Apple’s new iPhone 16e model has been launched as the most affordable version of the iPhone 16 series. To achieve the starting price of $599, Apple has made some hardware modifications. According to Apple’s official technical specifications, the A18 chip used in the iPhone 16e differs from the standard A18 processor found in the iPhone 16.
The iPhone 16e processor is not the regular A18!
The A18 chip in the iPhone 16e features a 6-core CPU (2 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores), a 4-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine. While the CPU and Neural Engine core counts remain the same as the standard A18, the GPU has been designed with one fewer core.
Although this difference is not expected to cause significant performance loss in real-world use, it could create a noticeable impact in benchmark tests and graphically intensive games. After all, there is a physical difference.
Chip binning is a common quality control process in the semiconductor industry. Since not every chip produced can meet the intended core count or clock speed, manufacturers categorize them and disable certain cores. Apple has applied this approach to the iPhone 16e by disabling one GPU core in the A18 chip to reduce costs.
The binned A18 chip comes with one fewer GPU core compared to the A18 in the iPhone 16, and two fewer than the A18 Pro chip used in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max models. Apple has previously used a similar strategy with the iPad mini (2024), which featured a cut-down version of the A17 Pro chip.
