In Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman’s weekly edition of his “Power On” newsletter, he claimed that Apple is planning to launch the successor to the iPhone 16e, which has been positioned as an entry-level model in the iPhone lineup. This upcoming iPhone model will likely be called the “iPhone 17e” since its hardware will be similar to that of the standard iPhone 17, just a more affordable option that may cut some corners.
As previously rumored in last week’s report, the iPhone 17e will likely feature the A19 chip. Since the iPhone 16e uses a binned variant of the A18 chip, it’s likely that the iPhone 17e will feature a binned variant of the A19 chip as well to reduce production costs. In addition, the iPhone 17e will remedy one of the biggest omissions from the iPhone 16e by bringing in MagSafe connectivity, which has been a feature that’s standard on the flagship iPhone models* for years since the iPhone 12 series. Last, but not least, the iPhone 17e is set to feature Apple’s latest in-house cellular modem and networking chip: the C1X modem and the N1 chip, respectively, just like on the iPhone Air.
Gurman says that the iPhone 17e will have the same starting price as before, at $599, bringing more features for the same price.
As you can tell from his report, Apple is gearing up to launch a plethora of new products across multiple categories imminently, so I suspect that we could see a week full of hardware refreshes as soon as the week of March 2. Apple has done back-to-back hardware updates within a week. A few examples are:
- iPad Air / iPad mini with A12 chips (March 18, 2019); iMac refresh (March 19, 2019); AirPods [2nd generation] (March 20, 2019)
- iMac with M4 chip (October 28, 2024); Mac mini with M4 and M4 Pro chips (October 29, 2024); MacBook Pro with M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips (October 30, 2024)
- iPad Air with M3 chip / iPad with A16 chip (March 4, 2025); MacBook Air with M4 chip / Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips
So maybe we’ll see history repeat itself with something like this:
- March 2, 2026: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips
- March 3, 2026: iPad with A18 chip / iPad Air with M4 chip
- March 4, 2026: iPhone 17e with A19 chip
This is just my prediction, so only time will tell when we’ll see those hardware refreshes, so make sure you bookmark this page to stay up to date with Apple-related stories.
*MagSafe is a feature on the iPhone 12 series, the iPhone 13 series, the iPhone 14 series, the iPhone 15 series, the iPhone 16 series (excluding the 16e), the iPhone 17 series, and the iPhone Air
