Unboxing Every Mid iPhone Ever
Oh, are we rolling? *laughs* Rest in peace little buddy. The home button is finally gone. Because the iPhone SE, the special edition, the last home button sporting device in Apple's lineup has been retired and replaced with this. The iPhone 16e. E standing of course for... I don't know. So I went onto eBay and I did as any morning person would do on new in-box devices that are very, very old and frankly, probably not new in box that have been repackaged by some Chinese factory trying to exploit YouTubers like myself. Particularly this one. Because I wanted to answer the question, has Apple really ever made a good budget phone? And is this budget at all? Is it any good? What are all these phones? Let's find out. It all begins with the iPhone 5C. Look at this box. they sure don't make stuff like this anymore. This device was launched in September 2013 alongside the iPhone 5S. And this was a big deal because it was supposed to be
Apple's first budget phone attempt ever. Wow. That is satisfying. And check this out. Wow. You haven't seen anything? Cut! Alright, action. So as I was saying, the iPhone 5C was intended to be a huge hit because the iPhone, though six years old by the time this came out, didn't really have much success in emerging markets. It was expensive. This device, for example, was the first iPhone to ship and sell into China, China Mobile, market that is now one of the iPhone's biggest markets globally. And so Apple thought this was really gonna be a hit because it was able
to be produced more inexpensively than the iPhone 5S. Let's do the peel. Yeah, you'll see that they actually print a picture of the home screen. It's not powered on, this is a sticker. Oh, and look at that, it kind of stays with this tray. So now we just snap and pull. Wow, all right. I have iPhone 5Cs, like. I got them but these things I've never seen them not scratch to high heavens but this this is amazing and this is so thin like there's my iPhone 16e wait no what do I have the iPhone 16 Pro and look how much thinner the iPhone 5c is I mean not just in physical size obviously this is this is tiny this thing has got a 4 inch display which was the same as the iPhone 5s that's not coming in the iPhone 16e Wow look at this this was a budget iPhone but it came with a heck of a lot more stuff than we get today nice hard plastic case this is the same case they used at retail I believe you've got a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack because a headphone jack still did exist on the you get a five watt wall adapter. These are not very
good at all. Five volts at one amp, I believe they used to be. Yep. This came in a bunch of different colors and Apple really focused on the cases and the color combinations you could have with their cases. Their cases had these little holes in the back. They were available for $29. And when they announced this, both on stage and during the little Johnny Ive like a little promo video, they spent half the time talking about this phone uh in reference to the case i think they were really proud of them and maybe it's because they weren't proud of the specs but let me tell you the iphone 5c was not a very good i don't know why i'm trying to turn it on like there would be battery surely there's no battery in here nope so we need to break out this bad boy today's sponsor i'll tell you about that in a minute. Oh, dude, look at this. This is gorgeous. The headphone jack and the lightning connector are both black, which match the front of the device. And then the rest of the device has these beautifully. Oh, that is one thing that I remember about the 5C that was so good. Here's the here's the iPhone 5S released the same time. Nice, but not quite as good.
