Apple iPhone SE Review - Review 2022

For the past few years, phone makers accept said that if yous want a pocket-size phone, you must have small demands. Simply that just isn't true. Some people have pocket-size easily and big ideas. The new iPhone SE from Apple ($399 for 32GB; $499 for 128GB) is the pocket-sized telephone that many people have been waiting for, with a conscientious balance of components that keep it electric current, while also hitting a midrange cost point. Anyone who has been driven nuts by increasingly large devices and wants to return to simpler, i-handed days volition love this phone. It's our Editors' Pick for smaller smartphones.

Physical Features and Ergonomics

Here'due south a quick rundown: The iPhone SE has the same trunk, screen, and storage as the iPhone 5s ( at Amazon) . It has the same modem, Touch ID sensor with NFC for Apple Pay, and front photographic camera as the iPhone 6 . And it shares a processor and rear camera with the iPhone 6s (599.99 with code VZWDEAL at Verizon Wireless) . These components add together up to a phone that can run the latest apps without complaining, and fits into a child's hand.

Apple iPhone SE

From a design perspective, the iPhone SE ($149.99 at Amazon) uses the iPhone 5s body. That means it measures 4.87 past 2.31 past 0.xxx inches (HWD) and weighs 4.0 ounces, and has a brushed-metal back with glass panels at the top and lesser. There'south a Affect ID-equipped, fingerprint-sensing concrete Home push beneath the display. The phone fits easily into iPhone v or iPhone 5s cases. There are merely two visible differences between this and the older phones: there'due south a pocket-sized SE logo on the dorsum, and the askew edges are matte rather than shiny. The phone too now comes in rose gold, in addition to dark gray, gilded, and silver.

The iPhone SE also uses the aforementioned screen every bit the iPhone 5s, a 4-inch, 1,136-by-640 console that has 326 pixels per inch. In terms of quality, it's pretty similar to the iPhone 6 and 6s screens, which are just bigger. These are high-quality LCDs that accept made hundreds of millions of people happy over the years, merely it's important to recollect they aren't leading-edge: The screens on the Samsung Galaxy S7 ($199.99 at Samsung) and the LG G5 ($624.00 at Verizon Wireless) , for example, are brighter, with richer colors and much higher pixel density, making everything look more than vibrant than information technology does on iPhones.

The 4-inch screen reduces usable real manor, of course. Reading an electronic mail in Outlook, I could see well-nigh xc words on the SE's screen, every bit compared with 160 words on the iPhone 6s, 250 on the Milky way S7, and 360 on Samsung Galaxy Note 5 . Looking at a Google Canvass spreadsheet, I could see xiii rows on the SE, as compared with 17 on the 6s, 22 on the Milky way S7, and 27 on the Note 5.

That can exist frustrating, merely it can too exist liberating. I used the SE as my primary telephone for a weekend, coming off of a few months with a Galaxy Notation 5, and discovered that you use them differently. I establish myself less likely to write long emails and social media messages on the iPhone SE than on the larger Note 5, but more likely to speedily check various feeds and read news, especially while doing something else. The iPhone SE sat so firmly in my hand that I never felt like I was going to driblet it, the mode I sometimes felt with the Milky way Note v. I commute with my tween daughter, and she institute information technology more comfortable to play games on the SE than on the Note 5—which is and so big that she actually tin't hold it safely in 1 paw.

In that location'due south one real usability handicap: I have always found the touch keyboards on 4-inch iPhones hard to type on accurately. Autocorrect helps, but trying to blazon passwords—especially because iOS never displays passwords—tin can be frustrating.

Apple iPhone SE

Call Quality and Networking
Phone call quality here is like to the iPhone 6: Voices are loud and solid through the earpiece, with back up for HD calling, Wi-Fi calling, and voice-over-LTE (VoLTE). The speakerphone is adequate, but not spectacular. Transmissions through the microphone on the T-Mobile VoLTE network were clear and solid.

In that location are ii models of the iPhone SE. The model nosotros tested—A1662, which Apple tree refers to as SIM-free—is sold for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; it's also the model sold unlocked. Information technology supports LTE bands ane/2/3/4/5/8/12/13/17/eighteen/nineteen/20/25/26/29. That notably leaves out Sprint'due south high-speed band 41, so a different unit, A1723, is sold for Dart. The SIM-free model also has the most-used basic LTE roaming bands, but non ring 7, which boosts speeds on Canadian and some European networks. The iPhone 6s has all the bands, and recovers from dead zones much more quickly than the SE.

That said, the iPhone SE is going to outperform both the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 6 (but not the 6s) on T-Mobile, considering information technology supports ring 12, which has become very important for extended LTE coverage. The 5s and 6 don't take that band; the 6s and SE practise. The iPhone 6 and SE should have similar operation to each other on the AT&T and Verizon networks.

