iPhone SE 2020 1 Week Later review - Best Value iPhone EVER? By BubVisuals

So this is the 2020 iPhone SE Apple's newest budget phone. Now this was a phone expected by a lot of people, with speculation, about everything from the name to the body style and what we got was a phone that looked on the surface to be a modernized. iPhone 8, however, I think it's a little more than that and after using it for a week, I've formed some pretty conclusive opinions. So should you buy the iPhone SE 2020, let's find out? First, let's take a look at what we get in the box. Well, it's an iPhone, so you're going to be getting the usual stuff. Obviously, yet the early phone, as well as a charging cable, unplugged, some headphones and some documentation.

It's all well put together properly protected and makes for a generally really nice unboxing experience, something that I rarely get because most of the time actually by my phones, refurbished so yeah I'd say this is like unboxing any other iPhone. After this we got specs, and this is where this phone starts to get fascinating. The iPhone SE features the Apple a 13 Bionic processor, which is actually one of my favorite parts of the iPhone 11 when I check that out this processor is what got me really interested in this phone, and we're going to be talking more about what that processor means later on. We also see three gigabytes of RAM, so one gigabyte less than the iPhone 11 and 11 pro storage options of 64, 128 and 256 gigabytes, which is a nice range. Now me personally, I have the 64 gigabyte Variant kiss, as I said before.

I, don't keep a lot of stuff on my phone. That said, it is always nice to know the options there. The iPhone SE weighs in at 148 grams, so exactly the same as it was on the iPhone 8, which would make sense as they do look very similar. Finally, there are three color options: being black white and red, all of which look nice and rich and well. I personally got the black one mainly because it was the easiest to get hold of I personally think all of them look really nice.

As I said in my initial impressions. Video, though I do kind of wish there were some more funky color options or even the gold Barn like we saw on the iPhone a still, in my opinion, not a deal-breaker and overall I think the specs are pretty good for the price here. As for the specs, that's pretty much it that doesn't include the screen that gets its own section later, but I personally, don't like to focus on benchmarks from my reviews, I think user experience is a much better test, and we are going to be talking about how this phone performs later on. Following on, we have a build quality and, despite Apple, making a few measures here to drive down the cost of this phone, it still feels nice and premium. The glass and aluminum build feel great in the hand.

This spy would have said about glass phones being significantly more breakable than aluminum phones, which is still true. If you're prone to dropping your phone like me, then you probably should still get a case, however, because of the size I, don't think I'd be likely to drop this phone, which is a huge plus. That said, the sensible thing to do in this situation would be to accept the risk of a glass back and, of course, make sure you have a case on it still there's something magical about not having a case, though, in terms of water resistance. This seems to be an area where Apple of cut by only including an ip67 resistance, whereas on the eleven series we did see and ip68 rating, what this means is the iPhone SE is rated to survive in up to a meter of water for half an hour. Well, this does seem to be a cut back and don't get me wrong.

It is a cut back. I've been totally fine with the ip67 rating on my iPhone 10 for like the longest time it's with our Dells saved my phone a few times, and so, in my opinion, it's not a deal-breaker, but it is just something you should be aware of. Overall, the iPhone SE feels like well an iPhone, nice and premium, but probably should be used in the case. I definitely should get a case moving on. We have the screen and the iPhone SE certainly saw the return to a classic design.

It has a northeast Sun and resolution of 750 by 1334. It has a PPI of 326 and a peak brightness of 625 nits. So on paper, not all that impressive, however, because of the 4.7-inch screen only haven't particularly noticed the low resolution and, while I'd, probably good if I got like super close and my usual distance in my real-world usage, I'm gonna, be honest: I can really notice. The SE screen also features haptic touch which allows for different actions such as opening up menus. This is different to the old 3d Touch system, which is actually based on pressure, which I actually still prefer.

That's it I've got used to haptic touch now and I, like the extra interactivity level that you get with your phone. So, in my opinion, it's nice. They included it another thing they included. That I like a lot, is the true term which make sure your phone's color temperature is accurate to your current lighting. I love.