This though. *cough* That's good. Alright. I still wait for it to boot. And while I do wait for it to boot, I should probably tell you one of the many reasons why it flopped. You see, Apple's sight of the reason that this was less expensive to make was the plastic case, but that's not really true as it turned out, because the inside was still comprised of an entirely stainless steel frame. And much of the tooling came at such a high cost that most of the savings came from the last gen hardware, not the plastic case itself. This was an iPhone 5 on the inside, and it's really hard to understate what a huge upgrade the iPhone 5s was over the iPhone 5. The A7 was significantly faster. It brought an SoC that was running on a new 64-bit architecture,
had moved from a 22nm to a 14nm process shrink, almost doubling the transistor count, offering twice the speed while offering better battery life. The iPhone 5S brought Touch ID, a totally new interface paradigm that was not present on the iPhone 5C, and it brought forth vastly improved cameras, the biggest camera jump probably in an iPhone ever to date. Yeah, you see the iPhone 5C, it wasn't free either. Like this was a budget phone, but not really. It was $99 on contract, which was less than the $199 on contract of the iPhone S, but only $100 less for a significantly worse phone in literally every way. It was a tough sell even for first-time iPhone buyers. And here's
some anecdotally: I repaired a lot of iPhone 5C models when I owned and operated Screen Clinic, an iPhone repair business. SimTrain Management, which is actually present on this, where the logic board would flex over time due to heat and deflection of the LCD itself because because this case was just not rigid enough, was really common. And it had some of the worst sealing of any device ever. I never worked on an iPhone 5C that didn't have one of the moisture indicator stickers gone pink or red to indicate that it had been exposed to moisture. And that's because you could put this in
a shower or in like a bathroom that was slightly humid. Heck, the state of Florida, and you would have water ingress issues. It was just a really poorly built iPhone. And while I'm using USB-A to charge up this old iPhone, it's booting! It's booting! I can't wait to tell you after this ad! While I'm using USB-A to charge this old iPhone, this Anker laptop power bank is really designed for high-power laptops. At 90 watt-hours, but only the size of a tall soda can, it delivers a massive 165 watts of output. It features dual built-in USB-C cables, this 2.3-foot retractable one, tested for 20,000 retractions, and this shorter cable that doubles as a lanyard, supporting up to 44 pounds. The smart display shows you everything you need to know, remaining battery, output wattage for each port, temperature and battery health. And thanks to its one, two, three
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I will tell you what, look at these keys. Look at my finger. These are so tiny. This is the second budget iPhone released after the failure that was the iPhone 5C in 2016. The first generation iPhone SE. And this is unquestionably the greatest budget iPhone ever. And I have been jebaited because this is not, this is not a genuine box at all. I mean, look at that. That is pixelated out the wazoo. Look at the home button. Like nothing about this is a good copy. Here's the thing about buying iPhones on eBay. Half the time they come from some seller that claims to
be in the United States. and then you get a box that comes from China and you're like, hmm. And then you open them up or you look at them for one fraction of a second and you go, oh yeah, this is very clearly not an OEM box. But, ooh, but that still looks really good though. Okay, so let's go through the process of this unboxing. Yeah, again, you can even just tell from the print quality, like, look at this. Am I supposed to believe that this is Apple? No, they would never
do that. Yep, not even a question about it. The injection molding quality is significantly worse. There's inconsistencies in the matched plastic. There's the Apple one, there's the counterfeit one. Not even remotely similar. That's a lie, that's counterfeit. Let's open this little packet of information. I don't know why it even matters 'cause, oh. Great. iPhone 5. Here's the iPhone
itself. Peel. Yeah, my eyes do not deceive me. This is definitely a reproduction case because this laser etching is not only off-center, but it's also off-axis a little bit, which would have never flown with the real OEM one. But it is one of the better third-party enclosures I've seen because this has got a stainless steel Apple inserted logo, which was new to the iPhone SE. If you actually look at the iPhone 5S, this is just laser etched. This is actually lasered out. They cut it out and then they inset a stainless steel Apple logo. And that started with the iPhone 6S.
