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.

Display Measurement - Maximum Brightness

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.

Portrait Displays CalMAN

Portrait Displays CalMAN

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.

Portrait Displays CalMAN

Saturation calibration is also extremely good, with only a quite larger overshoot towards the higher saturation reds.

Portrait Displays CalMAN

Portrait Displays CalMAN

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.

Camera - Quick Evaluation (Outdated) Battery Life - Matching the iPhone 8
Comments Locked

196 Comments

View All Comments

  • sonny73n - Saturday, April 25, 2020 - link

    Sure you’ll get the best performance compared to other phones at the same price point ON PAPER, not real life experience. For $400, There are many battery phones - Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, Oneplus, Vivo... to choose from. Unless you want to be on iOS which can be good also bad.
  • sonny73n - Saturday, April 25, 2020 - link

    ***many better phones
  • mandirabl - Saturday, April 25, 2020 - link

    Any example of which phone *performs* better, zippier and faster without lag?
    Any example of which phone gets updates for the next 4 years, including security updates?
    Any example of which phone is as secure and provacy-focused?
    ...Thought as much.
  • Retycint - Saturday, April 25, 2020 - link

    Most android phones at the $400 price point perform just as smoothly. We aren't talking about the $100 bargain basement phones here. The last two points are your own personal priorities, and people with different priorities e.g. battery life, high refresh rate etc will not necessarily see the iPhone SE as a clear winner.
  • sonny73n - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link

    You sound like a close-minded person who never likes to read. There’s a thing called internet, you know. Get on gsmarena, you’ll find many 2019-2020 flagship phones for under $600. Here’s a couple of midrange phones came to mind - Xiaomi Mi 9T $270, Vivo V15 Pro $300. They have full displays Super AMOLED, 6-8GB RAM, 128GB internal storage among many other things that I’d prefer them over this garbage.

    You’re one of those Apple sheeps who would believe everything Apple says. Watch the OLD Apple keynotes again and check those old iPhones which Apple touted about - “the fastest iPhone yet” LMAO. You don’t even know that iOS is a closed system, optimized to run on iPhones. Zipper, faster without lags my ass. Play Plants vs Zombies at high level on an iPhone, see how many fps it’ll give you. Operating system update? Haven’t you noticed every time an iDevice got updated to a new version of iOS, it got slower? Many people including me don’t want system updates for our iPhones but Apple always harass you if you don’t, right? They even trick you to enter password to update AFTER you CANCEL update. Security updates you say? Who gives a fk except for idiots. There’s many service online that bypass iCloud activation on stolen iPhones. Jailbreaks are out all the way to iOS 13. Security updates Apple push to your iPhones are for themselves, mostly patching the jailbreak exploits and install some more spywares. There’s not a phone that is secured. If you don’t know that iPhones and Android phones are the worst with spywares, you should not use any.

    I said this somewhere but I’ll tell the readers here again about my experience with these so called smartphones. My wife FaceTimed me while I was away from home, showing my 2 years old boy taking his first step. I told her please record everything about our baby. Fast forward to about one year later, she called me and told me that our then 3 years old boy singing in the shower and he’s taking the shower by himself and she’s recording it to send to me after. I stopped everything I was doing and told her not to do that because those MFs at Apple may think that you’re trafficking child porn or something. She said that’s our baby and that’s what I asked her to do, why tell her to delete this precious recording now. We had a argument over that until I explained clearly and showed her the iCloud storage of the message app later that night. I know that every keystroke I make or any file I have on the phone will go to the server and it will stay there forever, until someone dig it up. Luckily I stopped her in time or I would have been living in fear until now. Welcome to the police State where you have Apple and Google always there with you. Only sheeple like you would live in peace.

    You have thought as much? Still too fking little to me. Think some more. You have a long way to go.
  • Deicidium369 - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link

    I have heard of this thing called the Internet - I hear they have that on computers now - apparently 25% porn, 25% cat videos, 25% propaganda, and 25% long winded messages that are tl;dr
  • mandirabl - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link

    That moment when Android Police agrees... https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/28/iphone-se...
  • trparky - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link

    Xiaomi and Vivo? Really? I wouldn't let those damn devices with all of the Chinese backdoors into my house at all. Bad enough Google spies on you with Android as it is but to add China to the mix makes it even more of a toxic hellstew of spyware.
  • Irish910 - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link

    Wow. Salty much?? Did Apple shit in your Cheerios?
  • Deicidium369 - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link

    I replace my laptop/convertible every 2 years, replace my desktop every 2 years, why on earth would I keep a phone for 4 years - more like a year MAX

    What is provacy?

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now