I buy one iPhone and all of a sudden everyone at the office here was like,
"Hey, do you want to take a look at the new iPhone 17E?"
Just because I buy one iPhone, all of a sudden I'm expected to know everything
about these devices? Well, to be honest with you, I was
actually pretty excited to take a look at this. Mainly because this phone
I think is going to be perfect for both senior citizens who just want a phone
that just is basic and entry-level for the iPhone, but I also think that a lot
of people who just don't really care about their phone, this might be the
perfect device. I am very happy that we got the pink one though. Man, the pink
looks It's almost too subtle. It's like pastel pastel pink. But anyways, we
should look at what else is in the box here. You obviously got the iPhone 17E
and our cable. And it's about what, 3-ft
cable? It is type C to C though, USB 2.
The iPhone 17E only has a USB 2 port. It doesn't have a USB 3 like the Pro or the
Pro Max. Listen, I actually have kind of a hot take on this. I think that the
amount of data that people are transferring over a cable from their
phones, they probably [music] don't need anything greater than USB 2.
Look, so many people back things up to Google Drive now or iCloud.
Realistically, most people just use it for charging, especially at this level
of a device. And besides, if it's a corner that they have to cut in order to
get the price as low as they did, I think it's a worthwhile corner to cut.
Around the device, we have our action button and our volume rocker there. On
the top, you got nothing. On this side, you've got your power button. And on the
bottom is that USB 2 port and some down-firing speakers there. Around back,
you've got your single camera, which is their 48-megapixel fusion camera. And
that's just their fancy marketing term for zooming. But kind of like the last
year's iPhone 16E, the iPhone 17E is
using the same chip as the rest of the iPhone 17 family. It's using that A19
chip. In this case, this one has one less GPU core. Which for some people
that might be frustrating. If you want to game on it for example. But you also
don't get the 120-Hz display that you would get from the other iPhones. In
that case then, you're probably not going to be gaming at 120 Hz because A,
you don't have the screen for it anyways, and now you have the one less GPU core. If it translates to better
battery savings or just overall better performance of the phone because it
doesn't overheat, whatever it may be, having it be a cut-down version of the
same chip is nice because then it's the same chip, so you can expect similar
performance without hopefully breaking the bank. And now that I mentioned
battery, they're claiming it has 26 hours of video playback. Which man, 26
hours of battery is amazing. Going back to the point that I made in the intro
about people who maybe just don't really care too much about what phone they
have, that is going to be a ton. Because those type of people are going to be the
ones that just pull it up, answer a quick text message, maybe do a quick
Google, whatever it may be, and then don't touch their phone again. That
could translate to longer than just a day worth of use. In my case, I know
it's not exactly comparable with the Pro Max here. I have found myself getting
several days worth of battery off this thing. And so if you have a less
powerful device that is probably going to be used less, I could see the same
thing happening. And I think Apple knows that too because right away when you turn this thing on, you can see there's
kind of a healthy bezel around the edge here. And even that camera notch, man,
that takes up a significant percentage of your screen. Other than the refresh
rate which I mentioned earlier, I don't think Apple has made too many other
compromises to the screen. It still isn't OLED. It's still super retina XDR.
It's a 6.1-in screen, 2532 by 1170. You
are getting the same PPI as the iPhone 17, which means content on the screen is
going to look very very good for those YouTube videos or those movies you're
going to watch. I do wish they went a little smaller. When I actually bought
my wife an iPhone 17, one of the things she complained about was, "I miss my 13
mini. Bring back the mini Apple. That was the best iPhone you've ever made in my opinion." I actually just went to hit
it, but it's not there. You don't get the camera button on the iPhone 17E.
That's something you only get with the 17 or the 17 Pro lineup. Again, same
thing. I don't think that the people buying this phone are going to be too worried about having that shutter button
to take photos. It's probably a worthwhile cost-cutting measure to get
this a little bit cheaper. We should still look at the camera though. Let's open it up. But I've been told that
there's mandatory talking points once again by Dbrand, so maybe we should do that first. Wait a minute, are they just
reusing the exact same screen? I think they are. Let's go. Let's install it.
