Does the Apple iPhone 16e have a headphone jack?

Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Now the Apple iPhone 16e has officially been announced — and is available for preorder, no less — you might wonder what accessories you need to buy for it. This handset has been a long time coming and fits nicely into the lineup between the higher-end iPhone 16, holding to many of the flagship’s most useful features, while still remaining a budget-friendly option.

Does the iPhone 16e have a headphone jack?
Apple
You might wonder whether you should invest in AirPods, or if an old set of wired headphones will do the trick. And to answer that, you need to know if the new iPhone 16e has a headphone jack or not. Short answer: of course it doesn’t. Apple hasn’t changed course since its notoriously “courageous” decision to remove the headphone jack from its phones almost a decade ago, and so, the iPhone 16e has no headphone jack.

Given Apple has discontinued its Lighting to 3.5mm adapter — and that the iPhone 16e uses USB-C, not Lightning — that workaround is also out. But you will be able to use a third-party USB-C to 3.5mm adapter to listen to your favorite tunes with a wired connection, as well as any USB-C headphones you can find.

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The main go-to for any Apple user in terms of Bluetooth headphones would be the Apple AirPods, but we also have a list of some of the best wireless earbuds for 2025 that’s worth looking through.

Do you have any other options?
Simon Cohen / Digital Trends
Without a headphone jack, you’re stuck either going the dongle route with adapters or choosing a set of Bluetooth earbuds. Of course, you can also use Bluetooth headphones, too, and there are quite a few options that sound much better than even the best AirPods.

If you want to stay within the Apple ecosystem, here’s always the Apple AirPods Max, but those come with a high price tag. Options from Sennheiser or Sony are more affordable, and higher quality too. You can also get better noise cancellation with over-ear headphones than you can with earbuds, so if you’re in a busy office — or a busy home office — you can stay focused on your work, not on what’s going on around you.

Of course, listening alone isn’t the only way to listen to music, and if you want to share your beats with friends, or torture family members with the latest synth-nightcore-metal-funk fusion, then you can check out our list of the best wireless speakers too.

The iPhone 16e is bringing some serious changes to the iPhone 16 lineup, but don’t hold your breath for a headphone jack to return in this model or any future ones.

Patrick Hearn writes about smart home technology like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, smart light bulbs, and more. If it’s a…

It’s time for Apple, Samsung and Google to solve the eSIM problem

When Apple launched the new iPhone 16e on Wednesday, the Apple Store in every region displayed one thing under connectivity: eSIM. There was no mention of a physical SIM, and I had a waking nightmare that Apple had quietly pulled the plug, and every iPhone 16e globally would be sold as an eSIM-only model.

A quick search — and a look at the photos — confirmed that this hadn’t happened, but my reaction kickstarted a thought about eSIMs, their promise (and what we were promised), and the current state of eSIMs globally. I’ve been traveling for the past month, and eSIMs are an absolute mess. The potential was immense, but it goes against carriers’ interests to make it any easier, but there is a solution.

Own an Android? It looks like you may buy an iPhone next

In a recent survey of iPhone owners, 48% of those now wielding Apple’s smartphone had previously owned an Android phone. The data comes from an extensive report using information gathered from 4,000 individuals by analysts at Counterpoint Research, and shows despite the challenges those who switch from Android to iOS (or vice versa) often face, it didn’t put almost half of current iPhone owners off.

The research then states it’s Samsung and Google suffering the most when someone decides it’s time to buy an iPhone, to the point the paper warns Samsung may see a marked fall in S-series ownership over the next two years if the trend continues. It’s added that Samsung, along with brands like OnePlus and China’s market leader Vivo, are using AI and flagship specifications to differentiate devices, in an effort to entice and retain buyers.

Changing this one thing would have made the iPhone 16e much more fun

What a shame the Apple iPhone 16e isn’t more fun. I don’t mean exciting, and I’m not talking about the specification, or that a modem is the most technically interesting aspect (it’s important, but modems are inherently a bit dull) of the phone. I mean fun, and I’m specifically talking about it coming in only two colors, and the ones Apple chose are as vanilla and ordinary as you can get.

Two colors

The iPhone 16e is available in black or white. These are the most Apple colors it could have chosen, and fitting as the brand which arguably launched the white smartphone craze in 2008 with the iPhone 3G, when it joined the safe choice black iPhone 3G. What’s old is new again, but things have moved on since the days of a white iPhone capturing attention. Apple has actually moved on too, as we’ll soon show, which makes the whole situation feel out of place. There just can’t be any fanfare around a new 2025 iPhone where the choice is either boring black, or overdone white.