FazzNoth Posted March 21, 2022 Share Posted March 21, 2022 The iPhone SE is sort of a brilliant concept. Recognizing that there’s a huge market for people who can’t afford the typical price of a new iPhone (or just don’t want to spend that much), Apple takes a somewhat outdated model, replaces the processor with the latest one, and sells it at a greatly reduced price. In 2016, the original iPhone SE put the latest processor (A9) in the body of a two-generations-old iPhone 5S for just $399. It took four years for Apple to release a second-generation iPhone SE, which once again put the latest processor (A13) in a two-generations-old iPhone 8, still for just $399. Now two years later, Apple has abandoned this winning iPhone SE formula. It’s still the latest processor (A15), but instead of putting it in the two-generations-old iPhone 11, or even the iPhone XR, Apple is once again using the body of the ancient iPhone 8. And the price went up, to $429. This is still the least-expensive new iPhone you can buy, and it’s not bad, but it’s disappointing to see Apple charge more while not advancing its budget phone in the most important ways. What that A15 processor gives you The A15 is faster than the A13 in the second-generation iPhone SE, that much is certain. You can expect CPU and GPU performance around 20-30 percent better, though it can be more or less depending on the exact task. Whether you’ll really notice that sort of performance in everyday use is another matter. I found that, in most benchmarks, the iPhone SE is right on par with the iPhone 13, within a small margin of error (but not the iPhone 13 Pro, which has a fifth GPU core). This makes it by far the fastest phone in this price range. But was performance really an issue that needed addressing in the iPhone SE from two years ago? The A13 already outpaces most other $400 phones today. The A15 also includes a better image processor, which means it can do more with the data from those ancient iPhone 8 sensors and optics; none of the camera sensors or optics are upgraded from that five-year-old model. You have the new Photographic Styles feature found on the iPhone 13, for example, along with excellent 4K 60Hz video recording, Deep Fusion, and Smart HDR 4 does a great job in bright outdoor scenes. You also get 5G support, with a caveat: you can only connect to the sub-6GHz 5G bands, not the new super-high-frequency millimeter wave (mmWave) bands. That’s where the fastest speeds are, but mmWave is extremely short-range and not all that prevalent yet, so you’re not missing out on that much. Battery life is still disappointing One of the worst drawbacks of the 2nd-gen iPhone SE was its terrible battery life. Apple says the more power-efficient A15 works with the iPhone SE’s updated battery chemistry to deliver better battery life. The good news is, the battery does indeed last longer. The bad news is, it’s still pretty bad. In my tests, running the Geekbench 4 test in a loop with the display at a constant 200 nits, the battery lasted 5 hours and 13 minutes. That’s a big improvement over the 3 hours 37 minutes of the 2nd-gen iPhone SE, but it’s still the worst battery life of any iPhone you can buy (more than an hour shorter than the not-great iPhone 13 mini). A standard iPhone 13 ran three hours longer using the same test. In my testing, I found that I had to recharge in the evening to make it through the day. It’s been a few years since I’ve used an iPhone that didn’t reliably last all day. It’s good that battery life has improved in Apple’s most affordable iPhone, but it hasn’t improved enough. If it could last 15-20 percent longer, it would meet our expectations of falling just short of the iPhone 13 mini. https://www.macworld.com/article/624052/iphone-se-2022-review.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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