The 2020 Apple iPhone SE, all you need to know…

When it comes to buying an iPhone there are two things that always come top of the list of buyers needs. They know they are going to get the guaranteed base level of quality that comes from Apple products, but their main areas of concern are battery life and camera quality, with browser speed, screen quality, size, extra cameras, etc, coming further down the wishlist. With the Apple iPhone SE 2020 you know you are getting access to the usual iMessage, FaceTime, a huge library of great apps, reliable software updates, and more, but going for the SE which you know is going to be a reduced spec, you may be asking yourself “how much am I giving up?”, the answer is, less than you think!

Here are the highs and lows we’ve found with this latest iPhone model…

Battery Life:

Battery life on the iPhone SE averages between four and five hours of screen-on time. It appears that battery size is the issue with its lack of longevity – the SE has the same size battery as the iPhone 8. It’s enough for today volumes of use, but in a few years, you may be turning to a newer model with increased battery power or seeking out a repair shop to replace your existing battery.

Camera:

In bright lighting conditions, the iPhone SE takes great photos. It allows for various portrait modes on both cameras and the A13 Bionic also enables Apple’s enhanced HDR rendering features. This is all great, but the disappointment comes with low-light photography. The iPhone SE simply doesn’t do as well there as it does in other situations. There’s no night mode, and in dim light, there’s just too much noise. It’s almost like the whole camera stack panics and overcorrects, especially on portraits. Very, very low light: the lack of a night mode is obvious.

Design:

With a 4.7-inch screen, big bezels above and below, the circular home button on the bottom plus fingerprint sensor, and nicely curved corners and edges, the SE 2020 is all you come to expect from an iPhone, Apple has had this design since 2014, it works and they are sticking with it. Keeping the design is the main reason for the price point, there’s no need for Apple to retool its factories to build it. 

Updates:

This model has the same processor as the iPhone 11 Pro. There is really no faster processor in a smartphone at the moment, which makes the iPhone SE fast! But that’s not the main reason why the processor matters. The processor ensures that the iPhone SE will get OS updates for many years to come and based on the previous SE this can be up to four years, most Android phones top out at two years of updates! 

If you are buying the iPhone SE 2020 it is a good idea to consider spending the extra to upgrade the storage to 128GB, just in case you want it three or five years down the road. The potential of being relevant for the timespan is the reason the iPhone SE is a big deal. There aren’t many other phones in this price bracket that can claim to be this good, basically, the iPhone SE is not just a good deal, it’s actually a really good smartphone.