KUALA LUMPUR, April 23 — This review is nearly a month late but I’ve got two good reasons why.

The first is I got very sick (again) with a two-week long respiratory infection and as soon as I recovered, I was travelling up north to see a friend I missed very, very much.

So I took the iPhone 17e with me, to Kota Kinabalu on a plane, then to George Town, on a train.

I needed to answer the question; would the iPhone 17e be enough for many people or would the unbearable FOMO make people regret it once September came around?

Practical, but less of a compromise

The future looks scarily bleak right now but I will tell you from decades of experience that you might regret just settling on the cheapest, most easily available phone.

Mobile phone operating systems, I have found, are not getting leaner and I have a Samsung midrange Android phone now (ha!) to compare.

Not that I advocate going for the most expensive, tricked-out model.

When it comes to the iPhone secondhand is often just as good so why then, the iPhone 17e? 

Why should you put this on your list of phones to consider buying, when you have dozens of midrange Androids to choose from while in this price range there’s the iPhone 16e or 17e, or a refurbished model from the year before last?

If you’re going for an “e” iPhone, the iPhone 17e is probably the better choice thanks to important quality-of-life features like MagSafe.

Once you’ve experienced MagSafe, cables just seem like too much clutter around the house.

The modem too has actually served me very well while traveling; I have been in situations where my primary mobile provider’s reception is poor on my other phone so I’ve had to instead rely on the iPhone 17e as a hotspot.

Truthfully I am unsure whether my very expensive telco that I will not name is just lax coverage-wise, but the iPhone 17e was almost always near full-bar in most places.

Maybe it’s just the better C1x modem that offers twice the speed of the C1 on the 16e.

The 17e, I found out, performs fairly well even in some more remote parts of Sabah.

So it shouldn’t surprise me that it continued to give me decent reception even when my mother insisted we drive all the way down to Tamparuli to look at tourist attractions.

I took most of my iPhone 17e photos in Kota Kinabalu, while in George Town, it was instead my reliable modem hotspot even on the ETS train up to Butterworth.

It played my YouTube videos or Apple Music playlists on the bathroom counter while I soaked in the tub at St Giles Wembley. 

Sometimes it was my navigation device using either Apple Maps or Google Maps to the nearest decent char kuey teow. 

Despite the hot weather and my only charging all my devices, in-turn, at the end of the day, I wasn’t desperately reaching out for a power bank by mid-day so for most people I think, the 17e will last a normal commute and until the end of a (standard) work day.

Sometimes, less is more

I know your actual burning question is “The camera OK-ah?”

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I think it is easier for me to show you the pictures and video I took with no additional edits in software, straight out of the Apple main camera.

You don’t get ultrawide, you only get 2x optical zoom max on the rear camera which is just one 48 megapixel snapper, no separate telephoto, no separate ultrawide, just the one.

Apple decided to just stick one camera on this phone and maybe, you would think it would not be enough.

A lot has changed in the last decade.

While yes, no ultrawide means no macro or easy we-fis, if you’re the type who prefers to snap selfies, postcard perfect landscape shots, fun TikTok reels or just dabble in a little street photography, the iPhone 17e surprised me with just how much it could be “enough.”

This isn’t going to be your concert phone, no, the Pro models will be the best to get those perfect close up videos of your faves.

Wandering down an unfamiliar street, going to the night market with family or friends, chilling on the beach or having a nightcap? All those things, the iPhone 17e can handle.

I also like that whichever iPhone model you pick, selfies will always be easy and I will not miss having to work harder to get decent selfies on my Samsung S25 FE (that costs about the same as the iPhone 17e).

Have a look at the photo samples and you’ll see that the iPhone 17e is quite a decent performer, a capable enough chronicler of your life.

Because here’s the thing — as we get older, our memories, already such unreliable things, will falter and sometimes there’s only that one snap that will bring it all back to you.

Which is why the iPhone 17e works great — it’s not too big or heavy and as I found out, it’s pretty easy to take quick, discreet shots with it without looking like a perv.

Colours are good and if you learn to tweak the exposure via the handy little touch slider your photos won’t be blown out.

Though if you’re a bit more advanced, my favourite apps are Halide and ProCamera for more manual control, Mood for perfect retro filters (great for selfies), and BlackMagic for slicker looking video.

Yes, no or perhaps

I didn’t quite expect the 17e to work as well as it did. There are no glaring flaws besides it not being the one true love of my life, the 17 Pro Max.

There’s enough meat in the processor (the A19 chip) to handle your day-to-day life, a camera good enough to take vacation photos with (though I did miss that landscape in portrait selfie mode), a battery that can last as much as any iPhone that doesn’t have a huge honking battery.

Now the next burning question: What colour should I get, Erna? If you like pink, get the soft pink. 

If you want your phone to be as “invisible” as possible, get it in black.

If you’re a snob with a big wallet, wait until September for the iPhone 18 Pro-lah. 

Storage? Well you can get by with 256GB, I found, but only if you manage your storage well — I auto backup my pictures to OneDrive and once they’re in the cloud, I erase them from my phone. 

512GB is nice to have but you have to think really hard about whether that extra RM1,000 for more space is worth it especially when you can hook the phone up to a USB-C storage device.

The iPhone 17e is already available at all Apple retailers starting at RM2,999 for the 256GB model and RM3,999 for the 512GB version.