmmaking codecs and even has Pro-RAW capability. And all of that
04:28essentially means that this can be used and has been used to capture films. For example, 28 years later
04:35by Denny Boyle was shot on an iPhone. You're getting more of those advanced filmmaking capabilities and
04:39people are going to be using those features to produce better films on a smaller device. Most people don't
04:46need all of those features as the Pro Max, and you can probably be just fine with the 4K 60fps
04:53capability video recording on the 17E. So for your everyday video shooting of your kids, your traveling,
04:59all of that still should look pretty good on this phone, just not as good as the Pro Max.
05:06They both have the A19 chip, except the iPhone 17 Pro has the A19 Pro. So there's more cores for
05:14the
05:14CPU graphics performance. So overall performance will be much better here than what you get with
05:18the A19 on this phone. However, for most people, you know, you'll be able to run all your apps,
05:24even some intensive games just fine. And that should be more than enough for the vast majority of
05:29consumers. Of course, this is a bigger, bulkier phone. Apple in this iteration has actually stuffed
05:35some of its biggest batteries on the 17 Pro. However, this battery is still pretty respectable,
05:40but naturally the bigger phone, bigger battery in this thing will mean that you're going to get much
05:45better battery life on the 17 Pro, sometimes even close to two days if you're an average user,
05:49whereas this thing will probably just last about a day. Overall, there's little things that you might
05:54not really notice that actually impact the everyday use. So for example, both of these phones have
05:59USB-C ports. However, the USB-C port in the iPhone 17E, it transfers data at a slower speed compared
06:04to what
06:05you can transfer with the iPhone 17 Pro. Also, this phone charges much faster than the 17E.
06:11When you look at durability, Apple uses Ceramic Shield 2, its ceramic and glass mixture to protect
06:16the displays on this phone. However, over on the back, Apple uses Ceramic Shield, an earlier version
06:22of its glass technology to protect the back, whereas this one's some other version of glass that just
06:27isn't as durable as what you get on the Pro version. One of the big new additions of the 17E,
06:33compared to its predecessor, the 16E is MagSafe. So Apple has had MagSafe for several years. It
06:39allows you to snap magnetic accessories on the back of the phone just like that, like a wallet,
06:43or also it allows for faster wireless charging if you use a magnetic charger. That is just such a
06:48necessary upgrade and makes this phone match its $599 price compared to not having it on the previous
06:54version because this ecosystem has so many options. You can put it on magnetic tripods, magnetic car docks,
07:00bike mounts, and all that just makes this a little more versatile.
07:05To do a stress test, we're going to run an intensive and demanding mobile game on these phones,
07:10and I have a thermal scanner here so I can check the temperature. And let's take a look at what
07:16the
07:16baseline right now is for the iPhone 17E, currently sitting at around 89 degrees. So it's a little warmer
07:24right out of the gate already. So now let's run the game and take a look what happens after running
07:30that game for several minutes. So I'm booting up Genshin Impact on this iPhone 17E. Obviously,
07:35the more you do in the game when you're actually playing, the more it will use up that processor.
07:42So this game has been running for 15 minutes, so let's do another temperature check on the 17E.
07:48Overall, it's about 95. And when you get closer to a specific hotspot, it's closer to 97, 100. Let me
07:56also just pick up the back of the phone and just also feel this warmer, you can feel it. And
08:01you can
08:01also see one particular part of the phone is very, very hot. It's likely where the processor is. Pointing
08:08it more close to that area, we're looking at 99 degrees. That is significantly warmer than what we
08:16checked before. The baseline right now is for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, around 76 degrees. All right,
08:24let's try the same game Genshin Impact on the 17 Pro Max and let it sit for 15 minutes and
08:29see how the
08:30thermals fare over there. So it's been about 15 minutes. This iPhone actually feels significantly
08:38cooler than the other one when I picked it up earlier. So let's do a little temperature check.
08:43The surface here is reading about remarkably 77. We can see a little bit more warmth towards the top
08:51of the phone. We're sitting around 79 to 83 on the back of the phone. If you compare that to
08:57the 17E,
08:59which was operating at about 95 to 100 degrees, that's a pretty big difference. This phone feels much
09:05cooler. So you already are getting the benefit of just not having, you know, your fingers really sweaty
09:09by holding a really hot phone. But also that cooler performance means you can play the game
09:14for a much longer period of time and still enjoy a pretty smooth experience. Whereas on the 17E,
09:19the longer you play, the phone will get hotter. The chip will start to throttle itself a little
09:24bit and that'll induce some stutters and maybe some lag that you'll see as you play, which will then
09:28affect the performance over time. Over on the front, you'll notice that this iPhone goes for the very
09:35old style notch design. So the Face ID camera here is cut out like a literal notch on the phone
09:41and it
09:41doesn't necessarily look super modern. Whereas Apple has Dynamic Island on the iPhone 17 Pro,
09:47and that is sort of a newer technology where it just makes the entire phone look a little more
09:51sleek. But also Dynamic Island adds a couple of new capabilities. So when you have live notifications,
09:56for example, if you called an Uber and you're waiting for the Uber, you can actually tap on the
10:00Dynamic Island and it will show how far your Uber is away rather than having to hop into the app.
10:04That functionality just doesn't really exist on this phone, which has the notch.
10:08Also, the screen refresh rate is a big thing that is an underrated feature. Apple has 120 Hz on the
10:15screen on the Pro models, and that actually allows for the display to refresh 120 times per second.
10:22Now, the iPhone 17E has a 60 Hz display, so that's only refreshing 60 times per second. You're only seeing
10:2860 images per second, which means everything on the screen just feels not as smooth and fluid as it does
10:34on
10:34the Pro Max.
10:37Ultimately, what you're looking for in a smartphone greatly depends on your preferences. I know a lot
10:43of people who don't really care about the camera experience of the phone. They just want a really
10:47good baseline iPhone that can run their apps and maybe a couple of mobile games. And for those people,
10:52I would say something like the 599 iPhone 17E is a really great place to start. There are also the
10:57people on the other end of the spectrum who want all the bells and whistles. They want the design,
11:02they want the higher end materials, they want that triple camera system, maybe the larger screen.
11:08All those capabilities will draw people to a device like the Pro Max or even the iPhone 17 Pro. And
11:14don't forget, there is also the standard iPhone 17, which has a few extra capabilities over the 17E
11:19and has a little bit of a middle ground price point. I also do want to mention that if you
11:24don't
11:24care whether your phone is an Android or an iPhone, most people do, we do have another device that I
11:31think has a little bit better value. This is the Google Pixel 10a. It also recently just came out and
11:37this phone starts at 499 and you get many of the same capabilities as the iPhone 17E, except it can
11:44go
11:45a little bit further in some ways. So for example, it has a 120 hertz display versus the 60 hertz
11:50on the
11:5117E. It does have a dual camera system with an ultra wide, so that adds a little more versatility.
11:56But at the end of the day, you're going to choose what ecosystem you want, whether that's Android or
12:00iPhone, and they're all still pretty good phones. So if you're looking for a way to not break the bank
12:05and save some cash, the iPhone 17E is available now.
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