Is the iPhone 17e Still Worth It Now It Costs £699?

The iPhone 17e was the easy recommendation for most of this year. £599 for an A19 chip, 256GB of storage and MagSafe was a price that made the rest of the line-up look expensive. On 9 September Apple quietly changed that, and the iPhone 17e now costs £699 on the UK store. Every review on the first page of Google was written at the old price, so I went back through the numbers to see whether the verdict survives a £100 rise.

Short version: it mostly does, but not for the reason the reviews gave, and the phone it now competes with most closely is not the one you would expect.

What happened to the iPhone 17e price in the UK

Apple raised the price of every older iPhone on the same day it announced the iPhone 18 Pro. TechRadar's full list has the UK figures, and I checked them against Apple's own iPhone 17e buy page this morning:

• iPhone 17e 256GB: £599 to £699
• iPhone 17e 512GB: £799 to £899
• iPhone 17 256GB: £799 to £899
• iPhone 16 128GB: £699 to £799

On my arithmetic that is a 16.69% rise on the 256GB iPhone 17e and 12.52% on the 512GB model. The cheapest iPhone took the biggest percentage hit, which is the opposite of how you would design a price rise if the aim was to protect the entry point.

Back in August I worked through a rumoured iPhone 17 price increase and guessed the 17e would land somewhere around £649 to £660. I was wrong on the size. Apple did not apply a percentage at all; it added a flat £100 to everything, which is why the cheapest phone looks worst.

What £699 actually buys

Nothing about the hardware changed with the price. The iPhone 17e is still the phone Apple launched in March:

• A19 chip with a 4-core GPU, one core fewer than the iPhone 17
• 6.1-inch OLED with a notch rather than the Dynamic Island
• A single 48MP Fusion camera with a 2x crop, and no ultra wide
• 12MP front camera, where the iPhone 17 has an 18MP Center Stage camera
• Apple's C1X modem, Wi-Fi 6 and MagSafe at up to 15W
• Up to 26 hours of video playback, IP68 and an Action button
• 256GB of storage as standard

That last point is the one people forget. The iPhone 16e started at 128GB, and so does the iPhone 16 Apple still sells. The 17e has the A19, the battery and the storage of a much more expensive phone, and it saves its money on the screen and the cameras.

The iPhone 17 just got relatively cheaper

Here is the part none of the page-one reviews could have covered, because it only became true on 9 September. Apple added the same £100 to the iPhone 17 as it did to the 17e, so the gap between them is still exactly £200. But the same £200 is now a smaller share of the cheaper phone.

At the old prices, stepping up from a £599 iPhone 17e to a £799 iPhone 17 cost 33.39% more. At £699 against £899, the step is 28.61%. That is my own arithmetic, and it is a quiet shift, but it is a shift in one direction. The iPhone 17 is better value against the 17e today than it was all summer.

For that £200 you get the bigger 6.3-inch display with ProMotion and the Dynamic Island, an ultra wide camera, the Center Stage front camera, Camera Control, faster MagSafe at up to 25W and up to 30 hours of video playback. If two or more of those matter to you, I think the case for the 17e has weakened more than the headline price suggests.

Watch the monthly figures on Apple's store

This one caught me out on first read. On Apple's buy pages this morning the iPhone 17e was quoted at £29.12 a month over 24 months, and the iPhone 17 at £29.96 a month over 30 months. Side by side, the iPhone 17 looks 84p a month dearer.

It is not. Twenty-four payments of £29.12 is £698.88, and thirty payments of £29.96 is £898.80. The totals are £199.92 apart, the same £200 gap as the cash prices, and the iPhone 17 simply spreads it over six extra months. If you are comparing on the monthly figure alone, compare over the same term. If you are weighing Apple's finance against other routes, I went through Apple Upgrade and the UK's Flexible Finance Account separately.

iPhone 17e vs iPhone 16, new and refurbished

Before September, the iPhone 16 was £100 more than the 17e. It is still £100 more, at £799, but for a 128GB phone with an older A18 chip and up to 22 hours of video playback. The iPhone 16 does give you the Dynamic Island, a second camera and Camera Control, but paying £100 extra for half the storage and a year-older chip is a hard sell.

The more interesting comparison is with Apple's refurbished store. A refurbished iPhone 16 128GB was listed at £659 this morning, which is £40, or 5.72%, under a new iPhone 17e. Apple fits refurbished iPhones with a new battery and outer shell, as I covered in my piece on what Apple Refurbished UK actually gives you, so it is not the gamble it sounds like.

Even so, I would take the new 17e. Forty pounds buys double the storage, a chip a generation newer, a newer modem and four more hours of video. The refurbished iPhone 16 only makes sense if the Dynamic Island and the ultra wide camera are the two things you care about, and 128GB is genuinely enough.

Where to buy an iPhone 17e for less than £699

The rise went straight through to the big UK retailers. Currys, Very, Amazon, AO and Argos were all at £699 for the 256GB model when I checked, so there is no hidden discount on the high street.

Price comparison sites tell a slightly different story. PriceSpy's lowest listing this morning was £564.99 at Mobile Direct, which is £134.01, or 19.17%, under Apple. OnBuy had it at £619, an 11.44% saving. Both are below the old £599 list price. They are smaller sellers rather than household names, so check you are buying a UK-model handset with a UK warranty before you chase the saving.

Apple's own trade-in quote runs from £25 to £855 depending on what you hand over. A trade-in does not change the list price, but it does change which side of £599 you end up paying.

Who should buy the iPhone 17e at £699

Buy it if you want a new iPhone that will be supported for years, you take photos rather than shoot video projects, and you would rather have 256GB of storage than a second camera. It is still the cheapest way into Apple Intelligence on a new phone, and the battery is better than the iPhone 16's.

Spend the extra £200 on an iPhone 17 if you watch a lot of video, use the ultra wide camera, or would notice a 60Hz screen after using a ProMotion one. At 28.61% more rather than 33.39%, the gap is easier to justify than it was in August.

Skip the iPhone 16 at £799 new. The refurbished one at £659 is the only version of it that still makes sense, and only for a narrow set of buyers.

iPhone 17e FAQ

Why has the iPhone 17e gone up in price?

Apple raised the price of every older iPhone by £100 in the UK on 9 September, the day it announced the iPhone 18 Pro. It has not given a reason. The rise follows Apple's earlier Mac and iPad increases, which were linked to memory and storage costs.

Is the iPhone 17e worth it at £699?

For most people, yes, but by a smaller margin than at £599. It has the A19 chip, 256GB of storage and up to 26 hours of video playback. The iPhone 17 is now 28.61% more rather than 33.39%, so if you want the better screen and second camera, the step up is easier to justify.

Is the iPhone 17e cheaper anywhere else in the UK?

The major retailers matched Apple at £699. Smaller sellers listed on price comparison sites were lower when I checked, with PriceSpy showing £564.99 at the bottom. Check for a UK model and a UK warranty before you buy.

My take

The iPhone 17e is still the iPhone I would point most people towards, but I would no longer say it without a pause. At £599 it was the obvious answer. At £699 it is the sensible answer, and the iPhone 17 has moved close enough that you should at least hold one first.

What I would not do is take a refurbished iPhone 16 to save £40, or pay £799 for a new one. If the budget is £700, buy the 17e. If it can stretch to £900, buy the 17. And if you are happy to shop around, the 17e is still available below its old £599 price, which is the best version of this deal there is.

Source: Apple Raises Prices of iPhone 16, iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17e, MacRumors. UK prices read from apple.com/uk, PriceSpy and retailer pages on the morning of 1 October 2026; all percentages are my own arithmetic.