iPhone SE (2020) Durability Test – Reasonably... Reasonable? By JerryRigEverything

Here we have a brand new 2020 iPhone SE. It's a little guy in iPhone's current line up - and not just in size. The price is also a surprisingly justifiable $399. 'Reasonably priced' and 'Apple' don't usually go in the same sentence together, but here we are... I just said it. Inside the box we get the new red iPhone SE, along with the corded proprietary lightning headphones, power cord, and the little 5 watt charger.

It would be faster to plug your phone into a hamster, but for this price point I'll try not to complain too much. It's time to see how durable Apple's new iPhone really is. Let's get started. So you might be like, 'Yo, Jerry, that looks like an iPhone 8. ' And you're correct.

Old body, new internals. It keeps the manufacturing price down and I'm all for it. The vast majority of people will never utilize the high-end specs of a $1,000 flagship, and this little guy is exactly the thing a lot of people are looking for. Let's start with the scratch test. My Mohs mineral picks can tell the difference between optical plastic, which scratches at a level 3, glass, which scratches at a level 5 or 6.

And sapphire, which scratches at a level 8 or 9. A lot of people don't know that the original iPhone that Steve Jobs first held up on stage for that first ever iPhone launch had a plastic screen. Right after that launch event he changed his mind about plastic and said all phones needed to ship with glass. And within a few months, Apple got it figured out and every phone since then has been shipped with glass, including this one, which scratches at a level 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7. This means that the screen is resistant to scratches.

The camera up here is a 7 megapixel little guy. It's sitting right next to the earpiece grill... which is made from metal and ever so slightly recessed below the glass surface. It won't be falling out on its own. The phone does have a Home button... well, a Home circle.

It doesn't actually click or anything. This just doubles as a fingerprint scanner and is undamaged by my razor blade. Thumbs up for that. The screen does still have it's plastic buffer layer between the glass and the metal, which is good news for durability and easier screen replacements. And the body of the phone is still made from aluminum.

The SIM card tray is also metal. There is no expandable memory in the iPhone SE, but it does have a black rubber ring around the SIM card tray to help keep the ip67 water-resistance. Water damage is of course not covered under the warranty, but it is still nice to have the extra protection. The top of the phone has nothing except more metal. And the left side of the phone has it's two volume buttons as well as the mute slider – all made from metal.

The bottom of the phone has it's normal lightning port and loudspeaker, but no headphone jack, and strangely enough, silver screws. Apple has used black screws on phones in the past and I personally think black screws would look a little better than silver. What do you think? Let me know down in the comments. I'm just glad that Apple went with a black screen this time around. I made a video a few years ago about how to swap the black and white screens on the Product Red iPhone 7, which has been watched over 7 million times.

I'm not like saying Apple followed my tutorial or anything... but there's also no way to prove they didn't. Apple is using Product Red this year to help donate to the global fund Covid-19 response, and any donation is a good donation. I've been scratching stuff for a while now, and Apple and I have always disagreed when it comes to the definition of sapphire. Sapphire should start scratching at level 8 or 9, but Apple's sapphire camera lenses for some reason always start to damage at level 6.

I've done some pretty in-depth videos about this if you're curious. I just think that at some point they should stop calling it sapphire. It's just crazy... not drinking bleach might cure corona levels of crazy, but still pretty crazy. Either way, the 12 megapixel camera lens starts getting damaged at a level 6.

If it's not pure sapphire, we shouldn't be calling it sapphire. Even though the phone itself only costs $399, a broken glass panel of the iPhone SE would cost $269 to replace. The screen is a bit more reasonable at $129 replacement, but thanks to our channel sponsor dbrand and the Grip Case, repair costs won't ever be something to worry about. Especially with the gradual raised lip along the top and bottom to help keep the screen socially distant from things that might damage it. I'll put a link down in the description for the Grip Case.

The 2020 iPhone SE has a 4.7 inch 750p 8-bit display, which is capable of showing over 16 million colors. There are 10 bit screens now on the market, like the OnePlus 8 Pro that displays 1 billion colors... if your eyes are into that kind of thing. The iPhone SE lasted about 16 seconds under the heat from my lighter before the pixels went black and turned off. Apple is using an LCD screen for the iPhone SE, but the pixels do come back after the heat is removed, and also fully recover... minus the evaporated oleophobic coating.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with this little guy, and I think Apple's pretty smart for releasing a super inexpensive iPhone. It's kind of like a gateway phone to sneak you into their ecosystem. One minute you're buying a cheap iPhone, and the next thing you know you're paying $5,000 for a portless laptop that can iMessage. Everyone can appreciate a well-built phone, and the bend test of the iPhone SE shows that even with the price cut, there is no skimp on structural integrity. Whether bent from from the front or the back, the phone is intact and not permanently damaged or kinked.

The iPhone SE is still very much alive and survives my durability test. Nice work Tim Apple. Would you ever buy a $1,000 iPhone now that this SE exists? Let me know down in the comments. I'll leave the link for dbrand's case down in the description. Plop a Teardown Skin on the back and it's the best of both worlds.

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Source : JerryRigEverything