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
Display Measurement
The screen of the iPhone SE shouldn’t be much different to that of the iPhone 8. It’s still an LCD IPS display, but it’s also one of the best on the market, even though the resolution is quite low.
We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the iPhone SE screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using Portrait Display's CalMAN software.
In terms of brightness, the iPhone SE comes in at a maximum of 675 nits, which is in line with Apple’s previous generation LCD devices. It’s not quite as bright as the OLED iPhone 11’s and this can be noticeable in bright daylight, but it’s otherwise a very acceptable result.
In terms of greyscale calibration, minus a gamma that’s slightly too high and by a bit off with slightly darker tones, the color accuracy of the iPhone SE is dead-on. Whites come in at 6492K is almost perfect, and in general the color error is below a dEITP of 1.
Saturation calibration is also extremely good, with only a quite larger overshoot towards the higher saturation reds.
In the GMB test, the display is incredibly accurate with a color error of only 0.99 dEITP, only slightly worsened by the very slightly off gamma and darker tones for a total of 2.12 dEITP.
Overall, the iPhone SE’s display is in line with what we’ve seen on the iPhone 8. It’s amongst the best LCD screens in the market, even though by now it’s been outpaced in terms of brightness output and evidently resolution.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
196 Comments
View All Comments
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.