Tech

Sorry, Everyone: The iPhone SE is an apology to big-phone haters everywhere

Review: There’s not much that’s “new,” but that’s not what this phone is about.

Andrew Cunningham – Apr 6, 2016 7:00 am | 354

Here at Ars, one of the things we like to focus on in reviews is new technology. There are a few reasons: new stuff draws readers, new stuff is fast and shiny, and new stuff points the way to where technology is headed.

The thing about the iPhone SE is that there’s basically nothing that’s new about it. It’s a four-year-old phone design filled with six-month-old parts, and it’s the rare product that amounts to exactly the sum of its parts. You could almost write a review of it without laying hands on it.

So we’ll spend a little time with the tech inside, but this review is going to focus primarily on the Big Questions: Who should buy this? Why should they buy it? Who shouldn’t buy it? And where does it fit into Apple’s Grand Plan for the iPhone?

Here’s where it’s like an iPhone 5S

The iPhone SE looks almost 100 percent identical to the iPhone 5S, which didn’t change much about the iPhone 5 design from 2012. It’s familiar; holding and using the SE is exactly like holding and using a 5S or a 5. There’s a little “SE” on the back, the regulatory logos have been tucked away inside the software, and there’s now a rose gold color option. Other than those, there are only a couple of giveaways.

The phone’s chamfered edges and the Apple logo on the back have been tweaked, but both changes are aesthetic rather than functional. The edges are now matte instead of reflective, which Apple tells us was done to make the edges of the phone the same color and texture as its sides and back. And the Apple logo is now a separate piece of inset shiny metal rather than just a shiny spot screen printed on the back, which Apple says was done to make it consistent with the design of the 6 and 6S.

Specs at a glance: Apple iPhone SE
Screen	1136×640 4-inch (326PPI) touchscreen
OS	iOS 9.3
CPU	1.85GHz Apple A9
RAM	2GB DDR4
GPU	“Apple A9 GPU”
Storage	16 or 64GB NAND flash
Networking	802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2
Ports	Lightning connector, headphone jack
Camera	12MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera
Size	4.87″ × 2.31″ × 0.30″ (123.8 × 58.6 × 7.6 mm)
Weight	3.99oz (113 g)
Battery	1624mAh
Starting price	$399 unlocked, $499 for 64GB
Other perks	NFC for Apple Pay, Touch ID, charger, earbuds, Lightning cable

There are benefits to recycling an old design. For one, cases and accessories made for the 5S should work with the SE with no problem at all (and if you have a 5S, you can look forward to continued support from case and accessory makers). The flat edges of the 5-era design make it easier to hold onto than the rounded, more slippery edges of the 6 and 6S design. Even though the SE uses the same camera as the 6S, there’s no unsightly camera bump here. And since the 5S and the SE use many of the same parts, it should be easy to repair and replace many SE components right from the start.

But there are downsides, too. There isn’t really room to fit the 3D Touch hardware inside this smaller case; you’re dealing with a slower first-generation TouchID sensor, the front-facing camera is the older 1.2MP version and not the newer 5MP version, and the screen is exactly identical to the 5S not just in size and resolution but also in color and contrast. Blacks are less black, which can make the display look a little flat or washed out compared to the 6 and 6S—it’s not a bad display, it’s just not up to the same standard as the higher-end iPhones.

The people who are the most interested in this phone will probably be upgrading from a 4- or 5-era design rather than stepping down from a 6, 6 Plus, 6S, or 6S Plus. But as a 6/6S user who hasn’t used a 4-inch iPhone on a daily basis in a while, I can tell you that I actually prefer holding and carrying the SE around. The flat edges make it easier to keep a hold of, the smaller size reduces hand strain, and this phone will better fit into pockets (especially if you have to deal with women’s clothes and the associated tiny pockets). That said, it’s not as comfortable to type on, and I found myself going for my computer more often when I wanted to tap out anything longer than a Tweet, a short e-mail, or a quick note. The larger screens are definitely better if you’re interested in using your iPhone as a productivity device.

