The iPhone SE is kind of a brilliant concept. Recognizing that there’s a huge market for people who can’t afford the typical price of a new iPhone (or just don’t want to spend that much), Apple takes a somewhat dated model, replaces the processor with the last, and sells it for a very low.reduced price.
In 2016, the original iPhone SE put the latest processor (A9) inside the body of an iPhone 5S from two generations ago for just $399. It took Apple four years to release a second-generation iPhone SE, again putting the latest processor (A13) into a two-generation iPhone 8, again for just $399.
However, two years later, Apple abandoned this winning formula of the iPhone SE. It’s still the latest processor (A15), but instead of putting it in the two-generation iPhone 11, or even the iPhone XR, Apple is going back to using the body of the old iPhone 8. And the price has increased, for $429.
It’s still the cheapest new iPhone you can buy, and that’s not bad, but it’s disappointing to see Apple charging more while failing to advance its budget phone in the most important way.
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What the A15 processor brings
The A15 is faster than the A13 in the second-gen iPhone SE, that’s for sure. You can expect around 20-30% better CPU and GPU performance, although it could be more or less depending on the exact task. Whether this performance is really noticeable in everyday use is another thing.
I found that in most landmarks, the iPhone SE is on par with the iPhone 13, with a small margin of error (but not the iPhone 13 Pro, which has a fifth GPU core).
This makes it by far the fastest phone in this price range. But was performance really a problem to be solved in the iPhone SE two years ago? The A13 already outperforms most current $400 phones.
The A15 also packs a better image processor, meaning it can do more with data from those older iPhone 8 sensors and optics; none of the camera’s sensors or optics have been updated since that model from five years ago.
It has the new Photo Styles feature of the iPhone 13, for example, as well as excellent 4K 60Hz video recording, Deep Fusion and Smart HDR 4 does a great job in bright outdoor scenes.
You also get 5G compatibility, with one caveat: you can only connect to 5G bands below 6 GHz, not the new ultra-high frequency millimeter wave (mmWave) bands. That’s where the fastest speeds are, but millimeter waves are very short range and not that widespread yet, so you’re not missing much.
Battery life remains disappointing
One of the worst drawbacks of the second-generation iPhone SE was its terrible battery life.
Apple says the more power-efficient A15 works with updated battery chemistry from the iPhone SE to deliver better battery life. The good news is that the battery lasts longer. The bad news is that it’s still pretty bad.
In my tests, running the Geekbench 4 test on a loop with the screen at constant 200 nits, the battery lasted 5 hours and 13 minutes. That’s a big improvement over the second-gen iPhone SE’s 3 hours and 37 minutes, but it’s still the worst battery life of any iPhone you can buy (over an hour less than the worse iPhone 13 mini). . A standard iPhone 13 lasted three hours longer on the same test.
During my tests, I found that I had to recharge at night to last all day. It’s been a few years since I used an iPhone that didn’t reliably last all day.
It’s nice that battery life has improved on Apple’s most affordable iPhone, but it hasn’t improved enough. If it could last 15-20% longer, it would live up to our expectations of being up there with the iPhone 13 mini.
In many ways, a five-year-old iPhone
While the A15 upgrade has some real benefits, it’s disappointing that the rest of this $429 phone is an iPhone 8 from around 2017.
The screen is the same old LCD which isn’t as bright as expected in sunlight, has huge top and bottom bezels and doesn’t display HDR. It’s one thing to be in love with smaller phones, but this older design only gets you a 4.7-inch screen.
Consider that the iPhone 12 mini and 13 mini, while considerably smaller, have larger 5.4-inch screens because there’s not all that wasted space.
Part of this space is used for the Touch ID home button. Some users simply refuse to support Face ID, but even so – Apple could make a phone with Touch ID on the side button like it does on the iPad Air and iPad mini, leaving room for a lot more screen big. which further reaches the edges of the phone.
The iPhone 8’s old camera isn’t doing Apple any favors either. The A15’s superior image processing does a stellar job of producing good photos in bright light, but the 12MP rear camera struggles in low-light situations, producing very grainy, low-contrast images.
The 7MP front camera takes worse photos than we’re used to, with less detail and contrast, and frequent issues like blurry skies and crushed shadows. It does the job for FaceTime calls, and it never ceases to amaze me with how well this old man performs. Material in brightly lit scenes, but you’ll want something better if you’re doing a lot of Selfie.
You also don’t get features common to newer iPhones, like multiple rear cameras (no telephoto or ultra-wide camera), MagSafe, or the U1 chip to do things like identify AirTags.
Apple is still selling the iPhone 11 for $589, and I think most users considering the iPhone SE would be happier overall to spend the extra $70 on it. It doesn’t have 5G and its A13 chip isn’t as fast (not that you can tell), but it has a bigger and better screen, Face ID, better water resistance (IP 68 vs. IP67), higher-quality cameras and much longer battery life.
The 2020 version of the iPhone SE was already pretty fast and didn’t need a faster processor. What it needed was a new design, improved camera hardware, a modern display with a better screen-to-body ratio, and much better battery life, and it didn’t. not worked.
Apple updated the part that needed it the least and didn’t touch any of the things that are now hopelessly outdated. The screen is tiny with huge, ugly bezels, battery life is barely passable, and the camera hardware is incredibly dated and limited. And while the A15’s top-notch image processing really improves your photos, you’re still missing out on tabletop features like Night Mode.
It is a very uneven product. The processor is overkill, way more than any budget phone. It’s faster than Android phones that cost over $1,000. This kind of top performance is rarely the main concern of people choosing the most affordable phones. In other areas, it’s way behind, even for a $400 phone.
Original article published in English on our sister site igamesnews USA.
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