Apple unveils iPhone 17e with A19 chip and MagSafe charging starting at $599

The takeaway: Apple has unveiled its next budget smartphone, the iPhone 17e, featuring several upgrades over its predecessor. The most notable additions include MagSafe support, a more powerful processor, an improved cellular modem, enhanced screen protection, and double the base storage capacity. Despite these improvements, the iPhone 17e is expected to retain the same starting price as the model it replaces.

The iPhone 17e features a 6.1-inch OLED display with peak brightness reaching 1,200 nits. The screen is equipped with an improved anti-reflective coating and is protected by Apple Ceramic Shield 2.

The device is powered by the 3-nanometer Apple A19 processor, which includes a hexa-core CPU, quad-core GPU, and a 16-core neural engine optimized for machine learning workloads. Storage configurations are available in 256GB and 512GB variants.

Like the iPhone 16e, its successor also features a single rear-camera configuration. The 48MP Fusion Camera supports 2× telephoto zoom ...