Discover these secret iPhone 16e and iOS 26 features that will change the way you use your iPhone 16e forever!

The iPhone 16e is the second-cheapest way that you can buy a new device from Apple that is Apple intelligence-ready, and the cheapest new iPhone that is AI-ready.

And at last, because of iOS 26 that is actually starting to mean something as you’ll find out later.

I was an early adopter of the iPhone 16e, and since day one, I’ve had nothing but good things to say about it. The form factor, for starters, is perfect! I have a sneaky feeling that the 16 Pro Max may be the last large phone that I buy and run as my daily.

Since I’ve been using the iPhone 16e, the Pro Max all of a sudden feels too heavy, large and unnecessarily bulky. In fairness to the Pro Max, there has been a distinct shift in my behaviour, too.

As we all know, the main reason for the weight of the Pro Max is down to the camera setup. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been brilliant, and you can capture some amazing results with it, and I’ve loved using it, but it’s almost been instrumental in its downfall.

The 16 Pro Max cameras proved to me that photography was in my wheelhouse and something I wanted to pursue.

As a result, I’ve hardly used the iPhone 16 Pro Max for any kind of photography over the past few months. Instead, I’ve been reaching for my camera and taking that everywhere with me.

You can see where I’m heading with this, I’m sure…if I’m not using the cameras on the Pro Max, then what’s the point in carrying a phone that big around with me?

And it’s not only the size either, there’s the price of it to consider. I’ve been shooting out on location a lot recently, which heightens the chance of having the £1400 16 Pro Max stolen. Ok, I have Apple Care cover on it, so I could get it replaced, but it’s more to do with the aggro and hassle. The iPhone 16 Pro Max remains my main phone for now and has my main SIM card in it. It has my banking apps and authenticator app on it, so having it stolen would be a real pain. And let’s face it, a large 16 Pro Max is quite the target for would-be criminals.

The iPhone 16e, on the other hand, is small, understated and almost missable. It’s also £1000 cheaper, so it would hurt way less if the worst were to happen!

iPhone 16e – the way forward

With the Pro Max for the time being at least, still being my main phone, I didn’t want to risk running the beta, not even the public beta, on it. While I knew it would probably be ok, it’s just a risk I didn’t want to take.

But I was gagging to see what iOS 26 was about, so as soon as the public beta came out, I installed it on my iPhone 16e. I’ve been using it now for the past week or so, and in that time, I’ve managed to come across quite a few hidden gems within iOS 26 that I wanted to chat over with you.

I’m not going to cover all the obvious things here – there are plenty of column inches out there already covering those elements, I want to dig a little bit deeper and let you know some of the hidden treasures that are tucked away in iOS 26.

And the great thing is, if you have a £600 iPhone 16e, then you have access to all these goodies right now.

Before we get into it, though, just to say, the Liquid Glass element is probably the thing that has impressed me the least – but that’s not to say it hasn’t impressed me.

Sure, it’s there, but it’s subtle and I like it. It’s so good that to my eye it’s become almost invisible. It kind of just glues everything together and helps make better use of your screen real estate.

But if Liquid Glass isn’t for you, then you can turn it off by going to Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Reduce Transparency.

But the overall UI of iOS 26 is clean, minimal and functional. Apple has played a winner with it. It immediately makes iOS 18 look old and outdated.

Right, let’s get on to the good stuff and chat about some features I’ve come across in iOS 26 over these past few days that you may not be aware of.

iOS 26 camera tips

To get us started, there are a couple of things I’ve come across in the camera app that are pretty cool.

Have you ever had that sinking feeling of having been out all day, having taken loads of photos, only to later find out too late that your lens was dirty and covered in fingerprints? Well, that should now be a thing of the past with a new feature I found in iOS 26. Go to Settings > Apps > Camera and scroll down, and you’ll find a new option called Lens Cleaning Hints. With it turned on, your iPhone 16e will display a warning on screen if it thinks your lens is dirty and needs a clean.

If you want a super clean camera display, you can now turn off the flash and camera live icons. To do that, go to Settings > Camera > Indicators. I’d rather have them turned on, but you now have the choice.

Before, changing the frame rates meant going through a menu setting at the top of the screen. That has been simplified now with the frame rates appearing at the top of the camera screen. Tap here, and you can choose the resolution and frame rate directly on screen. It’s another example of the clean lines of iOS 26.

There are already loads of ways to take a picture on your iPhone, but this new method is possibly the easiest or most convenient yet. If you have AirPods Pro or AirPods 4, you can now take a picture or start to record video just by pressing the stem. Go to your AirPods > Camera Remote > Press once, and you’re set.

If you don’t see the Camera Remote at first, you may need to update your AirPods to the public beta firmware version, too. I think the version you’ll need is 8A324b. My firmware update was janky and seemed to take forever – be patient is all I can suggest. Annoyingly, this isn’t currently available with AirPods Max – not even the latest USB-C version.

