The first Geekbench listing for what appears to be the iPhone 16e details the difference between it and the iPhone 16, plus confirms the expected amount of RAM.
Apple would rather talk about what you can do with a device than mention specifications such as the amount of RAM in it. Consequently RAM wasn’t mentioned in the launch of the iPhone 16e, but it was presumed that the new iPhone comes with 8GB RAM.
That’s because at least 8GB RAM is required for Apple Intelligence. There was never any question that the iPhone 16e would include Apple Intelligence, but now the first benchmarks confirm it has 8GB RAM.
The new Geekbench listing, which describes the model as the “iPhone 17,5” does not as yet show the full single- and multi-core speed scores. But it does show that the iPhone 16e scored 24,188 in Geekbench’s metal tests.
That’s fractionally lower than the 27,669 of the iPhone 16 in the same graphics category. The difference is because the A18 in the iPhone 16 has five GPU cores, but in the iPhone 16e, it has only four.
First Geekbench scores for the iPhone 16e
While this difference in graphics cores produces a noticeable drop in the Geekbench results, it’s not a significant one for users. The iPhone 16e is unlikely to appear slower than the iPhone 16 in real-world use.
It’s a different story for users going from the last iPhone SE to the new iPhone 16e. They will see a dramatic difference in how fast and responsive the new iPhone is.
As first spotted by mysmartprice, the benchmarks also confirm that the iPhone 16e has a 6-core CPU. The same source also cites a Chinese regulatory filing that says the iPhone 16e can support up to 29W charging.
What the benchmarks cannot uncover, though, is now well the iPhone 16e battery lasts under regular use. But Apple has been promoting that the new model has a significantly longer battery life than the previous iPhone SE range.