They sent over their iPhone 17E grip case, which funny enough is actually the
exact same iPhone 16E case. But because
both of the phones are the exact same, you can reuse it. Thanks Dbrand for
reusing and recycling. That's super cool. Just like the grip name implies,
they're pretty grippy. Makes it nice and easy to hold on to. And you can make it even more special cuz they have over 40
different designs to pick from and stick onto the back. This one is called their
sketch 2D design, which kind of makes your phone look like it's coming straight out of a comic book. So if
you're in the market for an iPhone 17E phone case or hey, any grip phone case,
head over to mybossisveryshort.com.
All right, let's take a photo. Let's take a photo of our kitchen set. Then
I'm going to do a 2x and we're going to kind of zoom in on Lucky over there. Man, I have to zoom in a lot a very long
ways before I start having issues with the camera quality. Like even that
looks impeccable. There is just something special about iPhone cameras.
It's It's just magic. I do feel like it
might be a little limiting for some people to have just the one camera that
can kind of do everything pretty good versus having your specialized cameras
that might do their specialized focus really really well. But again, "Oh, I'm
going to take a picture of little Billy." I want to take a selfie cuz the
iPhone 17 has that square sensor as the selfie camera, right? It seems like a
gimmick, but once you've used it, it's pretty cool. Reese, I need a friend.
So go get someone else, Reese. No, I'm >> [laughter]
>> All right, we're going to take a photo. Oh, it's just me. Hey, buddy. Oh, it doesn't
Don't Don't look so sad. [laughter] It didn't do the auto scaling. Maybe I
need a better friend to help me scale it better. That's That's a little bit of a
bummer. I mean, it doesn't mean the photo is bad. It still looks very good.
The type of person that's buying this phone doesn't need the highest quality camera. So if that's a cost-cutting
measure that helps get the price down, I think it's fine. I also just realized
that those photos were on the 24-megapixel setting, which is on by
default. We could also take our photos on the 48-megapixel. Yeah, most people
aren't really going to care. So I think actually keeping it on the 24 megapixels
by default is probably a good thing because a lot of people are going to be
snapping a ton of photos with this thing, right? Whether again it's families or you're just going out for a
walk, whatever it may be. And having only 256 gigs of storage, you kind of
want to get your mileage out of 256 gigs of storage. So by [music] in turn
lowering the quality of the photos, you can have more photos. And 256 gigs, I
quickly glossed over that. I think that's awesome as an entry-level phone,
right? Before, the 16E had 128 GB. Now
we're at 256. And in a world where DRAM
prices are going absolutely insane, the
fact that Apple chose not to gouge that out of us on the entry-level model, I
think is kind of awesome. I think it shows
respect for consumers and their space. What doesn't show respect is 60 Hz, damn
it. It's It's It's such a weird thing when
you compare this to other entry-level phones, whether it's Samsung's A56 or
Google's Pixel 10A, those phones have 120 Hz screens. Why can't Apple, damn
it? But it's an entry-level phone. I've always thought that 120 Hz screens on
entry-level phones seemed kind of weird anyways. At least your iPhone 17 has 120
Hz now. But once again, going back to who the target market is for this thing,
they don't care about 120 Hz. I I don't know, man. In a world where tech has
become kind of shitty lately, I feel like Apple's done kind of a lot of cool
things right. I know this isn't the app the MacBook Neo video. That's a prime
example right there. Sorry, enough Apple glazing. Let's watch a YouTube video.
Man, this looks good. Other than the
big off notch. Sorry, pardon my language. That takes up so much of the
screen real estate. You kind of can't watch it in full screen. It gets pretty
bright though. 800 nits, 1200 nits in peak brightness for HDR stuff. It looks
great. It's an Apple display. It's It's basically the same display as the other
17 lineup right now, right? So it looks fantastic. This is where it gets weird.
