The iPhone SE Review
by Brandon Chester on May 16, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone
- iPhone SE
Display
The display on the iPhone SE is one of its selling points, but not due to its specs. The iPhone SE takes the place of the iPhone 5s in Apple's iPhone line, and like the 5s it has a 4-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1136x640. While there's no way to confirm whether or not it's the exact same panel, you'll see in a moment that the characteristics are similar enough that it's probably safe to assume that it is. To evaluate the iPhone SE's display I've run it through our standard display test bench that examines peak brightness and black levels, along with the accuracy of greyscale shades and both color saturations and color mixtures.
Apple rates their iPhone displays for a brightness of 500 nits. There's always some degree of variance, but it's always the good sort where you're getting more than you paid for. In our iPhone 5s review we saw that it had a peak brightness of around 500 nits, while the iPhone 5c reached nearly 600. This iPhone SE is similar, with a peak brightness of 598 nits. I wouldn't expect this on every unit, but it's just interesting to note because I've never encountered an iPhone 6 or 6s that was so far above the spec.
The black level on the SE at peak brightness is quite high. Part of this is due to the fact that the screen has a bright backlight, but ultimately even with the high peak brightness the contrast ratio is well behind what you get on other phones, and even compared to our 5s unit it's quite low. It's important to note that Apple only ever rated the 4-inch iPhones at 800:1, but when you put the phone side by side with modern IPS displays on devices like the iPhone 6s, and the LG G4, the black ends up looking more like a dark grey.
The iPhone SE does quite well in our greyscale test. As usual, there is a degree of blue shifting, but it’s not too severe and the CCT average is below 7000. The gamma is quite straight, and in the end there aren’t any shades of grey with a DeltaE greater than three, which is generally the goal. With an average DeltaE of 1.87 there’s really not much more you can ask for.
The iPhone SE renders primary and secondary colors with a high degree of accuracy. The DeltaE for many colors is below one, which means the error cannot be perceived by the eye even with the colors side by side with the true reference color. In the absolute worst case you get saturations with a DeltaE of 2 which is quite impressive. With an average DeltaE of 1.24, there’s really not much that Apple could improve here.
Given that accuracy with color mixtures is just a function of saturation accuracy and greyscale accuracy, it’s not surprising to see the iPhone SE perform well here. There isn’t a single DeltaE error over three, and in general most are between one and two. The overall error is 1.46, and there’s little improvement that Apple could actually make to the accuracy of color mixtures.
Ultimately the iPhone SE ships with a solid IPS display. At 1136x640 it’s definitely not the highest resolution display on the market, but Apple does give you best in class color accuracy, and at 326ppi it’s still high enough resolution to not have really obvious aliasing. Apple was definitely not going to move to 1704x960 on their $400 4-inch smartphone, and a boost in resolution will likely come with whatever Apple’s next 4-inch iPhone is.
Given that Apple is in the process of moving their devices to the wider DCI-P3 color gamut and likely moving the iPhones to a 3x scale resolution, it’ll be interesting to see where the iPhone SE’s display stands relative to the next generation of iPhones. With sharpness and color accuracy being equivalent between the SE and the 6s, the only significant difference in quality right now is the lower contrast ratio on the SE. Apple most likely plans to keep the SE around for two to three years, and so that gap will widen as time goes on.
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name99 - Monday, May 16, 2016 - link
So your complaint with the screen is WHAT exactly? What was so bad about the 5/5S screen that reusing it was unacceptable? You want change simply for the sake of change? Have you actually even SEEN the screen in real life?This is the sort of idiotic complaint that makes Apple fans so irritated with the haters, a complaint that is so OBVIOUSLY utterly content-free.
Eden-K121D - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Viewing angles suckname99 - Monday, May 16, 2016 - link
"Apple’s A9 SoC is still one of the fastest chips you’ll find in a smartphone"Wow, someone's trying REALLY hard not to praise Apple. Please tell us the names of these other chips of faster to comparable speed...
Because what I see in the reviews is that on single-threaded benchmarks Apple's CPU from three years ago is spanking the best Android can offer today, and the SE has a CPU that's twice as fast as that...
You can obviously buy octacore (or hell, decacore) mobile CPUs which have aggressive parallel performance. But that is not "fast", not by the intuitive definition, and not in terms of pretty much any real world workload.
CloudWiz - Monday, May 16, 2016 - link
Haha, first comment I've seen where someone is hating because they're pro- instead of against- Apple on an iPhone review.He says "one of the fastest" because chips like SD820 and Exy8890 have only slightly worse single-threaded performance, significantly better multi-threaded performance, and better GPUs to boot. I own a 64GB SE, but there's no denying that both of those chips are beasts. SD has its optimization problems on the S7 but it looks to perform quite similarly to the E8890.
name99 - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Hard to argue against that claim in the absence of any reliable reviews!The best I can find is this
http://wccftech.com/benchmark-results-show-a9-domi...
which has at least interesting graphs, but I wouldn't especially trust the numbers for 2016 which have god knows what provenance (eg may be released from within Samsung on golden chips to build up S7 buzz), and we have no idea what the throttling characteristics are like.
NA1NSXR - Monday, May 16, 2016 - link
It would've been perfect if they stretched the display out closer to the ends of the chassis, making the display ever so slightly bigger than what's on the 5/5s, but with the same size body.csango - Monday, May 16, 2016 - link
Great review. Across iOS n Android both there is need for 4-4.5 inches smart phones , manufacturers can't just think that trends n users like phablet so we will only manufacturer 6 Inches slabs n bricks. Let some sensibilities prevail in Android too , public fashion choices are ephemeral but good quality and design is eternal. I hope Motorola and Google are paying heed and Apple too esp on the price point they need to look at making 4 inch phones more affordable so ppl latch onto it and then you would see there will be all of sudden market for 4 inches .... it's all a value vs price game in the end.Che - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Lack of a review of the Galaxy S7 (or any other android of this year) is just pathetic. Really no excuse is reasonable. Yet no problem getting the apple review done.Ian Cutress - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Different reviewer. Check one of the first comments.Che - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Yes, saw that already. Also have been following the comments on the other reviews. So I have heard the school work excuses already. But if that is a problem, you need to find a solution. You can't continue forever with an ever increasing backlog of reviews.I have been forced to look elsewhere for the reviews and info I need. In the past I would wait for the AnandTech review due to its depth (always better than other sites),but better is not better if it takes this long.