iPhone 5c

Apple had never shipped a cheap iPhone and the 5c was not really one either. It took the iPhone 5's internals, put them in a polycarbonate shell in green, blue, yellow, pink or white, and sold it for $99 on contract against the 5s at $199. The plastic was thicker and better made than the 3G's had been, molded over a steel frame that doubled as the antenna, and it felt considerably less cheap than the marketing implied it should. Apple's own advertising leaned into color harder than any iPhone campaign before it. It sold, but not in the volumes Apple planned for, and the company cut orders within months of launch. Buyers who wanted to spend less bought last year's flagship instead, which was the option Apple had always offered and the one the 5c was meant to replace. The 5c's real legacy is what Apple learned from it. There has been no direct successor. The cheaper slot in the lineup went to the iPhone SE in 2016, which took the opposite approach and put current internals in an old body rather than old internals in a new one.