iPhone SE 2020: An Update After 5 Months of Use By Mark Spurrell

A portion of this video is sponsored by Squarespace the all-in-one platform to build and design your stunning new website. Hey guys mark here, and it's been a long time since my initial iPhone SE review, and I thought it might be time for an update because things have changed and so has my opinion of this phone. In some ways it's been a bit of a roller coaster of feelings. With this phone, when it was first announced, I was a little disappointed that apple had decided to once again reuse a design that has been pretty much unchanged since the iPhone 6. But then you know I thought about it a little and then decided it was actually a good move. It allowed them to make essentially a budget iPhone with the specs of their flagships, and that was pretty cool.

So I did my review and gave it a pretty favorable conclusion, and that was that, but now, five months after its release, the SE has a new story to tell- and it's not all great. So, let's start with what is still great, the SE is still in great shape. The phone has been used with a case on and off over the past five months, and both the front and back glass seemed to be in good overall shape, with no significant, scratches or dings to speak, of, the only blemish is a small scrape in the bottom corner of the frame, which presumably appeared after a hard fall, while it isn't quite as small as the old SE, which, by the way, is still one of the best phones apple has ever designed. In my opinion, the new SE is still very pocketable and comfortable to have around it feels nice in the hand and despite its aging design, it still does feel very premium to hold it's light too. At 148 grams, it's easily one of the lightest phones on the market, while touch ID, is an old form of tech that has since been replaced by face ID.

It is so, so much better in these crazy times when you have to mask up just to leave your house it's fast and accurate, and for once, I'm glad that it's here on the SE, the cameras are also still just as excellent. As I mentioned before, they aren't quite up to iPhone 11 tier quality, but they come pretty darn close colors and skin tones are some of the most natural out of any phone on the market, and sharpness is good as well, despite not having the highest resolution. Cameras 4k from the rear camera is still great, although I do miss having 4k on the front selfie camera, because although colors and dynamic range is good, the front camera is missing the sharpness that comes from that rear camera. What I'm wondering is how well it's going to stand up against Google's new Pixel 4a, which is priced similarly and has the excellent cameras from the pixel 4. I'll, have a review of the 4a coming within the next week or so subscribe and hit that notification bell to be notified when that video releases, as expected, the performance on the SE is still just as excellent, and I suspect it will be for at least several years into the future.

The a13 bionic inside is a flagship tier CPU that can compete with literally any other CPU from pretty much any other phone on the market. Today, everything is nice and snappy and other than a few minor bugs from the beta of iOS 14. I've had no real problems with how this phone performs apple will likely keep this phone updated into 2024 and maybe even 2025, so this might be just one of the best bang for your buck. Phones ever released, at least where performance and software updates are concerned. Before I move on and start warning you about a few of the not so great things about this phone, I want to talk about one last great thing that I've used extensively in the past to build websites.

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com marker to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or a custom domain thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this part of the video and now back to the iPhone SE. Okay, that's the good stuff! Now, let's change gears a little and talk about the stuff that maybe isn't so good and in some cases is just downright bad. First, the display this probably won't come as a surprise to pretty much anybody. Anyone who buys this phone knows the display isn't going to be the greatest. It's the same, one, that's in the iPhone 8, it's a 4.7 inch 720p display running at 60 hertz, it's old display tech and in 2020 it's starting to look a little dated watching YouTube. Videos aren't exactly ideal with a screen.

This is small and you can forget about something like watching. Netflix on it, when watching a movie shot in 21x9 aspect ratios, you not only have a massive bezel from the top and bottom chin, but you now also have a huge one on the sides. So the whole thing just looks a little awkward. The speakers aren't exactly amazing either. So if you watch a lot of media content, this probably isn't the phone for you there's no real issues with sharpness unless you get really close to that display.

But LCD panels like this one, don't look the best and don't have the ability to dynamically turn off individual pixels to save battery life like AMOLED does and that right. There is a perfect segue to perhaps the single most important update that I wanted to talk about today and that's battery life. So initially I said that the battery was fine enough to get you through the day, if you're a bit more of a light user and while I think that's still possible, I think that's more of the exception, rather than the rule. The battery life on this phone is not at all what I would call good, especially with the new iOS 14 updates. That seems to be sapping battery life more than on iOS 13.

, and this is something we really should have anticipated. I mean it's got an 1800 William hour battery, which is less than half the capacity of most modern phones. These days, yeah, of course, the a13 bionic can be a very conservative chip but feed it a demanding game or spend an hour in the camera, app taking photos and videos, and you'll quickly find yourself running to find a charger on a good day. You could get maybe four and a half, maybe even five hours of screen on time, if all you're doing is watching YouTube, videos and scrolling twitter, but throw in some mobile gaming. Maybe some image processing into the mix, and you're going to see your screen on time drop to less than four hours before you need to juice up again, and this is only five months after turning it on.

For the first time, you guys have had old phones before right. You know how big of an issue battery life can be when the cells inside start to degrade. This is an iPhone 6. I know it looks familiar right. This phone and this phone have the exact same capacity batteries in them, and I can tell you for a fact that the years have not been kind to this iPhone.6. I'd be lucky to even get three hours of screen on time.

With this phone. Okay, look. I don't hate this phone. I actually think it's one of the best, if not the best value phone, that apple sells, but part of my job as a tech. YouTuber is to be honest and inform you when these phones have big downsides, so that you can plan and prepare to work around them without being completely blindsided.

So, after all that here's my take on the iPhone SE, if you're just a light user- and you use your phone for calling texting a bit of social media and taking the occasional photos and video when you're out to an event or something the SE could be the perfect phone for you. But if you're the kind of person that uses their phone all day, and you need more battery life, I'd look towards the slightly more expensive iPhone 11, which I have a review on, that you can check out right here. If you like this video, please give it a like and subscribe to support my channel and, as always, have a great day.

Source : Mark Spurrell