iPhone SE vs Android’s best smartphones
A £419 iPhone stands up to £1,199 in Android phones. Michael Simon reports
When comparing phones, you generally want them to be in the same league. These days that might mean there’s a few hundred pounds separating the models – like the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, or the Galaxy S20+ and the OnePlus 8 Pro – but it’s basically a waste of time to pit the £1,199 Galaxy S20 Ultra against the £329 Galaxy A51.
But Apple’s new iPhone SE is a horse of a different colour. Yes, it’s Apple’s budget phone and costs £700
less than the highest-end Galaxy S20, but it also has a bunch of Apple’s latest tech. And, you know, it’s an iPhone. I did the unthinkable and compared it to the three of the top Android phones available today: Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra (£1,199), Google Pixel 4 (£669) and OnePlus 7T (£469). Add it all up and you’ve got £2.337 in Android phones against one lowly £419 iPhone. But what should have been a ridiculously one-sided battle was surprisingly close.
Design
The iPhone SE looks and feels like an older phone. Like the iPhone 8, the SE is extremely similar to the
hardware introduced with the iPhone 6 in 2014 and you can feel every bit of its six-year-old design. The screen is small, the bezels are monstrous, and the home button is physical. It’s been a long time since an Android phone of any repute had a home button, and the SE looks and feels downright antiquated in comparison to the other phones here.
I’m not going to debate the designs of the other phones, but I will say this: despite its ancient looks, the iPhone SE is an extremely attractive phone with a solid build quality and retro charm. Even Apple’s old designs are better than some of today’s Android phones, and the glass back, aluminium sides, and carefully curved chamfers are satisfyingly symmetrical and ergonomically pleasant. The S20 and 7T are definitely a step ahead in the looks department – the Pixel 4 is a toss-up – but for a phone that hasn’t been in style for years, the SE really isn’t so bad.
Granted, its not a phone for everyone, but those who like or can get past its outdated Home button will appreciate is craftsmanship. The smooth glass back and polished aluminium edges bely its £419 price tag, and the whole package feels like a premium handset. Its bezels are way too big to compete with the other phones here, but there’s a certain charm to the iPhone SE – and it’s nice not to have to worry about palm rejection. There’s also something to be said for a phone that fits in any pocket.
Display
Right off the bat, the iPhone SE is at a disadvantage. While the Android phones here all have high-refresh
rate OLED displays, the iPhone SE uses an LCD screen that pales in comparison to the other phones here:
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: 6.9in Quad HD+ Dynamic AMOLED, 120Hz, 3,200x1,440, 511ppi
Google Pixel 4 XL: 6.3in Quad HD+ P-OLED, 90Hz, 3,040x1,440, 537ppi
OnePlus 7T: 6.55in Full HD+ AMOLED, 90Hz, 2,400x1,080, 402ppi
iPhone SE: 4.7in HD IPS LCD, 60Hz, 1,334x750, 326ppi
Apple labels the iPhone SE a Retina HD display rather than Liquid Retina, but it’s essentially the same display as the iPhone 11 with square corners instead of rounded ones. But for an LCD that’s already several years old, the iPhone SE’s screen is surprisingly
good. Text is crisp and it’s very bright, rivalling the peak manual brightness I was able to achieve on the other displays using the same all-white image.
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: 610 nits
Google Pixel 4 XL: 745 nits
OnePlus 7T: 870 nits
iPhone SE: 740 nits
However, with adaptive brightness turned on and a direct source of bright light applied, the results were dramatically different.
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: 1,275 nits
Google Pixel 4 XL: 1,075 nits
OnePlus 7T: 1,275 nits
iPhone SE: 840 nits
With adaptive brightness turned on, the OLED displays can leverage advanced algorithms and higher contrast ratio to deliver fuller colours and impressive brightness. And they’re far superior on the lower end too, with incredibly deep blacks that put the SE’s LCS to shame.