I just complained that I wanted a smaller phone, but when I'm watching content on it, it feels really small.
>> [laughter] >> Man, consumers really don't know what they want, right? Anyways, we need to
listen to the speakers on this bad boy. Smaller devices mean worse speakers
typically. Cool.
I hope you're a bass head. I can I can hear the bass pretty aggressively on
this device. It sounds really good. It's just very bass heavy. And for being such
a small device, I'm surprised at how loud it gets. I'm going to go back down
to 50% volume here. Wow, even that I can hear the bass like
crazy. Yeah, they they sound good other than the bass. Well, I have to wait for
a game to download. I might as well talk about some of the other specs that come with this phone. It has Wi-Fi 6,
Bluetooth 5.3, and it has Apple's new C1X modem, which is the exact same modem
that was in the iPhone Air. And the iPhone 16E had the C1, right? That was
the first time that they had moved over to Apple's in-house developed modems. A
lot of people attributed the great battery life of the 16E to that modem.
We should probably see similar results
in terms of battery longevity with this one if it's using similar architecture
and similar design. We don't have those full numbers today because we just got
the phone I think basically today. So we didn't quite run battery tests just yet.
I'm sure that once they're done though, they can be up on the lab site. In some of our stress tests, mainly in Geekbench
and 3DMark, it performed basically exactly where you'd expect this to line
up. Better than last year's 16E and worse than the iPhone 17. So at least
it's not over-punching or under-punching and it is an upgrade from last year.
That's exactly where I'd expect it to land. So I don't know why I'm surprised
or even talking about it this long. They're still using the ceramic shield 2
glass that the iPhone 17 uses. It's very interesting to me that they managed to
get this device just a couple hundred bucks cheaper than the base model 17 and
on a lot of cases make it feel the exact same. I do think that some of the
cost-cutting measures that they did actually were smart. Whether you want
120 hertz or not, I think if cutting it down to 60 hertz is what makes it
cheaper, then let's go for it. I mean, I'm in game right now and at 60 hertz on
this size screen while playing, this feels fine.
Where is the lock? There it is. I found it. It's still got MagSafe. That's
awesome. So, hypothetical here. You're giving your kids a new iPhone for their
Christmas. You're already have been a long-time iPhone user. You have built up
your MagSafe army. They can use it now. I think it's kind of cool that they
still managed to get MagSafe built in, unlike the 16e. Which, I guess if I'm
talking about price, it's finally time to mention it. It's $599 US, which is
more expensive than a lot of other phones' entry-level devices. Like I
mentioned earlier, that Samsung A56 or even the Pixel 10e. For an entry-level
phone, it's expensive. For an entry-level iPhone, it's cheap. And I
think that's where this is going again, right? This is going for your family
members that you want to have on iPhone because maybe your family's already an
iPhone family. Or maybe you just don't want to give them an Android because
there's some things you don't like about it. It might be a little complicated for your relative. Whatever it may be,
this is the device that's going to be perfect for that. Perfect for kids' Christmas gifts. I think that the
compromises that the iPhone 17e makes is
worth it to get it down to that price. I wish they could go a little bit cheaper.
Maybe if it they made it a mini, less material, uh cheaper? I think right now in a world
where devices feel like they're getting more and more expensive, things are kind
of terrible in the tech space. I am giving Apple a gold star here. It's
still expensive as a budget phone, but between everything that they announced
in the last couple weeks here, who would have thought that Apple's RAM pricing
and SSD pricing, mm, ahead of the curve, baby. But, let me
know what you guys think down below. If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out the complete opposite end of the
spectrum, the S26 Ultra that I just unboxed on ShortCircuit. I tried to
compare it to my flagship iPhone and uh
it's a phone. I think Samsung made more compromises on that than Apple did on
this. Spoiler alert.