When Apple introduced its latest iPhone models for 2026, the company discontinued the iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max. Apple kept both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus in the line, by dropped their MSRPs by $100. What you may not know is that Apple cut the capacities to only 128GB for the base iPhone 16 and 128GB/256GB for the iPhone 16 Plus. We’ve sometimes had Apple dropped storage configurations when the company dropped prices for previous-generation models after new models were announced.
Before the event, here are the MSRPs for all the storage configurations for both models:
- iPhone 16: 128GB ($799) / 256GB ($899) / 512GB ($1,099)
- iPhone 16 Plus: 128GB ($899) / 256GB ($999) / 512GB ($1,199)
After the event, the only options for the iPhone 16 models are the following:
- iPhone 16: 128GB ($699)
- iPhone 16 Plus: 128GB ($799) / 256GB ($899)
Note that those prices include a $30 connectivity discount when assigning to a carrier.
Before the iPhone 17 introduction, you could get the 256GB iPhone 16 for $899, but Apple surprised us all when the base iPhone 17 now starts at 256GB. Had Apple kept the previous 256GB iPhone 16 and dropped the price by $100, it would be priced at $799 – the same price as the base iPhone 17 with the same amount of storage. Therefore, there’s absolutely no point in offering the iPhone 16 (256GB) now that all 2026 iPhone models have 256GB of storage by default.
With that said, the iPhone 17 is a much better deal now thanks to having double the storage at the base as well as getting many more features that were previously reserved for the Pro models, especially ProMotion/Always On display features. iPhone 17 will be available to pre-order tomorrow, and it will launch on Friday, September 19.
