Introduction

The iPhone SE is a perfect fit for a time-saver review, it seems, as Apple didn't come up with a new design or new internals. Instead, the innards come from an iPhone 6s, while the design is a direct copy of the iPhone 5s. While on paper this sounds like a great combination, it's not exactly breaking news, is it?

One way to interpret this move is to conclude Apple is taking the easy road and is merely recycling an existing chassis design to produce a lower-cost iPhone without hurting margins.

Key specifications

  • 4.0"640 x 1136 pixels
  • 12MP2160p
  • 1.84GHzApple A9
  • 2GB RAM16/64GB
  • 1624mAhLi-Po

The iPhone SE has this nice nostalgic feeling of the good old iPhones when they were always shaking the market, and its compact size and powerful hardware will be appreciated by many. It will hardly attract any new users to Apple's platform, but will allow those who are stuck in the past to level up.

Design and build quality

The Apple's iPhone SE design is on the catwalk for a third time in a row, and there are no surprises here. After the dawn of the glass iPhones, the new metal chassis introduced by the iPhone 5 quickly became a fan-favorite

Display

The display uses a 4" IPS panel of 640 x 1136 pixels, which is 326ppi density - the very definition of a Retina display.

The iPhone SE rendition of blacks is brighter than we would prefer, but on the other end of the spectrum, the 600 nits worth of brightness level is quite appreciable. The resulting contrast of 1:804 is not as noteworthy mainly due to the poor black levels.

Battery life

The battery inside the iPhone SE is slightly bigger than the one inside the iPhone 5s. The iPhone 5s has a 1,560mAh battery, whereas a 1,624mAh unit powers the iPhone Special Edition.

The iPhone SE posted very balanced score across all of our tests - it can do about 12 hours of 3G calls, 13 hours of web browsing, or 14 hours of video playback on a single charge.

Audio

We also put the loudspeaker performance of the new iPhone SE to testing. The audio quality is uninspiring - worse than the iPhone 6s - and the sound is queiter. The speaker loudness is almost the same as on the iPhone 5s. This means you should keep a close eye on your phone in noisy environments, or missing calls is a real possibility.

As for the audio quality through the 3.5mm audio jack, the Apple iPhone SE takes after the iPhone 6s, sharing its less-than-stellar stereo quality with an active external amplifier.

Video camera

Thanks to the higher-resolution sensor, the iPhone SE is capable of recording 2160p videos at 30 frames in addition to 1080p capturing at 30 and 60 fps. There is a new mode as well - 1080p at 120 fps for slow motion purposes, in addition to the 720p at 240 fps low-mo videos.

Software

Apple iPhone SE runs on the iOS 9.3 out of the box, though there is already a 9.3.1 bug-squashing firmware update. The new phone lacks 3D Touch hardware, so some of the major features are missing from the OS

Wrap-up

There is no conspiracy behind the iPhone SE - it's what the fans wished for, and what the critics love to hate. It's always been this way with Apple - polarized opinions versus massive sales.

The iPhone SE is an iPhone like any other iPhone. It has top-notch hardware, all the latest camera capabilities, and runs on the latest iOS with everything but the 3D Touch gestures. The only thing that puts us off is the old selfie camera.

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