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
name99 - Saturday, April 25, 2020 - link
"In JetStream, the phone even gets a boost here, which might be due to the newer iOS version."Not "might be", *is* a result of newer iOS. Apple's constantly improving Safari performance.
Some of the tech behind the most recent improvements is detailed here:
https://webkit.org/blog/10298/inline-caching-delet...
LeftSide - Saturday, April 25, 2020 - link
Could the oddly close battery life numbers be related to the oddly close name of a particular apple employee and the name of this site?yeeeeman - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link
With this article my suspicion of you guys being either paid my Apple or Apple fanboys has been confirmed.There are a ton of interesting, cheap Android devices in THE SAME price category as this old junk, but you never get the time to cover them. Some of them even have SD865 and the lot at close to same price as this phone, but neah, don't bother to write about them.
No, you instead waste your time and our time to write a long article, to repeat basically all that was valid for iPhone 6 in 2015. Sure, you are free to do it, you are the writer.
Sorry to be so harsh, but I feel like this site is going into a wrong direction.
toyeboy89 - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
The fact is that Apple is more popular. They are going to get more hits on an article for a new iPhone. Just because a design is old doesn't make it junk. It's a proven design that many people still prefer to the swiping gesture based controls of the newer full screen iPhones. Most people don't look into these off brand budget phones you speak of for the same price. I personally wouldn't risk spending $400 on a brand with no service center in my country, Apple is everywhere, and you can walk into a store and get service the same day on your device.trparky - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
A lot of those cheap Android phones are from China. That's a hard NOPE in my mind.shady28 - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link
Honestly my untrained eyes can't see much if any difference between the iPhone 8 and SE 2020 video. I do see a slight but noticeable difference vs the iPhone 11 Pro video though.There is at least one side by side speed comparison with the SE and 8 out there now. Basically, normal stuff it's a toss up. But in more demanding applications, longer loading apps and so on, there's a pretty large difference.
My take on all this is that the SE 2020 is essentially a more future proof variant of the 8, but the 8 is still a very capable and fast phone to the point where the differences are undetectable except under the most demanding of apps (there is a significant difference in the comparison when the phones are pushed, but how many people push their phones SoC to the limit with any frequency?). This shouldn't be too surprising, any competing phone running less than a Snapdragon 845 is going to get thumped hard on performance by the iPhone 8 - which is to say anything short of a 2019+ flagship android.
So, as an 8+ owner who disdains facial recognition, I'm not seeing this as much of an upgrade path. I don't want to go back to the smaller screen, my camera is already better than an normal 8 and probably better than this 2020 SE, and I'm not interested in losing my home button on the new iPhones.
Deicidium369 - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link
Yeah I remember when my Atari 800XL with disk drive was future proof.toyeboy89 - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
To be fair CPU and GPU in phones have plateaued in recent years so shady28 does have a good point.Drakkon801z - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
I don't understand about bezels, phones with thicker bezels have higher chace to survive after accidental drops, I lost cout of how many thin bezel phones that has latest version of protective screen, been smashed/cracked just because of 30 cms drop. For practical purposes, thicker bezels is like the only choice, unless you add good quality material like higher quality quartz/sapphire glass to entire front. Untill then, I will prefer thicker bezels on my phones.pav1 - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
As usual, Anandtech reviews dote on CPU, giving us an A13 review which we already know is fast and largely wasted on such a device.