iPhone 16e gains MagSafe, thanks to a curious experiment

One year after the first model of the ‘e’ series, Apple has relaunched with the iPhone 17e: Cupertino’s budget phone did not introduce upheavals, limiting itself to refreshing the chipset and adding support for MagSafe charging.

Certainly a welcome novelty, but it took its time and from here arises a question: was it really that complicated to add support for magnetic charging? The answer won’t please you, especially if you are among the owners of the family’s smallest member.

iPhone 16e with MagSafe? Yes, but it will be necessary to sacrifice the new iPhone 17e

The iFixit team performed the teardown of iPhone 16e and the new model iPhone 17e, documented step by step via the dedicated page (which you can find in the source). Comparing the two phones revealed numerous technical similarities: there is a high degree of compatibility between the devices, such as the same logic board and the same battery.

There was some issue with Face ID, which does not appear interchangeable, but the selfie camera works without glitches. The repairability score of the newcomer is 7, but with a caveat since the team is awaiting details on availability and prices of replacement parts from Cupertino.

From the teardown emerged also the answer to the question we asked at the beginning. Replacing the back panel of iPhone 16e with that of the latest 17e, the previous model gained MagSafe support. So the only component that was missing was the magnet ring integrated into the chassis; the rest of the enclosure is practically identical.

The only difference concerns support for the Qi2 standard since the previous 16e is a Qi device delivering 7.5W. So magnetic charging works, but it cannot reach maximum power; moreover, MagSafe software features are missing, as Apple did not provide them.

Nevertheless it’s still a stunning twist: Cupertino deliberately chose to make the iPhone 16e cheaper than its bigger siblings, even though the device was predisposed for magnetic charging — since it was enough to simply change the back panel.