AirPods stuff

Whilst talking AirPods, there were a couple of other new features that are worth mentioning.

Apart from the Camera Remote function. With Conversation Awareness turned on, AirPods will now recognise your name. So if someone uses your name, AirPods will flip to Transparency for a moment or two.

There’s now also a Head Gesture feature that you can use with AirPods as well. Turning it on will mean that they’ll pause audio after about 10 minutes if they detect your head isn’t moving. The idea being that if, like me, you wear AirPods in bed, then it’ll save you having to rewind to catch up on the podcast you were listening to.

In theory, AirPods also have studio-quality mics and improved audio, but I couldn’t honestly detect any difference in either area.

Quality of life improvements

You may have heard about Apple’s new Battery Intelligence feature. Well, one of the more obvious ways you’ll notice it in action is when you plug in your iPhone 16e to charge. At the top of your Lock Screen, it will now tell you how much charge you have, but more importantly, how long it will take to charge to 80%.

There was one other new battery feature I came across as well. Go to Settings > Battery > Power Mode > Adaptive Power. With that toggled on, Battery Intelligence will make some clever background changes for you, such as lowering the screen brightness and slowing down some activities.

It will typically kick in when you have about 20% battery left. That said, the battery life on the iPhone 16e has been brilliant, and I am regularly getting a day-and-a-half out of it.

iOS 26 is full of little quality-of-life improvements like these, which help to make it feel more user-friendly.

Screenshots

If you’ve taken a screenshot to share with someone, Apple has now added back in Add Loupe as a feature. To find it, take a screenshot, then tap the pen tip icon at the top of the screen and then the plus icon at the bottom. That will bring up a new list, and at the bottom, you’ll find Add Loupe. A Loupe is a magnifier that you can resize and re-position to highlight something before sending it on.

And if you find it a pain having your screenshots appear as thumbnails in the bottom left corner of your screen, you can now change that in iOS 26. Go to Settings > General > Screen Capture > Full-Screen Previews.

This one is worth trying out – I really like it.

Apple Intelligence with screenshots and more

You can use circle-to-search on a screenshot as well. Take a picture of something, screenshot it and then swipe up to see images from Google. But if you have something in front of you that you want to search for, there’s a quicker way to go about it that I’ve found.

In Control Centre, add the Visual Intelligence shortcut. Then you can simply tap that and point your camera at whatever it is that you want to find out about. There’s no need to take a screenshot at all.

While in Control Centre, I’ve added the Reminders shortcut too. Again, if you just want to make a quick reminder about something you want to grab from the shops on the way home, it’s a quicker way of doing it than having to launch the Reminders app.

Caption & translations

iOS 26 now offers you Live Captions. To enable it, go to Settings > Accessibility > Live Captions. With it enabled, your iPhone 16e will then use on-device intelligence to display captions across all apps.

Live Translation is also now part of the Messages app. Another AI feature that may prove useful is Local Capture. Again, you’ll need to add that to your Control Centre, but once you’ve done that, you can tap it any time during a FaceTime call, and it’ll record the call’s video & audio and then, at the end, add it to your Files app.

The Phone app

Lastly, there have been a few meaningful updates to the Phone app.

I’m always very cautious these days about answering calls from numbers I don’t recognise. Well, now iOS 26 will do that work for you. If you go to Settings > Apps > Phone > Screen Unknown Callers, you can choose to either never have the call answered and put in your missed calls, ask them for the reason for calling or silence their call.

In the Phone App, you’ll also notice the new Detect Call waiting, which will be toggled on by default. This handy feature will detect when you are put on hold and then notify you when it’s time for you to pick up.

iOS 26 & iPhone 16e are winners

To disregard the iPhone 16e as a cheap parts bin would be a huge mistake.

So long as you’re happy with a single-lens set-up, then the iPhone 16e ticks the boxes. The battery life is the best of any iPhone I’ve ever used, the Apple C1 Modem has made call quality consistently better than my Pro Max, and the size and weight of the phone are perfect for day-long use.

You get a 6.1-inch XDR Retina OLED display, and probably the only two things missing from the 16e that I’d like to see on here are MagSafe Charging and support for Find My. But other than that, this 16e is the real deal – make no mistake about it.

The A18 chip has been quick enough, too – the phone has never felt like a cheap phone. It still feels every inch an iPhone, and because of that A18 chip, it’s Apple Intelligence-ready.

If I’d written that before, I’d have been laughed out of court, but now in iOS 26, I think we are starting to see the kind of system-wide implementation that Apple has in mind for their brand of Artificial Intelligence.

Of course, iOS 26 is available on any iPhone from the 15 Pro onwards, but the 16e is the cheapest new iPhone you can buy that will give you all these new functions.

I’ve only highlighted the more unusual and hidden features here that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. But there are loads of other functions to play with in iOS 26 that make this one of the best OS updates in years.

If you’re waiting for the full public release of iOS 26 in September, trust me, you are in for a treat.