Then there’s the issue of size. The iPhone SE isn’t just small for 2020, it looks comically small compared to the Galaxy S20 Ultra and is more than an inch and a half smaller than the average Android flagship. Even the 5.8in screen on the iPhone 11 Pro looks monstrous by comparison, and videos and websites feel very cramped by comparison. With Apple rumoured to be switching to an all-OLED line-up for the iPhone 12, the SE’s LCD is going to quickly become obsolete, but all in all it’s a decent display.
Performance
Quite frankly, the iPhone SE wouldn’t be worth its salt (or comparing to the phones here) if not for its processor. Apple has put the iPhone 11 Pro’s A13 processor inside the iPhone SE, making it one of the speediest phones ever made and certainly the fastest for less than £420.
I picked the three phones I did because they represent the cream of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon crop. The S20 Ultra uses the 865, the best system-on-chip available, the OnePlus 7T is powered by the Snapdragon 855+, and the Pixel 4 runs the Snapdragon 855. Simply put, you won’t find a trio of faster processors in any Android phone. But pitted against the lowly iPhone SE, the three phones simply can’t stack up:
Geekbench 5 (CPU)
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Single-core: 901 Multi-core: 3,245
Google Pixel 4 XL Single-core: 724 Multi-core: 2,529
OnePlus 7T Single-core: 772 Multi-core: 2,883
Single-core: 1331 Multi-core: 3,310
Before you ask, those results are with all of the latest patches and updates installed and following fresh restarts. I performed them multiple times and took the best results. In short, there’s no contest. The iPhone SE not only handles the best Android phones, it handily beats phones costing twice and thrice as much. And when it comes to graphics, the iPhone SE is a beast.
Geekbench 5 (Compute)
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: 3,085
Google Pixel 4 XL: 2,149
OnePlus 7T: 2,675
iPhone SE: 6,413
That’s not to say any of the phones here are slow. Far from it. The Galaxy S20 Ultra and OnePlus 7T both have UFS 3.0 storage along with 12GB and 8GB of RAM, respectively, compared to the iPhone SE’s 3GB. The Pixel 4, like the SE, has the benefit of being engineered alongside the same team that makes the Android operating system. But even with those advantages, the iPhone SE is faster in every way.
And if you were to compare the iPhone SE to a £419 Android phone, the results would be lopsided to the point of being absurd. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Geekbench 5 scores for the Pixel 3a, which is widely regarded as the best budget Android phone you can buy:
Single-core: 351 Multi-core: 1,244 Compute: 639
And those are good numbers compared to the Exynos-powered Galaxy phones in that price range. But honestly, even if the upcoming Pixel 4a were to share the same Snapdragon 855 processor as the Pixel 4, the iPhone SE would still run circles around it. It’s even got Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), which you’ll only find on the S20 here. Apple could have made sacrifices with the SE’s speed with an A12 chip or even the A10 Fusion that powers the 9.7in iPad and no one would have minded. Instead it delivered the fastest phone you can buy at a ridiculously affordable price.
Battery and charging
Granted, the Android phones I looked at are much bigger, so they will have bigger batteries. Apple doesn’t divulge the battery capacity of its phones, but through teardowns it’s been revealed that it has the same 1,821mAh battery as the iPhone 8. By any metric that’s incredibly small, but it’s downright puny compares to the others here.
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: 5,000mAh Google Pixel 4 XL: 3,700mAh OnePlus 7T: 3,800mAh
It’s also small compared to Apple’s other offerings. The iPhone XR has a 2,942mAh battery, the iPhone 11 has a 3,110 mAh battery, the iPhone 11 Pro has a 3,046mAh battery and the iPhone 11 Pro Max has a 3,969mAh battery. And in this case, size definitely matters. The iPhone SE’s battery life is acceptable in that it’ll probably get most people through a day of
normal use, but it’s not going to blow anyone away. And if you plan on using it do to a good amount of streaming or navigation, you’re going to want to have a charger nearby. If you’re going to be using the iPhone SE’s Lightning port for charging, you’ll want to invest in a better adaptor.
In my testing, I played a two-hour movie on the brightest settings with automatic brightness turned off and then the same movie with automatic brightness turned on. Here’s how much battery life each phone used:
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: 23 percent
Google Pixel 4 XL: 35 percent
OnePlus 7T: 29 percent
iPhone SE: 46 percent