I wasn’t expecting to be the target demographic for the iPhone 16e, but apparently I am because I just bought two of them.

The two oldest phones that my kids still used were an iPhone 14 Pro and an iPhone 12 Pro. Both of these belonged to me at some point, and now had made their way down the chain. The 14 Pro is still a very great phone, and the 12 Pro is okay. I planned to keep them in the rotation for at least another few years.

But since my kids don’t really use the Pro features, the 16e was a small step up in almost all dimensions, especially battery life, which is a big one for them. And with trade-ins and the fact that my kids get by fine with the base storage level, it was not that much money to upgrade.

Which brings me to the real selling point, which is that these were the last two Lightning devices in our house, and the 16e charges by USB-C.