This feature I've said before how I think it's kind of like auto white balance, and it's just one of this feature that doesn't seem all that significant on paper, but when you get used to it impossible to go back from so overall. What do I? Think of this great? Let's be honest, this isn't going to be winning any awards for the best phone screen anytime. Soon. First set this by using the high-res HDR LED screen for my iPhone tempera long time now. The biggest thing I missed was the aspect ratio as for the rest, I got used to it pretty quickly and what I do obviously still prefer the newest screens, the SE screen, certainly isn't unusable.

Next up, we have usually a really strong point on the iPhone side of things, button placement, and I'm pleased to say on the iPhone SE, it's pretty much as good as ever as I said in my iPhone 8 review. There are two separate volume up and volume down buttons for easy, distinguishability, a lot but nice to light it on the side of the phone, which is actually super important. The ever useful mute switch and the home button, which were actually gonna, be talking about more next, as for now, all the buttons feel nice and tactile they're, all logically mapped with the hole for power off returning and due to the return of the home button. No accidental screenshots but you're, squeezing your phone. Now that isn't a headphone jack like a few people actually speculated would be returning.

But honestly, at this point, I, don't really think that's to be expected, as we saw in the unboxing Apple did include some Lightning headphones and with wireless headphones and adapt as being as accessible as they are to me. This really isn't a big deal overall, I think the iPhone SE has brought along the most mature refined version of, in my opinion, the best button layout we've seen from Apple yet and as everything feels so high-quality for again, a budget iPhone I really don't have any complaints here. Next up, as I said before, we've got the home button and, of course, touch ID. The iPhone SE 2020 actually brought back that haptic home button, like we saw from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone 8, instead of having no home button and face I'd date, like we've seen on iPhones over the past few years. Now this, along with the screen and the camera, is probably one of the biggest cost-cutting measures that came along with this phone and after using it for the past week.

I'm honestly, ok with that, returning to this much more simple method of navigation has actually been pretty nice. I love the fact that this means less of those button, combinations that we saw introduced on the iPhone 10, and it can make operating the phone one-handed a lot easier in terms of touch ID. In my opinion, this is the best, yet it's very fast, very accurate and all in all works great. After this we have the camera. Now, I actually did do a full test on this the other day, if you want to check that out, it'll be up there, probably, but it's mostly pros, along with some pretty significant limitations.

First off there's one 12 megapixel main camera with an actual f1 point 8, and while this is limited compared to the 2 or 3 cameras that are now on iPhones these days, the important thing here that this isn't a photo enthusiast iPhone most people, don't need a second focal length. It also makes my job reviewing this camera a hell of a lot easier. The front-facing camera has also taken a hit in terms of specs, been dropped down from 12 megapixels, like we saw in the iPhone 11 line, Bank down to 7 megapixels. It also took some pretty significant cuts in terms of video, and we're going to discuss those in a moment. The app is overall good, with easy, changing and things like aspect ratio and, of course, accessing the aperture slider in portrait mode.

However, I really don't like the hold for video I, take a lot of burst photos, so I do naturally go to hold down the shutter button. Yeah, that's something I'm still getting used to in terms of overall image. Quality I've actually found it to be quite good. Charmless was great, although not quite at the level of the iPhone 11. That said, as I mentioned in my detail, camera review I think this is probably down to a hardware element of the iPhone 11 dynamic range is fantastic, and I found the color science to be pretty much on point with a nice amount that contrasts in saturation great looking skin tones and all in all it just looks perfect.

I was expecting this to be like the iPhone 8, but no totally differently. There is also a good amount of room for post-processing, which I always love, as I've said before. Lightroom Mobile is a great tool, and as long as your source, photic and a whole loads of some editing, a little of post-processing makes your photos look significantly better when it comes to low-light photography. Unfortunately, we don't see night mode here so Scott low-light is pretty mediocre. However, due to popular request, I decided to chuck new camera miss thing and see how it worked.

If you don't know what your cameras- it's, essentially a low-light photography out and looking at the side by side, I got some pretty comparable results of the iPhone 11, which, in my opinion, is super impressive. In the past, when I've tested neural cam against night mode, it's been good but pretty obvious, which is which and as this has seen more and more situations, this may end up being the case again. However, it certainly isn't bad. The iPhone SE also features portrait mode on both cameras. However, Apple decided to pretty severely limited.

