This week, Apple is releasing the new iPhone 17e, which doubles the storage and adds the “magic of MagSafe” to the $599 iPhone 16e replacement. Apple’s decision to bring MagSafe to the last iPhone holdout means every iPhone now has a useful hardware feature that zero Samsung phones offer.
When Apple introduced the iPhone 16e a year ago, not including MagSafe in the budget model didn’t make much sense. The iPhone 16e replaced the iPhone SE, which technically never had MagSafe charging.
Now, for the first time since the iPhone 12 introduced MagSafe in October 2020, every new iPhone sold by Apple works with MagSafe — no case required.
Adding a strong magnetic connection to the back of the iPhone enables attaching accessories like wallets, stands, and battery packs. It also greatly improves wireless charging with charging coil alignment that snaps into place.
Meanwhile, in Samsung land, reviewers ding the company for choosing not to put magnets inside even their most premium Samsung Galaxy smartphones. The reason, they say, is because most people use a case.
Last month, The Verge asked a Samsung executive about the decision to continue not offering a feature like MagSafe in 2026:
I asked Samsung’s Won-Joon Choi, the executive in charge of both R&D and operations for Samsung’s mobile business. He says the added thickness of magnets is a bad tradeoff to make, because you’re just going to buy a case anyhow.
“About 80 or 90 percent of people are using a case, and cases with magnets are very popular these days,” he tells me.
Samsung would rather use that extra height to give the phone a larger battery or make it thinner, he says.
That doesn’t mean Samsung isn’t looking into magnets. “We’re still doing a lot of research to make sure we don’t have any sacrifice inside the phone; when we actually achieve that, we’ll integrate,” he says.
Apple, of course, managed to put MagSafe inside the impossibly thin iPhone Air. Somehow they manage, and battery life is completely usable.
Meanwhile, Samsung is leaving it up to case makers to standardize magnet placement, strength, and quality, which pretty much guarantees a mixed experience for accessories. It’s a much simpler story when the phone itself sets the bar for magnetic accessory support.
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