Hey, it's counterfeit enough to have been charged semi-recently. They probably put this in a box like a year or two ago and repackaged it. Ooh, yeah, look at that. That's not an original display either. You can see the top of the display is fairly yellowed. That's something you frequently see in very inexpensive LCDs. This is a new enough device to support setup, wireless setup. So let's,
oh, and there it goes. Set up your new iPhone? Yeah. I'm going to say continue. I say English. United States? It's got good buttons. Whatever happened to good buttons? We don't have good buttons anymore. That feels soft and sad. This has got... That's got some click. Listen. Soy? Beans. Ah, Touch ID. I haven't used Touch ID in literal years. Ooh. Did the iPhone SE have a Taptic Engine? because this doesn't. Can you hear that? That is a non-linear vibration motor for sure. Sounds horrible. Well, I guess this debuted six months after the iPhone 6S, which
was the first iPhone to have the Taptic engine because it was the first phone with 3D touch. This device famously did not offer 3D touch. I will say it's a really nice looking phone. I mean, you can just look at the bottom of that. I think that the iPhone 6 is one of the ugliest iPhones to ever exist, and by consequence, the iPhone 6S, particularly the rose gold, it was just hideous. But this phone, this is beautiful, with the white glass on the top and the bottom, with the actual nice-looking pink, and then frankly, the squared edges, which when this came out was indicative of the old design. Round and curved was the new cool. We've kind of done a 180 on that, haven't we? It's just a really, really handsome device. So let's talk about the context. Apple made a really big
deal when they unveiled this thing, saying that they still continued to sell about 30 million 4-inch iPhones per year, meaning the iPhone 5S before this released, and that buyers of these 4-inch iPhones did so for two reasons. Number one, that many were first-time iPhone and smartphone owners, meaning that it was likely only selected because it was just the free on contract or very heavily subsidized device. But there was a second group of people that they talked about on stage. There were just a lot of people that really loved smaller phones years later. And I mean, the iPhone 12 mini would prove that not so true in later days, but back then in 2016, I think that was true. I mean, this was right on the heels of Jobs famously saying there would never be a phablet-sized iPhone. And many people with old 5S devices had now skipped two generations of upgrades, the 6 and the 6S, because they refused to go big. This was the answer to those prayers,
because unlike the 5C, the SE was every bit as good as the flagship 6S. It had the same A9 SoC. It had the same 12 megapixel rear camera as the flagship 6S, though it did retain the older, worse, 1.2 megapixel selfie eyesight camera. It had the same storage chairs, 16, 32, 64, and even 128 gigabytes of storage. It had Touch ID, not the slightly faster second generation sensor
found on the iPhone 6S, but not much slower, no slouch. And the battery life was fantastic, up to 14 hours, better than any other 4-inch iPhone ever. And because it wasn't compromised, it was just a 4-inch flagship iPhone. And the price, the price at $399 off contract was insanely good. even compared to mid-range Android phones of the era. I mean, it was $250 less than the iPhone 6S and the only difference was a slightly smaller screen. I mean,
score. So was it a success? Yeah, you bet your booty. It was very well received, especially for its compact size with reports of strong sales and even later clearance sales into 2019 indicating sustained demand. Software longevity on this phone was unreal. I mean, right now, as we speak, I am downloading iOS 15.8.3. That was released just last year. It was a security update, but iOS 15 was supported into the end of 2022. That's nutty. It's still getting updates security-wise today,
and it was getting feature updates until just a couple of years ago. And this is almost a decade old, a decade next year. The iPhone SE was absolutely killer. Da da da da! This is the second generation iPhone SE launched in April of 2020. So that's seven months after the iPhone 11.