It now only works on human faces which, in my opinion, sucks I use portrait mode on my 10 for so much more than taking photos of people. In fact, I barely ever took photos of people with it most of the time it was just to get that fake background blur, and while it does work well in this use case, this sucks, it was limited. This way. Moving up to video again I was actually pretty impressed with the results coming up the main camera, it can shoot 4k at up to 60fps, with extended dynamic range at up to 30. Fps and my personal favorite frame rate 24 frames per second I love how they kept the feature where you can tap to change frame rates because sometimes, if I want some cinematic, goodness I am going to flip it into 4k 60fps.

However, most of the time I'm going to be shooting in 24 fps, so yeah being able to switch that on tap amazing. It serves a slow motion. You can shoot Full HD in either 120 or 240 FPS, which again has that same tap to cycle frame rate feature, honestly. The 240 FPS doesn't look great, but the 120 fps isn't actually that bad. Don't get me wrong.

It still does look like phone slow-motion, but not as phone slow-motion, a slow motion. That is not a word, but we're going to go with it. I'd say the biggest downfall of the video performance would have to come with the front-facing camera, as with the megapixel downgrade all suck in the loss of the hundred and twenty FPS slow fees which, to be honest, not a huge deal but also gone, is the 4k recording, which honestly is a little of a shame. That said, if you want the highest quality recording, you really should be shooting on the main camera anyway. So not too much of a loss.

In my opinion overall, initially I thought: I wasn't going to like the camera performance, I thought the single focal length will be limiting and the lack of night mode and a fully functioning portrait mode would suck and while I still do hold these complaints, it is not a foam for camera nerds. Like me, the iPhone SE is a phone first camera second, and in that regard, I was very more impressed than I thought. It was going to be following this. We have perhaps the most important aspect of any phone OS and app performance, the iPhone SE shipped with iOS 13, and while it hasn't been without issues such as haptic touch not working with notifications. These issues will almost definitely be fixed in coming.

Updates scrolling through the phone feels smooth I haven't, had any issues with crashing and yeah overall OS performance on the iPhone SE very good in terms of and performance. This is where the beefy Harbor starts to shine everything from playing games to watching videos on the SE twas, a really nice experience with, as I said, no issues with crashing and all in all our performance is solid for a budget iPhone, because this is an iPhone you're, also going to be getting that legendary Apple support cycle and seeing is phone was released with iOS 13. It will most likely get updates until at least iOS 18, which just makes it so much better value. Next up, we got the speakers which, like all modern iPhone, features that stereo technology. This means that both the top and the bottom speaker are used in conjunction to create their stereo effect.

The result is a lot more immersive experience and on the SE, I'm actually quite impressed. It doesn't sound quite as good as on the iPhone 11. In my experience, honestly, both are totally fine with some casual listening again, as always, I wouldn't recommend relying on iPhone audio for anything that involves monitoring or accurate listening. I'd always recommend good speakers or headphones for that, but for simply watching videos, it does a pretty great job. Finally, we have the battery life, the ole fin a sieve actually comes in at 1821 William hours, which is honestly way smaller than most phones out at the moment, certainly less than the 11 series almost manufactured two times when it comes to the 11.

However, the small screen more efficient processor, as well as great bachelor attention during standby periods, do mean this shouldn't just be written off as bad right away and in my testing it would last the day now. This is something I'm used to with my iPhone 10. That said, I have been using my iPhone 10 for ages now, and I've only had the SE for a week overall, in real-world usage, I've managed just fine, but in comparison to something might be out from the 11 totally differently. So all in all, what do I think of this phone honestly I'm, actually pretty impressed. Is this the perfect phone? For me? No, is this phone aimed at me again? No, the authenticity is a well-rounded phone at an affordable cost.

That I think for most people will be incredible. It performs great, takes nice photos and gives you all the bonuses of iOS for under $400, as I said before, I personally prefer to buy refurbished, you get a better deal. The seller gets some money for their old phone and fewer goes to waste. However, a lot of people don't want a used phone, which does make sense. I mean there are a lot of advantages to having a new phone and due to the new phone market being so expensive right now, I think the iPhone SE might just be the best value phone on the market.

In fact, I think this might be the best value iPhone ever made alright guys. So that's it for today, as always. Thank you for watching, remember to like the video. If you want to see more content like this and smash that subscribe button, I'm done for now, and I will see you guys in the next one.

Source : BubVisuals