Here’s where it’s like an iPhone 6S

The SE is identical to the iPhone 6S in most of the ways that count. It’s just as fast as a 6S thanks to the Apple A9 SoC. Its CPU appears to be exactly as fast as it is in the larger iPhones, and while the GPU is a little slower (check the Offscreen scores, which put all GPUs on the same footing) the reduction in speed appears to be in proportion to the reduction in the number of pixels the GPU needs to push (see the Onscreen scores, which render at native panel resolution).

While it doesn’t show up in these charts, bumping the SE up to 2GB of RAM makes a huge difference for heavy multitaskers or people who have lots of Safari tabs open at once. If your main problem with your 5 or 5S is frequent tab reloading, the SE is the answer to your prayers.

It takes the same pictures as an iPhone 6S, which means you’re getting a very good pocket camera that also happens to be able to shoot 4K video at 30FPS. I use the Live Photos feature very, very rarely (and on occasion I’ve had trouble sending accidentally taken Live Photos to friends with Android phones), but it’s here if you want it. Unsurprisingly, however, this phone lacks the optical image stabilization features from the 6S Plus.

These are some perfunctory test shots below to show you that the SE and 6S are in fact using the same camera (and that they’re a nice step up from the 4S, 5/5C, or 5S), but I’ll point you to our iPhone 6S review for a more wide-ranging comparison.

The SE’s wireless capabilities are closer to an iPhone 6—it’s got 150Mbps LTE and the 433Mbps 802.11ac Wi-Fi, presumably because there’s not enough room in the smaller case to fit the extra antennas needed to further boost speeds. All iPhones Apple currently sells support Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC (for Apple Pay), so there’s no difference between the SE and the 6S there.

Finally, the SE’s Apple A9 supports the hands-free Hey Siri feature, which makes the phone spring to life whenever you say, “Hey Siri.” If you need to quickly get some information or set a timer while your phone is on the counter, it’s definitely useful.

Does it do anything unique?

There is one thing this phone can brag about that neither the 5S or the 6S can boast: superior battery life. All the chips inside are a couple of years newer, which means they include a couple years’ worth of manufacturing advancements and power consumption improvements. The battery is just a little larger than it was before—1624mAh instead of 1560mAh, a roughly 4-percent increase. And the screen is relatively small and relatively low-resolution, which eliminates one of the biggest power drains on all of the large-screened phones we’ve seen lately.

We’re using the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus battery figures from our original review, but for the 5S we’ve re-run them on an older phone with a brand-new battery from iFixit. If you’re using a 5S with its original battery, your current battery life is probably a bit worse than this depending on when you bought it.

In our standard Wi-Fi browsing test, the SE actually outlasts the iPhone 6S by a couple of hours, and it even beats the longer-lasting 6S Plus by a comfortable margin. The story is the same in our heavier WebGL test, which puts a light but continuous load on the CPU and GPU; it lasts longer than either of the current flagship iPhones. All of those power efficiency improvements mean that the iPhone SE is also a huge step up over an iPhone 5S with a fresh battery. In its smallest phone, Apple has done what we’ve been asking it to do for years: stop chasing thinness and prioritize battery life instead.

Who should upgrade? Who shouldn’t?

The SE is a great upgrade if you don’t want to give up your small-screened iPhone. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

On Apple’s last earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said that some 60 percent of iPhone users hadn’t yet upgraded to a 6 or 6S model—over half of all iPhone users are still using something with a small screen, and a considerable percentage of those users might not want to upgrade to a big screen.

If you’re in that group, I would suggest you at least try holding and poking at a vanilla 6S for a while to see what you think, not because the SE is a bad phone but because larger phones are still likely to receive most of Apple’s engineering and promotional attention going forward. There are still benefits to climbing on board the big phone bandwagon aside from roomier screens.

If you absolutely know that you don’t want a larger phone, it’s an easy decision to make if you’re still carrying an iPhone 4S, 5, or 5C around. The SE is dramatically faster and has a much better camera. The TouchID sensor is a truly useful addition that you’ll really appreciate if you haven’t used one before now. The extra RAM (1GB extra if you’re coming from a 5 or 5C, 1.5GB extra if you have a 4S) has a big impact on Web browsing in particular. There’s Apple Pay, if you care, and faster LTE. And while all three of these phones will probably stop receiving iOS updates at some point in the next year or two (death for the 4S is surely imminent; the 5 and 5C could hang on for a bit longer), the SE’s newer hardware should have many years of updates ahead of it. Those updates will have more features than the same updates for slower devices, too—iOS 9.3’s Night Shift doesn’t work on any of these three phones.

