IPhone SE: Apple on a budget
At £419, it’s half the price of Apple’s flagship phone, but is it only half as good? Daniel Bennett tests it out
How clever does a smartphone really need to be? A look at my Screen Time app tells me that 85 per cent phone usage is spent either watching YouTube, listening to music, or scrolling through Twitter. Clearly, I’ve wasted my money on a top-of-the-range phone – a 20-something-core processor is a bit over the top for binge-watching Binging With Babish.
So, I skipped the new iPhone 13 to spend a month with the latest iteration of the iPhone SE instead – a handset that’s less than half the price of the newest, smartest iPhone available – to find out whether it’s time for a rethink when it comes to how much I spend on my phone.
WHAT ARE THE UPSIDES?
A quick read of the spec sheet tells you this isn’t just old tech repackaged at a reduced price. Apple equips the iPhone SE with the same chipset, the A15 Bionic Chip, that it uses in its latest, most powerful phones. This means there’s absolutely nothing wrong with how the phone performs. Apps load in an instant, the touchscreen never hangs and there hasn’t been a website or a game that has caused the phone to stutter. Plus, it’s technically powerful enough to handle editing photos and even 4K video.
It’s a similar story for the camera, which punches way above its weight, thanks to the chipset inside. The A15 has what Apple calls a Neural Engine, which is there to help your iPhone understand the world around it. In terms of photography, this means that, in theory, your phone’s camera can tell the difference between the blue in the sky, and the blue in something like a road sign, and then tune one or the other independently depending on which ‘photographic style’ you’ve chosen. There are four styles to choose from: Rich Contrast, Vibrant, Warm and Cool. You might, for example, want to capture a photo with a warmer looking sky, but that doesn’t mean you want every single blue in the image to become more saturated – this is what the Neural Engine figures out. Similarly, Apple says the same tech improves the way your camera captures skin tones too. In practice, it’s hard to fault.
The camera also pulls off Apple’s newest software trick: point the lens at a document, poster or sign, and the camera will give you the option to copy the words off the live view and paste the text into a note, document or email. It’ll even recognise when a line of text is actually a web link, and invite you to click it to head to the address.
On top of a powerful CPU, you’re also buying into Apple’s OS, which is clean, simple and easy-to-use. It also comes with powerful privacy tools that can help keep nosy apps at arm’s length. Plus, the phone offers wireless charging and waterproofing, which you don’t often find in similarly priced Android devices.
WHAT’S MISSING?
If you’re downgrading, the first thing you’ll notice is the display. Compared to the edge-toedge screens we’ve become used to, the black bars at the top and bottom that frame the display feel like a step back in time. On its own the screen is bright and crisp, but put it next to an OLED display you’d find on a flagship phone and the iPhone SE’s LCD is notably less vibrant. Ultimately, it’s the size of the screen (4.7”) more than the picture itself that would potentially put me off the device long-term: it’s just a touch too small for long stints on YouTube or a video game.
The storage on the base model, 64GB, is a little on the shallow side. The battery life also falls a little short of what you’d hope for, occasionally needing a recharge before the day was out.
As a point-and-shoot camera, we like the iPhone SE, though it’s worth noting you’ll be missing out on a few features. There’s no zoom or wide-angle lens, and there’s no dedicated night-mode, which means photos taken in low light can come out blurry and lacking definition.