The iPhone SE (2020) Review: A Reinvigorated Classic
by Andrei Frumusanu on April 24, 2020 6:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Apple
- Smartphones
- iPhone SE
- Apple A13
- iPhone SE 2020
First Thoughts & End Remarks
This very much has been a light-speed review for a phone that at the time of writing I’ve only received 23 hours ago now, but the iPhone SE is also a phone which many of us should actually be plenty familiar with.
There’s no doubt that Apple's choice of recycling the iPhone 8 design and housing is related to achieving the super low $399 cost of the iPhone SE. This is a manufacturing chain that has been pumping out hundreds of millions of these phones over the years and I imagine that re-using that machinery very much helps the affordability of the phone.
It’s a very familiar design, but it’s certainly no longer a modern one. Besides the actual price of the phone, I can imagine that for some the biggest selling point of the phone is that it’s so a small device compared to other contemporary options. Particularly for people attached to the iPhone and iOS ecosystem, the iPhone SE is the only option going forward if you’re after a small form-factor phone.
The iPhone SE’s display is in line with that of the iPhone 8, meaning it’s an excellent LCD panel with outstandingly good color calibration, although it’s no longer keeping up in terms of brightness and resolution with newer generation OLED phones.
Performance of the iPhone SE is arguably the very best part of the phone, and Apple’s choice to go with the new A13 chipset is an outright disruptive move in the $399 sector. In essence, Apple’s lowest-end phone right now outperforms all other Android flagships on the market, painting quite the stark contrast of the competitive situation of the silicon playing-field.
Camera performance of the iPhone SE was the biggest question mark for the phone, and the new SE delivers on its promises. In daylight pictures, there’s much better HDR and dynamic range characteristics, and Apple here is mostly able to match the compositions of the iPhone 11 in the vast majority of scenarios. Detail-wise, the phone is also extremely strong although slightly lagging behind the class-leading iPhone 11 cameras. Meanwhile colour temperature is still on the warmer side, similar to previous generation iPhones.
Low-light capture, whilst not explicitly tested in this piece today, is significantly improved for the new iPhone SE, massively upgrading the quality of shots compared to the iPhone 8. Whilst it doesn’t quite match the low-light ability of the iPhone 11 series, it’s a very respectable performer here given the lack of computational photography.
Overall, at the end of the day what the new 2020 iPhone SE represents is a $399 iPhone – and that’s a selling point all by itself. It’s a significantly better device than the now discontinued iPhone 8, for a cheaper price. You’re getting the best performance of any mobile device out there on the market – and the compromises in the screen, battery life and cameras are reasonable given the price of the phone.
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hechacker1 - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
Buy an Apple or third-party battery case to solve your issue? The phone is cheap enough to afford a case to double the battery life.GC2:CS - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
Yes that is strange. teardown makes it look like the displays are so similar they are interchangeable. Has Apple gone so cheap they did not even bother to remove 3D touch layer ?Still original SE had battery almost the size of an 6S. This is 60% of 11.
Teckk - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
I couldn't get used to the limitation that is iOS so, back to Android, but that battery life is really good. Especially when comparing S9+ and Pixel 4XL with bigger batteries.That battery capacity on Android phones won't be fun at all.
Speedfriend - Saturday, April 25, 2020 - link
The reason that battery life is good is that iOS kills background apps. I do day trading and on my iPhone it stops the prices updating in the background so when I switch to it quickly to check prices, it is totally wrong. I have to manually shut it and reopen it to get it to work. So I use Android for my main phone because you can customise app killing.Featherinmycap - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
That is not really true. Go into settings/general/Background App Refresh and select if you want your stock app to keep refreshing in the background. By default it is usually enabled. So, yes, like Android, you can "customize" app killing.cha0z_ - Thursday, August 6, 2020 - link
You can customise a lot on ios, but people love to bring that argument without really having any clue what they are talking about. :)cha0z_ - Thursday, August 6, 2020 - link
That's your trading app issue, not ios.sorten - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
Wow, double the GPU performance of the iPhone 8, which is faster than my 7. Not sure what I'd use it for though since I don't bother with phone games.This is a brilliant phone in terms of value and perf., but only an iPhone SE sized device would have caused me to upgrade early.
Quantumz0d - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
Only company which can make anyone fool - Apple.The design, 2008 OG iPhone and 2020 SE same bezel width. Just perfect.
IPS LCD 720P, I bet it costs them cents at this point.
AL frame, recycled again massive profits.
Probably their SoC R&D already had a massive break even and TSMC as well so again with that SoC, next level profits.
A13, the BAU case of AT's uber fast SPEC measurement means it's faster than a 9900K and SD865 is waste because it's sooo fast and Qualcomm is so behind as it takes many years to catch. But in real life UX, it's the same and sometimes even loses to the Android, wonder where did all that performance go.
But it's just $400+tax, so it's the best of the best smartphones on the planet because it's the best phone evaar. And ofc you do not get any 3.5mm jack as usual because space is not there I guess.
Apple is the most successful company because of their marketing edge, which is not possible to beat by any company, even the company which lives on Ad revenue itself failed so hard.
The utter shame is it runs on an OS which doesn't have a filesystem open to user for access but rather a ball and chain ecosystem utopian system.
Kudos tho. I hope this breaks the retarded mold of the Android phones esp Chinese ones and Samsung, Sony get their shit pricing corrected by selling $1000+tax phones planned obsolescence with sealed battery technology.
hlovatt - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
You are probably trolling, but in case anyone else is reading your Comments the file system app omen to the user that is part of iOS is called Files.