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The latest budget iphone SE doesn’t compromise on quality
Read all about the awesome new iphone SE, an A13 Bionic chip‑powered budget behemoth!
APPLE HAS RELEASED ITS LONG-AWAITED BUDGET IPHONE, THE NEW IPHONE SE. The brand-new 2020 edition of the budget iphone boasts some impressive features like an A13 Bionic Processor, 12MP rear-facing camera and a 7MP front-facing camera with Portrait mode. But its best feature is its price, it starts at just £419.
The original iphone SE was discontinued way back in 2018, and a budget model hasn’t featured in Apple’s line-up since, although it has continued to sell the iphone 8, which shares many design similarities with the new iphone
SE. “The first iphone SE was a hit with many customers who loved its unique combination of small size, high-end performance and affordable price; the new second-generation iphone SE builds on that great idea and improves on it in every way – including our best-ever single-camera system for great photos and videos – while still being very affordable,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
The most surprising addition to the iphone SE is Apple’s A13 Bionic chip, which is the fastest chip currently found in a modern smartphone, and the same one you get in the top-of-the-range iphone 11.
The A13 Bionic processor was built with a focus on machine learning, with a dedicated eight-core Neural Engine capable of five trillion operations per second, two machine learning accelerators on the CPU and a new machine learning controller to balance performance and efficiency. It’s also very good for battery efficiency, and means the iphone SE is capable of wireless charging from Qi-certified chargers and supports Apple’s Fast Charging, which delivers a 50% charge in just 30 minutes. Even with an A13 Bionic chip, don’t expect the iphone SE to be as fast as the iphone 11, 11 Pro and Pro Max. While the processor itself is the same, the amount of RAM within the iphone SE version is less. While Apple hasn’t announced the amount of RAM in its chips, teardowns of the new SE have established that it had just 3GB, compared to 4GB found in the other models mentioned.
The design of the iphone SE is very much based on the older iphone 8, so you get a similar 4.7-inch Retina HD display with True Tone that adjusts the white balance to match the ambient light for a more natural viewing experience.
In terms of colours you get a choice of three: white, black and (PRODUCT)RED. There are also three memory sizes that come at different price points: 64GB at £419, 128GB at £469 and 256GB at £569.
The iphone SE also sees the return of the Touch Id-capable Home button from the iphone 8, and by implication
this means that there’s no Face ID on the device. While this may seem like a backward step, Touch ID proved popular with users, and we’ve even read anecdotal reports of iphone 11 owners have switched back to entering a passcode to unlock their devices, because they prefer it to the face recognition system.
Apple claims that the camera system on the iphone SE is the most advanced singlelens camera system available today. It’s a claim that probably stands up, as many competitors have switched to a multiplelens system. The SE’S rear camera has a single 12-megapixel f/1.8 aperture wide lens that uses the image signal processor and Neural Engine of the A13 to enable Portrait mode. Portrait mode remains one of the most popular features of the iphone range, and all six Portrait Lighting effects and Depth Control are supported. It also supports high-quality video capture at 4K up to 60fps, and extended dynamic range comes to iphone SE for more highlight details up to 30fps. You also get Quicktake video on the front and rear cameras, allowing video recording without switching out of Photo mode. Finally, while the iphone SE isn’t waterproof, it is water (and dust)-resistant with an IP67 rating for water resistance up to one metre for 30 minutes.
The iphone SE is already available directly from Apple and also on contract from mobile phone companies such as Vodafone, EE and O2.