iPhone SE (2020) Review: Almost Perfect... By The Apple Circle

The iPhone SE has made a splash, it's the $400 new iPhone and my now I'm sure. You know that this is, you know, pretty great value for a phone, but I wanted to put it to the test. So I took my SIM card out of my 11 pro so nice and put it into the iPhone SE, and I've been using it since it came out and, interestingly enough, I'm not missing that much. There's really like three main things here that are different from the flagship iPhones, the design, the performance and the camera, and the design is probably the biggest because that's the first thing that you see this is an older design of an iPhone, and it's kind of being phased out. I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone SE is the last version of an iPhone with a home button. But there's you know a lot of charm with that design.

It is what we were used to since the original iPhone. So going back to it, although it did take a little of getting used to kind of use the home button again and not use gestures, it felt very familiar, and I'm totally used to it at this point, I think the iPhone SE the first version, and now this version kind of has two camps. It's for people that really wants an affordable, iPhone and the SE definitely does that and for people who want a small phone. Now, that's where I was a little iffy I'm personally in the camp that wants a small phone, we covered the original iPhone SE and I really loved it, and on paper, this 2020 SE is not that much different from the iPhone 11 Pro. The size of the actual hardware is basically the same, but what you're getting here is thinness and a smaller screen.

So, even though those top and bottom bezels might not look all that good. That screen is actually I found more usable. It makes it feel like the phone is smaller I think you know it's a decent screen. I definitely noticed the fuzziness of it, not being a super high resolution. OLED display, but in day to day it's really not a big deal at all that, in combination with the thinness, which I've forgotten, how much I actually like a really thin phone- and you really kind of forget that Apple has made the latest iPhones really chunky and that that's great for a lot of things, but it's kind of nice to hold a really thin sleek phone again.

So it's not as small as the original SC, of course, but in the hand it actually does feel quite a bit smaller than current flagship phones, but overall, that size of the screen and the size of the overall hardware. It actually does feel like the smaller phone I was hoping for ? I wish it was a little smaller, yes, but I can still say this is the small quad iPhone. By the way did you know that we have a podcast, and we actually talked a lot more in depth about the iPhone SE, what it's like to actually use on our latest episode? It's called the Apple Circle podcast. Surprise hit his link down below be sure to check it out, give it a listen, and we think you really enjoy it now. The home button was actually the one thing I was looking forward to and not because I want to go back to the home button, but because of touch ID, and normally I wouldn't really care.

But in the situation we're in the world right now, when you're wearing a mask face, ID just kind of sucks, you would just have to enter your passcode, which at that point, why even have biometrics so having touch ID has been a really nice thing whenever I'm out of the house, and I'm wearing a mask touch, ID is coming in handy, and it's the same touch ID that you have come to expect from a hardware fingerprint sensor. It works great, it's fast and right now, I'm loving it. If the situations were different, and I didn't have to wear a mask, I, don't think I would really enjoy it quite as much. But it's a give-and-take face ID and touch ID are both great biometric options, but right now I'm definitely enjoying having touch ID. So the camera on the iPhone SE is the one thing.

I was a little worried about because that's one of the main things I look for in a phone. It's the reason why I'm using the 11pro, instead of just the regular 11, it's the reason why I always get that top-tier. It's for that camera and the iPhone SE is now confirmed. Furthermore, it has the exact same hardware as the iPhone 8, so the same sensor the same lens, but it has the updated processing from the 13, and that does make a huge difference. So when you have good lighting- and you have both cameras next to each other, honestly you're hard-pressed to tell a difference- they both do a great job.

But it's when you get into those less ideal situations where you can see a difference and I think the biggest one is no night mode. I didn't realize how much I actually use night mode and appreciate night mode. This is so seamless on the higher end. iPhone 11 and 11 Pro it just works really well, and there is a huge difference between the iPhone SE and the iPhone 11. Video, on the other hand, is excellent, and I can say it by far it's the best video you can get on a phone of this price, and it competes with even flagship phones.

Is that good? And if you want options you get up to 4k 60 you get different frame rates. I mean everything you would want from a phone camera for video, the iPhone SE pretty much nails. So it's really give and take with this camera system. It's not the best, but it does some things really well. I'm, not missing having those different camera options as much as I thought I would because the camera performs pretty well now.

One area where I am missing is battery life, and it's no real surprise here, because the internal battery is less than 2,000 William hours, which is tiny for today's phones. We have phones with 5000 William hour batteries, it's a big difference and that's one of the things that the iPhone, 11 and 11 pro are touted for excellent battery life. Now I, don't want to say that the battery life on the SE is the worst I've ever experienced. I can still get you through a day, but this is where you notice that this is older hardware, with kind of turbocharge of a great processor. So when you're doing day-to-day tasks like Twitter web browsing Instagram, all that kind stuff, the phone I mean it'll last you quite a good amount of time almost all day and that's where I think you see the power efficiencies of the a13.

But then, when you wanted to do something intensive like a game or edit a photo or something that actually hits the processor, you can almost see the battery dip percentage by percentage. It's almost like I said you put a turbocharger on your car. Yeah, you're going to go faster, but it's gonna use a lot more gas, but as an average I've found I'm getting about for a little more than four hours of screen on time, so it's definitely worse than when I'm used to from the bigger flagship phones, which is again to be expected. But it's not completely unusable. There's a lot of talk going on about the battery life on this phone not being good, and it's not what it is completely usable I can still use it throughout the day, but I've had to go back to the mentality.

If I can charge it or have an opportunity to I will and that's something I haven't had to do in a long time. But using a phone with a small battery will give you that, but besides battery life, that 8:13 is great. It is as fast as you would want an iPhone to be because it's that latest processor there have been some reports of it clocking differently. Maybe it's because it has three gigabytes of RAM, but really in day-to-day use. This one is fast snappy, it's what you expect from an iPhone and, most importantly, to me at least, is that you get those updates for presumably five years from now.

This is obviously not a perfect phone and I, don't think anyone ever claimed it was and for whom it's marketed to I think this is a great option, of course, for someone like me, I am used to using the newer phone so going back. There are things I'm going to miss, but if you're coming from a lesser phone like an iPhone, 7, iPhone, 6s or even 6, this is gonna, be a great iPhone and even more importantly, you're getting a great deal on it. But I think what I've really learned here is the Apple ecosystem is strong and whether you're paying for the 400 phone or the $1200 phone you're, getting a great experience across the board, and after a week of using the iPhone SE as my main phone I'm, not really missing. All that much you.

Source : The Apple Circle