iPhone SE Review: Apple's Outdated Innovation
Apple’s iPhone SE has been on sale for just over four weeks now… or is it four years? The lineage of this device reaches back to the September 2012 launch of the iPhone 5. Then the design represented the future, with the new lightning connector debuting on the 5 and both the TouchID sensor and 64-bit computing appearing on the iPhone 5S. In that sense the iPhone SE is simply the next step in a long production line of handsets, with the 2016 model taking everything that worked before and updating the processor, camera, and memory.
I’d argue that this is new ground for Apple. Rather than redefine what it means to be a smartphone every two years (with the mid-term course correction of the ‘S’ handsets), the iPhone SE is an iterative approach to handset design from Cupertino. The existing handsets were working well before, so just give them a little nudge in specifications and keep selling the handset.
By virtue of the new name – SE – the handset can be marketed as a new device while retaining all the benefits of the older models, including physical compatibility with peripherals, a comfortable and well-loved style, the commonality of iOS and a form factor that developers are already familiar with
Apple’s issue in 2016 is that it needs to get customers to upgrade. The push to larger screened devices such as the 4.7 inch iPhone 6/6S and the 5.5 inch iPhone 6/6S Plus left a gap in the portfolio. iPhone 5, 5S, and 5C users were looking for a handset that would comfortably run iOS 9 (and likely iOS 10 or 11) in the future, or an equivalent device from the competition. Apple was lucky that no small but powerful Android devices caught the public’s attention before the SE arrived
The longevity of the new hardware is the biggest selling point in the iPhone SE. Apple has acknowledged that it expects first users to pass on a handset and pick up a new device after three years, and the length of time a device is supported reflects that. The iPhone 5 does cope with iOS 9 (just about) but iOS 10 arriving this summer for developers is likely out of reach. That’s not the case with the iPhone SE, which should be supported by usable updates until 2019 at the earliest. The SE is about as future proof (for software) as you can get in today’s market, and Apple is not shy about releasing updates.
Staying with the smaller form factor does bring with it some issues, and the biggest of those is the small screen. At 1136 x 640 pixels, it has a 326 ppi display, but in a $400 smartphone I think that customers would expect more. With Android devices half the price of the iPhone SE sporting 1080p screens (such as the OnePlus X), this is a huge compromise. It’s also missing 3D Touch, the new user interface element that Apple proclaimed as the next best thing in September 2015 which then failed to appear on the iPad Pro 12.9, the iPad Pro 9.7, or the iPhone SE.
Yes it keeps the same form factor, yes it keeps Apple’s costs down, and yes it means people can stay with something familiar. But it does feel like you are playing over the odds for older technology.
Arguably the same is true of TouchID, with the iPhone SE using the slower first generation technology. Here I’m happy to give Apple the benefit of the doubt – it’s noticeably slower but only by a fraction, and this is a device lower down the portfolio. Functionality is fine, and it’s still far easier than entering a pin code every time I turn on the handset.
The other visibly updated component of the iPhone SE is the camera. There’s been no cutting corners here, the SE comes with the same camera as the iPhone 6S. It’s a twelve megapixel sensor, no slouch for the mid-range market, and the focus detection pixels mean that if you can hold the phone steady for a fraction of a second the scene will snap into focus. It also has one addition from the 5S – a sapphire-based lens cover which should be more scratch resistant over time and preserve the image quality shot through the lens.
What the camera doesn’t offer is a huge amount of flexibility – just like every other iPhone you can tweak the exposure with a long press when focusing in the camera app, but otherwise your artistic choices are ‘what filter will I use?’ and ‘where should I focus the camera?’ The iPhone SE is a strong point and shoot camera, but it rarely reaches the imaging heights of Samsung’s latest smartphones. Apple passed over the crown of ‘best imaging smartphone’ in late 2014 and shows no sign of claiming it back with the current top-end hardware that you find in the SE.
It’s also worth noting the FaceTime camera is the older 1.2 megapixel version from the 5 series, and not the 5 megapixel hardware you’ll find on the iPhone 6 family.
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