Cheapest iPhone

Review: Apple iPhone 17e - Cheap top model

Apple's way of making a cheaper top model differs from competitors. Often for the better.

Published 2 April 2026 - 10:49

Apple's price ladder for the iPhone consists of the iPhone 17 Pro at the top with a price starting from 15,000 kronor and upwards. Below that is the regular iPhone 17, then last year's iPhone 16, and as the cheapest option, the iPhone 17e, with a price tag starting from 8,500 kronor and upwards. Not exactly a cheap mobile phone by competitors' standards, rather the price point where they usually place their "cheaper top models".

When Android manufacturers make cheap top models, they often save on the price by putting a cheaper chipset in the phone. Apple hasn't done that; here you find the same A19 processors as in the iPhone 17, and the phone performs just as well in performance tests. This makes the iPhone 17e faster than the 1,000 kronor more expensive iPhone 16, which is the next step up on Apple's price ladder.

Not that it matters. Very little in the user experience is affected by performance, which mainly provides improvements in graphics and artificial intelligence, for example in image processing or if you are editing videos on the mobile.

Noticeably worse screen

The screen is, however, worse than both the iPhone 17 and 16. Not so much because it is smaller than the screen in the iPhone 17, you mostly notice it by the thicker black edges around it. All three mobiles also have OLED screens, but the iPhone 17e only has a 60 Hz refresh rate, which makes the image blurry as soon as you swipe the slightest. At the top, we find the screen cutout that later iPhones have done away with and replaced with Dynamic Island.

Above all, however, the screen is dimmer than both the Iphone 17 and 16, and it is difficult to use outdoors in sunlight. On the plus side, the screen is anti-reflective. This removes some of the reflections caused by ambient light, but don't have too high expectations of it. The reflections are slightly reduced but do not disappear.

An obvious compromise you make when choosing the Iphone 17e is the cameras, or in the case of the back, the camera. There is only one camera here instead of two as on the Iphone 17 or three as on the Iphone 17 Pro. It is also not Apple's best camera as on the Iphone Air, but rather a camera with a fairly small sensor.

However, this is where Apple's A19 platform kicks in. By default, the camera delivers images in 24 megapixels, generated with the help of multiple exposures and the computational power of the phone's circuits. Apparently, it is more important than the camera sensor, because when I compare photos I take with the Iphone 17e with the Iphone 17, it is difficult to say which image is better in most cases. The images from the Iphone 17e look a bit harder when you zoom in on them, which sometimes makes them feel sharper, sometimes more processed, compared to the soft images from the Iphone 17. The difference is significantly greater if I compare with the Samsung Galaxy S26, and it is to Apple's advantage.

Even in slightly poorer light, the Iphone 17e takes pictures that I have to scrutinise to distinguish from the Iphone 17, and it is only in complete darkness that the Iphone 17e clearly cannot keep up and the pictures become quite poor. The same applies to zoomed-in pictures. Both the Iphone 17e and Iphone 17 can take pictures with two times magnification by using the sensor having more image points than the picture has points, but here the image result is clearly worse for the Iphone 17e. And of course, you cannot take wide-angle pictures at all with the phone as it lacks a wide-angle camera.

The system you know

The system in the phone is probably familiar to most people who have an Iphone. IOS 26 works on Iphones from 2019 onwards. Personally, I think that IOS at this point feels like a simple engine where new things have been added all the time instead of being reworked from the ground up. Widgets, notifications, app catalogue and more work quite messily and unintuitively, but it obviously doesn't matter if you have been along for the whole journey and learned the additions one at a time. I hardly even notice the visual redesign that was done in 2025.

Apple has also enabled its AI features Apple Intelligence on Swedish phones, they may not be as familiar to everyone since they only work on Iphone 15 and onwards. These are the usual features, editing pictures by removing unwanted objects and filling in the background, summarising text and suggesting text formulations and more. These are functions that you partly find in most Android phones today, partly have been able to access on Iphone via third-party services already before.

When it comes to the design, the Iphone 17e feels spontaneously and immediately cheap, a marked difference from the Iphone 17. It's about small details like the grinding on the screen and the metal frame, and the simpler camera island. Even the back feels plasticky, despite being the same type of glass as on the Iphone 17. At least they haven't skimped on the screen's material choice, it has the same ceramic Shield 2 as the Iphone 17.

The battery in the Iphone 17e is slightly larger than in the regular Iphone 17, but it's not something that is noticeably apparent during use. However, the phone has received Magsafe for wireless magnetic charging, which is a welcome addition compared to the Iphone 16e. That and the faster chipset are really the only differences compared to the Iphone 16e.

This leads us to the question of who the Iphone 17e is really for. For Apple, it all probably makes sense, offering a range of phones from 8500 to 14500 and more, with better features the higher the price level you choose. But when the differences between generations are so small, there are plenty of alternative Iphones. You don't even need to turn to the market for refurbished mobiles, I find, for example, the recently discontinued Iphone 16e, which is almost identical, for 7000 kronor or less in stores, or for that matter the significantly better Iphone 15 for the same price.

But maybe it's not that type of choice you're facing, it could be your job offering you to choose between three mobiles, or for some other reason you're simply wondering how much of a compromise the iPhone 17e is compared to more expensive iPhones. And the answer is, not very much. The iPhone 17e is still a top model, albeit with slightly inferior screen and cameras.

Questions & answers

Is the selfie camera of the new type where you can choose portrait or landscape mode afterwards? No, the iPhone 17e hasn't received the new selfie camera introduced with the iPhone 17, but has the same camera as the iPhone 16e.

How is the speaker sound? Really good, it's nice to watch video clips with the mobile's speaker sound.

What memory configurations is the iPhone 17e sold in? 256 GB for 8500 kronor or 512 GB for a significantly heftier 11,500 kronor. So, they've doubled the storage compared to the iPhone 16e.

An alternative

If you turn to the market for factory-refurbished iPhones, you can, for example, get an iPhone 16 Pro for about the same price. Then you get significantly better cameras.

Camera example

I think it should be more noticeable than it actually is that the Iphone 17e has a rather small camera sensor.

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