iPhone 17e hands-on: Nothing more, nothing less

Apple announced the $599 iPhone 17e earlier this week, and we had a chance to play with one of these devices for a few minutes at the company’s media “trial” in New York City.

The 17e is exactly what you’d expect — a cheaper, simpler take on the iPhone 17 that replaces the similarly stripped-down iPhone 16e in Apple’s lineup. It comes in black, white, and pink, and the main compromise is really the screen: it’s a basic 6.1-inch, 60Hz refresh rate display and no Dynamic Island, ProMotion, or anything. The only real upgrade to the screen is that it now has Apple’s Ceramic Shield 2 coating for improved scratch and glare resistance. It’s all well and good for an entry-level phone – but at this point Apple has more interesting displays elsewhere.

There’s only a single 48MP camera on the back that generally produces 24MP images. You can shoot at full 48 resolution if you want, and the sensor can be cropped for 2x zoom, which Apple adamantly calls “optical quality” in its constant attempt to redefine the word camera in imaginative new ways. We’ll see what that all looks like when we get a chance to actually review this thing, but for now it feels like a familiar iPhone camera placement, aside from the lack of a camera control button and the slight downgrade to a 12-megapixel front-facing camera from the 18-megapixel cameras found in the rest of the lineup.

The big news is at the back, as Apple has added MagSafe to its entry-level phone for the first time. You can charge wirelessly at up to 15W (down from 25W for the rest of the range) and it supports the Qi2 standard for those who like to party cross-platform.

Inside, the base storage has been increased to 256GB, and you’ve got an A19 processor alongside Apple’s new C1X modem, which the company claims is twice as fast – a nice idea belied by the reality of 5G in 2026. But still: nice.

That’s it, really – as you’d expect, the iPhone 17e is a great thing to hold, and Apple’s fit and finish make it a very sharp little package. But there’s nothing spectacular here — which is probably just right for a $599 phone that most people would buy on sale or get for free on contract.