If you have a 5S instead, I’m more hesitant to recommend you run right out and upgrade. On the one hand, the SE is still faster, still newer, still a better camera, is still likely to get updates for longer and support more features introduced in those updates. But if you were going to draw a line in the sand between “old” iDevices and recognizably modern ones, the 5S is still firmly on the “modern” side, especially now that Apple has made it clear that 4-inch screens are sticking around. It has a 64-bit SoC and the Metal graphics API, it has TouchID, and its camera is still decent—the iPhone 6 and 6S were both built on the foundation laid by the 5S. The older phone is still pretty fast, though iDevices with 1GB of RAM are feeling increasingly limited when switching between tabs and apps.

Here are some questions to ask yourself, then, if you’re considering a jump from the 5S to the SE: how happy are you with your phone’s general performance? How important are niche features like Apple Pay and always-on Hey Siri? Are you happy with your phone’s battery life? If not, were you happy with it when you originally got it, and would a battery replacement help? If you trade your 5S in, will it defray the cost of an SE enough to make it worth it, or do you have someone you can hand your 5S down to while it’s still a really decent phone? Figure out the answers to these questions, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how much you want and/or need that SE upgrade.

If you have a 6 or 6S series phone, generally speaking you don’t need to consider the SE at all unless you just absolutely hate the larger screens or something about the design. And even then, you should probably sleep on it a bit before you make your decision. And even then, REALLY think about it before you make the jump.

Finally, if you’re an Android or Windows Phone user looking to make the jump to iOS, I’d still recommend checking out the 6S first since it’s of a size with most mainstream Android phones these days. If you’re leaving either of those ecosystems in part because you want a smaller phone, that’s when you should give the SE a look.

Where does this fit into the iPhone lineup?

In a lot of ways the SE is just a drop-in replacement for the iPhone 5S in Apple’s lineup, an “entry-level” iPhone that doesn’t quite offer all the features of the flagship versions but updates the specs enough to keep up with iOS’ continued development and various Apple services like Apple Pay.

But it’s the first time that bottom spot in the iPhone lineup has ever been occupied by something that wasn’t two to three years old, which changes the value proposition significantly. It’s not going to draw a ton of customers from the 6S or 6S Plus, really. Those bigger screens sell themselves and are worth putting up with some of the larger phones’ more annoying design elements. However, the SE is a big deal for people buying their first iPhone or people who just want the cheapest possible route into the iOS ecosystem. $399 ($499, really, since you should avoid the 16GB model in most cases) for a brand-new iPhone with flagship-level specs and a high-end phone camera is hard to ignore.

Ultimately, most people should still buy an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus before an iPhone SE, assuming money is no object or the full cost of your phone is being masked by some kind of carrier subsidy or payment plan. The 6S is a good sweet spot, offering a larger screen without being as unwieldy as the 6S Plus. By contrast, the SE is a great option for people who just don’t want to deal with something bigger. The flagships are likely to remain larger, and they’re likely to get new features faster (I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if the 4-inch iPhone only got a refresh once every two years or so), but the SE at least makes it so that people who prefer small phones don’t need to time travel back to 2013 to get a decent one.

The good

A familiar design that is compatible with current accessories and still feels great to hold and carry around.
Great performance courtesy of the Apple A9, 2GB of RAM, and other internal upgrades.
Same camera as the iPhone 6S, including 4K video support.
At $399, it’s as close as Apple has gotten to releasing a “cheap” iPhone with flagship specs.
Outstanding battery life.

The bad

Storage maxes out at 64GB while the bigger models offer 128GB.
Display isn’t as high-quality as the ones in the 6 and 6S.
Small screen can feel cramped when typing or trying to edit video or images.
Missing a couple of 6S features, including the faster TouchID sensor and 3D Touch.

The ugly

16GB entry-level storage tier will fill up with apps, pictures, and video much more quickly than you think.

Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

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