The iPhone SE performs consistently amend than the iPhone 5s, merely not besides as the iPhone 6s, on Wi-Fi networks. While the SE and 6s did nearly as well as each other within 25 anxiety of a Wi-Fi router, the 6s offered meliorate speeds on the edge of the Wi-Fi cell and in a very Wi-Fi-noisy expanse. I got double the Wi-Fi speed of the SE on the 6s in edge cases, where both phones were stuck under 10Mbps on a 100Mbps connection. That's to be expected, because the 6s supports MIMO and the 6 does non.

What does that all add upward to? A theme, perhaps: If y'all're upgrading from the iPhone 4s or five, or comparing this phone with a Samsung Galaxy S5 , you're going to go much better coverage and Internet speeds on the SE. If y'all're comparing it to an iPhone half-dozen, you lot'll be near on par.

Small-scale Size, Big Power

The iPhone SE uses the same Apple A9 processor that the iPhone 6s does, running at ane.9GHz with 2GB of RAM. Its processor ability benchmarks exactly similar the 6s—which is, by the way, 75 percent faster than the iPhone 5s. The powerful GPU means that on-screen graphics benchmarks tend to hit vsync, the 60 frame per second limit beyond which screen images generally tend to tear and skip.

The A9 processor enables hands-free "Hey Siri" voice commands, which I detect much more usable than holding down the Home push button. It also enables Apple'due south animated Live Photos, which can now be shared on Facebook.

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The SE runs iOS nine.3. It's our Editors' Choice for mobile operating systems, if just because dissimilar with Android, iOS devices get frequent updates and are free of carrier bloatware. Third-party apps, especially games and social networks, all the same tend to come up to iOS first, and the apps are still frequently ameliorate-looking and better-designed.

The price of that smoothness, of form, is that iOS has a more rigid layout than Android does, and pushes yous into using Apple's services whenever possible. Yep, sure, Amazon Music and Google Photos work on iPhones, but Apple Music and iCloud Photo Library piece of work better (for instance, allowing y'all to upload photos to the cloud in the background). You also still accept to put all of your apps on your home screens, and can't take anything on your domicile screens except apps, which is less flexible and powerful than the myriad widgets that Android offers.

Back to the SE itself, though: if you have an iPhone v or an iPhone 5c ( at Amazon) , y'all may have noticed your telephone slowing down a fleck with iOS 9. It's non really planned obsolescence on Apple's part, merely rather that newer OSes simply assume newer processors. Switching to an SE future-proofs you through around iOS 12.

Apple iPhone SE

Battery Life and Photographic camera
The iPhone SE's battery life is the best I've ever seen on an iPhone. That's because of the combination of the energy-efficient modem and processor, the small screen, and the 1,642mAh battery, which is slightly larger than the 1,560mAh cell in the iPhone 5s. In our standard bombardment exam, which streams a full-screen video continuously over LTE, nosotros got 6 hours on the iPhone SE, every bit compared with about 4.five hours on the iPhone 6 and 6s, and 2.5 hours on the iPhone 5s. In a real-life examination, I got 13 hours of solid employ out of the phone including gaming, taking pictures, surfing the Web, and making phone calls before it needed a recharge.

The SE's master camera is the iPhone 6s'southward 12-megapixel photographic camera, and information technology has the same pluses and minuses. Compared with merely near every telephone camera except for the Galaxy S7, it'southward very fast, and takes sharp pictures in skillful light with true colors. It also records 4K video at 30 frames per 2nd, too as slow-motion video at up to 240 frames per second in 720p. But as with the iPhone 6s, the camera's low-light performance doesn't rule the roost. The Samsung Galaxy Note five and the Galaxy S7 both take brighter shots with better color residual when the lights go down.

The 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera is the iPhone half dozen's camera, plus Apple'due south new Selfie Flash feature, which dials up the screen brightness to ameliorate epitome quality in low calorie-free. In proficient calorie-free, it's fine; in low light, things can still get grainy enough that it well-nigh looks an Impressionist painting.

Comparisons and Conclusions
If you want a powerful small smartphone, the iPhone SE is by far your all-time option. It is both smaller and faster than its viable Android competitors, the 4.7-inch Alcatel One Bear upon Idol 3 4.7 ($124.20 at Amazon) and the 5-inch HTC One A9 ($155.00 at Amazon) . (Notice that to find any Android competitors at all, I needed to stretch up to a considerably larger screen size.) And it'southward then much faster, with much better wireless operation than the iPhone 5s or 5c, that people with those phones should consider upgrading right now.

Along with "small" Android phones similar the Idol four.seven and the A9, the iPhone SE also throws the iPhone 6 off the bus. At that place's really no reason to get the middling iPhone 6 any more—the SE delivers more than power for less money. If you lot want to stride upwards in screen size, go an iPhone 6s or an iPhone 6s Plus ($749.00 at Verizon Wireless) .

Most people, I call up, will want a larger window to the Internet. That'southward 1 reason why the 5.5-inch Samsung Milky way S7 Edge remains our Editors' Pick for smartphones overall. Simply I'm willing to create a new category here to requite the iPhone SE a prize. Let the iPhone SE be known equally our first Editors' Choice for small smartphones, and permit's hope that other manufacturers beginning to give Apple tree some real competition.