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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
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 phonesmandirabl - 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;drmandirabl - 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 MAXWhat is provacy?