Apple Launches A19 iPhone 17e And M4 iPad Air With Major Performance Boosts

As expected, Apple has gone and refreshed both its iPhone and iPad Air lineup with new models, though the surprise is that it did not wait until its Apple Experience event that is scheduled for this Wednesday, March 4. Instead, Apple used the start of Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2026 to unveil two relative affordable product additions, both of which start at $599.

Starting with the iPhone 17e that has been the subject of leaks for months, the new entry maintains the same launch price as the iPhone 16e (see our review) that came before it but with some key upgrades, including double the baseline storage at 256GB. That alone is noteworthy, given that Apple managed keep the price same despite all the talk of an industry-wide shortage on memory and storage chips.

The other big upgrade is a jump to Apple's A19 processor, the same as found in ...