But in the body of the now two year old iPhone 8. So let's open this thing up. I miss when they did this little nice origami plastic packaging. They don't do that anymore. They just have those straps because then you could just go. I forgot that They started doing this and I don't like that I feel like when you open the box you should see the phone I don't know why they got rid of that Welcome to iPhone Okay, so I guess they're still telling people Well, granted, this was the SE So a lot of people were updating from older 4-inch iPhones So they're like, hey, here's the side button Here's Touch ID Stickers! You still get stickers Even with a cheap iPhone And here it is Oh, wow I forgot how thin the iPhone 8 was. Was it? It wasn't quite as thin as the iPhone 7,
I don't think, was it? Now it's a little thicker. The iPhone 7 is even thinner. This is like, what? This is so thin. I mean, look at my modern phone. Look at that. Look at that. I mean, that is like noticeably taller, and that's excluding this enormous camera mesa. Wow. So you've still, even with a budget iPhone in 2020, got your little headphones here. Although these wouldn't have been
a headphone jack because the headphone jack is gone. Yep, so you've got lightning ear pods. Look at this. So you pull the back, it comes to the top and then you keep peeling. Nice, that's a good design. I like that. You know what boys, I gotta say something. Lightning, the insertion and removal feels so much better than USB-C. I know it's a crappy connector. I'm glad we have USB-C. I've been advocating for USB-C for years, but it doesn't feel as nice. It's booting. Okay,
so from the outside, this is an iPhone 8, which means it has a 4.7 inch Retina HD display. And that's not the same display found on the iPhone 8. That's actually the same iPhone display found all the way back to the iPhone 7. And even then it was just a variation of the iPhone 6S. So it is,
I mean, bezel extraordinaire. Look at those monsters. But on the inside, it was like the iPhone SE before. It had an A13 Bionic chip, which was the same as the flagship iPhone 11 Pro, the current generation, most expensive iPhone you could buy, same chip in this iPhone SE second generation, which is exceptional. Now, the camera system, unlike the first generation SE, was not taken from the flagship phone. This is still a 12 megapixel rear camera, which looks teeny tiny, and a 7 megapixel front camera, which was the same exact camera system hardware-wise as the iPhone 8. However, the SoC, the A13 Bionic, did enable a portrait mode, smart HDR, 4K60 video, and a couple
of other features that were not present on the iPhone 8. Even though it was literally the same camera hardware, it's just that practically it became much more capable because, well, smartphone cameras are mostly software anyways. It did come in a bunch of storage options, 64, 128, and 256 gigabytes. And, oh, I forgot about the home button. Okay, hold on, let's see. Okay, iPhone 5C, brand new. Just took it out of the box for 12 years. This should be the most pristine home button there's ever been. You push it and it feels okay. It's just, I don't know. It's kind of mushy. It's a little bit like laterally. It doesn't engage if you don't push it like dead center.
now that we've moved away from the headphone from the home button i'm like yeah it wasn't that good but this home button feels amazing because the taptic engine is right down here and so it's simulating a click this is just a piece of glass it doesn't actually move actually it's actually a piece of sapphire it doesn't actually move but it feels so so nice and it it sounds good it sounds like a click. Oh, this is also smaller than I remember, like the iPhone 11, the iPhone 11, which was in effect an iPhone XR. And I didn't include the iPhone XR, you might have noticed. Why didn't I include it? Because the XR wasn't a budget iPhone. It was $800. Now, that was in an
era where the flagship phones, the XS and the XS Max were $1,000 and $1,100, but $800 does not a budget iPhone make. And so I didn't include the XR because it wasn't a budget iPhone. And proof of that was the year later they just turned the XR into the 11 and they're like okay yeah this is the nice phone the the base model phone you can get the pro phones if you want and then you can get a budget SE if you want so the XR it stopped don't don't I know people love the XR I don't like it it was a dumb phone this is so freaking thin like it is substantially thinner than the iPhone 11 like by a lot now part of that was because the iPhone 11 had an edge-to-edge display that look at that you could hardly consider that edge to edge. It was massive. But that's because it was an LCD, not an OLED. That didn't come until the iPhone 12. And so because this was a little bit thinner,
it did take a bit of a hit. And frankly, the battery life on the iPhone XR and 11 was amazing. Some of the best battery life there's ever been in an iPhone until maybe the iPhone 16e. We'll talk about that later. Dated design besides, this came at a really good time, April 2020. Do you remember what happened in March of 2020? Yeah, that whole mask with face ID feature didn't come until March of 2022, two whole years after the start of the pandemic. And so people that bought this probably loved that they didn't have to do a mass check when they were out in public to unlock their iPhone. Now, this was just absolutely panned when it was launched because it had a data design, it
was heavily criticized by reviewers. And this was in an era where even budget Android smartphones were starting to have edge to edge displays. But this device sold generally quite well the go-to for corporate purchasing. And I think it held up better than expected thanks to its amazing SoC. I mean, that A13 Bionic was fabulous. This is still today running the latest version of iOS 18 and is likely to get another version of iOS later this year with iOS 19. Not bad for a phone that looks
the same as frankly one that came out in 2014. Oh, it also supports gigabit LTE, which is cool so connectivity is really good yeah the se2 fantastic device 400 bucks same price really really really good deal i kind of missed the home button and now on to the last and least interesting iphone se the iphone se third generation released in march of 2022 and man this thing has seen some of the world. And, ta-da, it is new. Wow, wait, what color is this? Is this black? Oh yeah, from this angle, it looks very blue. Probably just the plastic on the phone. Wow, this is, oh, interesting. Look at that. They label the Touch ID sensor, your volume buttons. I have never seen an
iPhone that does that. I don't think. Check that out. The box has the tiniest little circle for the camera cut out. And that camera is still very, very smooth. Because, well, this is basically the same form factor yet again. A 4.7 inch design with a home button. Is this blue? This is blue. - Looks black over here. - Looks black? In the light, it looks so blue. Aha. Pull the asset
tag up here and, ah, midnight. Ha ha! Midnight. See, I told you it wasn't black. It's midnight, like the MacBook Air, which is kind of blue, but not really. Is the aluminum midnight color? Yeah, I guess so. It's like a sickly grayish green, kind of like the MacBook Air, but this is a much deeper, more attractive blue, if you ask me. I like it. Does it have battery? Ha ha, it does! See, because this thing is only a couple of years old. But you wouldn't know it from the outside, because it's got the same super ancient 4.7-inch retina display. It's got the same ancient 12
megapixel rear and 7 megapixel front cameras from the iPhone 8 and unlike the generation of SE before it, there were no new software features, so it really seemed dated. You did get new silicon, so there was an A15 Bionic in this device which was the same silicon that was in the iPhone 13 which at the time this launched was the current generation iPhone and the storage tiers did get bumped up a little bit. Battery life, still pretty mediocre. It was slightly better than the prior generation but that's just from the silicon being more efficient it was still only promised 15 hours and really the only other interesting feature of note on this device is that it had 5g not millimeter wave 5g just regular old boring 5g uh but yeah so okay i mean people bought it it was a phone that was purchased but it really became a popular phone not amongst typical consumers because even them by this point were like we don't really want that. It was very popular amongst corporate purchasing. So if you were issued like a company issued device with a cell number on it, it was oftentimes an SE that you would receive. And for that purpose, I guess it's fine. But boy, this thing was on sale until just a couple of days ago for $430.
That 5G increased the price by 30 bucks, which was kind of frankly a bit of a slap in the face for 2022 through again 2025. So now that brings us to the big dog, the new guy. Where did it go? The iPhone 16e. And I'm going to keep this here because this is a big upgrade visually from the iPhone SE that we've had for so many years. Okay. Wow. Okay. That is a beautiful looking phone. I know this has been said ad nauseum, but look at that. The aluminum is so much better than my glossy, like weird looking titanium that's got fingerprints all over it. This is just smooth.
The back matte glass looks amazing. The single camera, I mean, oh, come on. That is a beautiful design and it is so, so light, significantly lighter than the Pro, despite this being titanium, which is lighter in theory than aluminum. It turns out getting rid of a bunch of cameras and much of the hardware inside makes the device less heavy. But hey, check it out. So maybe there are, maybe there have been these little button markers on the side and I just don't remember, but you get a mute switch button for the action button, volume up, volume down, power. And then there's even a little logo down here to say, hey, this is where your charge port is, which is finally USB-C. Very good to see. Okay. Yeah, compared to the iPhone SE, that's just a couple of years old, this is obviously a very big upgrade, but the price was also upgraded massively. This was $430.
This is $599. $600 does not a budget phone make. And while sure, we do get a bunch of nice updates, like an OLED display, very nice to see, especially considering that they probably could have and would not have surprised me if they use the LCD present on the iPhone 11 and iPhone XR. So we got OLED on here. It's still 60 Hertz, unsurprising, but you know, it feels reasonably okay. Yeah, no, 60 Hertz, you feel it. You feel it, you feel it. But I'm sensitive to that stuff. There's a lot of people that frankly don't really care. Let's set this device up as mine. And those bezels, I mean, geesh. That stuff ain't edge to edge. look at the iPhone 16 in comparison, 16 Pro. Activation
error. That was just an error. Okay, cool, great setup experience, enjoying it so far. I do not wanna transfer my phone numbers, so we'll skip that. Although maybe I should, maybe I should. Should I make this my main phone? Should I do, I'm gonna do it. Let's go back. Transfer my phone numbers. Please don't look at them. Blur this out. Oh, you can only transfer one at a time. I'll do that later. Signing in. I'll tell you what, look at this. There's still a wobble,
but it's a lot less bad than the Pro iPhones. See, wobble. This can like take flight. Oh, okay. Oh, here we go. Transfer apps and data from an iCloud backup, from another iPhone, from your Mac or PC, from Android, or don't transfer anything. Here's a pro tip for you. You always want to transfer from your Mac or PC, even though this is the old school way and it takes quite a bit of time. It is the best way to do it because unlike restoring from iCloud or restoring from device to device, it passes over a lot of the encrypted stuff that doesn't make it in those other backups. And so you don't have to like re-login to a bunch of your apps. The settings are just better. Okay,
trust me, I've been doing it for years and every time I'm like, I'll do a device to device backup, it's worse. And iCloud is even worse than that because then you've got to re-login to everything, which sucks. Most people aren't buying a new iPhone often as I am. What does this video become? But you know what I mean, skip. Oh my gosh, I don't want to set up all my credit cards now. Later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later, later. beta update that will be coming soon to everybody through the action button. Yeah,
you know what? It's an iPhone. Let's, uh, let's see here, because I've got the pro iPhone on the right with the A17 Pro and then the A17 right here. And, uh, well, holy smokes, the 16 was faster, probably because there's nothing on it and it's not actively running anything, but still, what other thing could I open? Dialer. Hey, they're both the same speed. Ready, set,
go. Okay, so it's like a wash. Similar silicon. Hey, you know what though? This can run AAA games in theory. Well, I'll tell you what, not all OLED displays are made equal because make no mistake, the 16E looks really nice, especially when contrasted against the prior generation. Wow,
that is truly bad. Especially when contrasted against the prior generation SE's LCD. But you look at the Pro and you go, oh yeah, now this has got significantly better brightness, the display is closer to the glass, the refresh rate is obviously no comparison. But I feel like this needs a little bit more time and attention because there have been two reviews that I've seen. Either it's too expensive, don't buy it, or it's actually pretty good and most people would be fine with it but you still shouldn't buy it because it's only $100 less expensive than the iPhone 15 which is a better device. I want to spend some time with it to really decide. And so I'm going to make
this my primary phone for the next month and I will come back and tell you whether or not you actually need a fancy pants iPhone or you can get away with the base model. I do think that the price is still going to be an issue at $599, but I have a theory and it's not one I want to share because it makes me sad inside. But I feel very confident this year that the entire iPhone lineup is going to see price increases because otherwise the pricing of this makes absolutely no sense. We've got tariffs that are incoming and inflation has happened. And frankly, the iPhone 16 Pro is the same starting price point as the iPhone 10. That was eight years ago. And with inflation, that device today would be like almost $1,200. So it's time. I don't want it to happen. But I think this is the indicator that the rest of the lineup is going to be pushed up market and they're going to use that new iPhone 17 slim as a way to kind of trick us into not realizing it.
But it's going to happen. And so I guess between now and then, I should try the latest and not so greatest iPhone. My dearest iPhone 16, you will become my one and only. It does feel really good in the hand. It's so light. Thanks so much for watching, and as always, stay snazzy.
2025-03-15 22:39
