A small cult was born on the web around the first iPhone SE, released in March 2016 with the body of the iPhone 5s and the “engine” of the iPhone 6s, which was released at the end of 2015 with the A9 processor. Small, economical and powerful. A perfect recipe, and indeed that successful phone has had a lot of it. Now it's been four years and Apple hopes that, with the new iPhone SE 2020, history will repeat itself. In the iPhone SE 2020 review we try to understand if this will be the case or not.
We unboxed and started using the little one as the main unit to replace the iPhone 11 Pro we've been using since last fall. The new iPhone SE 2020 has the body redesigned but substantially identical to that of the iPhone 8, i.e. the latest generation of Apple phones with Touch ID, which arrived on the market in 2017 and came out of the list a few days ago due to the concomitant arrival of the new SE. .
However, those who consider the iPhone SE 2020 as a replica of the 8 could not be more wrong. The 4.7-inch screen and single-lens rear camera are the only points of contact (in addition to the use of the Lightning connector and Qi-standard wireless charging). In fact, the new iPhone SE is small and bombastic. It occupies a very important price range because it positions it below not only all other iPhones but also most high-end and mid-range Android, despite having a processor that is the same as the iPhone 11 Pro, i.e. 'A13 Bionic, more powerful than Qualcomm's best processor on the market today. But let's see in detail how this phone is and how the test went.
First contact
There are no particular elements to report from the point of view of what both the packaging and the phone itself looks like. The unit under test is the (PRODUCT) Red version of 256 GB, but the device is also available in white and black versions and in the sizes of 64, 128 and 256 GB. We tried it (as we always do, for safety) with an original cover, absolutely identical to the old iPhone 8 covers. This reassures us because it means that those who have an old cover at home (or can find it at a good price even on eBay or Amazon) can save you some money.
In the box are Apple's 5-watt charger (the base model), the USB-A to Lightning cable, and the EarPods with Lightning connector. On the other hand, the audio mini-jack to Lightning converter is missing to use your own headphones. It is consoling to think that it is the cheapest original Apple accessory in the entire Apple Store (you can buy it from this page), at less than ten euros.
The device, after years of telephones with screens over five inches, is objectively small, but not very small. It would have been unbearable to think of a 4-inch screen as it was for the iPhone SE of 2016. The footprint of the body, with the phone off, is slightly less than that of the iPhone 11 Pro, but the difference is seen by turning on the two phones . The 11 Pro is borderless and with notch, so it has a 5.85-inch screen, compared to the 4.7 diagonal of the SE. And you can all see them, because the SE has the two black areas on the front that are occupied by the front camera and audio speaker, and below by the fingerprint sensor incorporated in the Home button.
On the other hand, we must emphasize the pleasantness and compactness of the design inherited from the iPhone 8. It was a long time we didn't hold one and it is an extremely pleasant phone, compact but not too easy to challenge. The rear photographic compartment protrudes but it is a single lens and not cluttered, keeping the lines very clean. The (PRODUCT) Red version is extremely pleasant due to the bright red, which however almost completely disappears because the cover covers it behind and the screen has black frames on the front.
Flash configuration
It is not often talked about, but the configuration of switching from one iPhone to another, historically one of Apple's weaknesses because it had to switch from iTunes with very long backups and reinstallations, has become much faster in recent years. It is based on the passage of the basic configurations via Bluetooth proximity and then on the download of user data from iCloud backups and of the apps themselves from the App Store, including all in-app purchases.
To make a passage of this kind we took just over three hours, bringing with us a historical legacy that has its roots in the first iPhone 2G of 2007, thirteen years ago (or more likely in the iPhone 3G, which was the one on which we had the App Store for the first time) and we still have to thank a good fiber connection. The home router does not have WiFi 6 and we could not go out to look for another one for obvious reasons: the test took place in Milan during the coronavirus lockdown. This also created some problems in evaluating the autonomy in the field, if only because the phone is always connected to the same Wi-Fi and the same 4G cell. Insurmountable problems, also for this reason we have difficulty in evaluating the actual battery life.
Once the configuration was finished, we began to use the telephone as the main device, that is the tool for making calls, sending messages, chatting and audio chatting, playing games, managing a bit of mail and agenda, plus some other convenient apps such as organizing the things to do, Dropbox, the shopping list.
Field tested
Due to the coronavirus and the consequent lockdown, as mentioned, the phone was used very little outside the home. The only distraction is when you go shopping, armed with gloves and a mask. And here the advantage comes from the fact that the transparent gloves allow the sensor to recognize the fingerprint and to unlock the phone even wearing the mask. One small thing that caused us many problems when using the iPhone 11 Pro.
The luck of being able to use your finger to unlock the phone is offset by the small screen size. And here the closed-at-home test basically introduces a problem: in mobile use, the small and agile screen is very comfortable, and that's fine. At home, the instinct is to take the iPad or the Mac, because it is more comfortable. Taking a nap after eating, the 4.7 inches does not stimulate the desire to play games or watch Netflix, as you can easily do with the thumb and something more than the 11 Pro.
In short, the home instinct is different from that of playing or reading on the go, for example on the bus or train, or when you are taking a lunch break, and this penalizes the smaller screen. But if you want to use it, how do you find it?
This, as mentioned, is undoubtedly a matter of taste, habits, uses and also of the state of sight: the extra thumb diagonally allows those who see less to use perhaps a larger font or a zoomed view on iOS that doesn't get too big for the screen size. We tried to set up iPhone SE with screen zoom mode, where iOS “stretches” and enlarges all icons and texts, but the effect is not pleasant even if the eyes of the middle-aged reviewer undoubtedly found relief.
Back to “normal” mode, the iPhone SE is balanced between the small and the normal. Here too, the measure is not unique but it must be said that for those who have come from years past with the current “frying pans” the “small” SE is truly such. On the other hand, if you are coming from a first generation SE or a smaller screen phone, the transition to the new SE is pleasant.
Gamer power
If you love to play in small spaces, with the new SE you are at home. Because on the small screen, which has TrueTone mode thanks to the front ambient light sensors, almost any game runs. There are many that it probably doesn't make sense to put on this unit, but there isn't one that has stuck or isn't spinning at full power.
We found more comfortable games like “harp” even if of skill, such as the excellent Mini Metro, and with the triptych Bastion, Transistor and Hyper Light Drifter. It takes some concentration because the controls go on the screen too, and therefore the fingers, but they are absolutely playable.
This is not the portable office
If the computing power of the iPhone SE makes it capable of grinding any app and the power of connectivity with Wi-Fi 6 and Gigabit-class LTE make it a phenomenon, from the point of view of the mobile office it is not the right subject. . Out of curiosity we tried to download Ferrite and LumaFusion, software for audio editing (mainly podcasts) and video, both only for iOS and iPadOS, which we are trying these days. The results are very limited: working with this type of app on SE is neither reasonable nor comfortable.
Attention, it is not a demerit point for the iPhone SE: the two softwares probably do not make sense even on an iPhone 11 Pro XL (more Ferrite than LumaFusion, anyway). Which iPhone 11 Pro XL also has exactly the same processor as the small SE. The problem is of “real estate”, of polliciaggio, as they say: under the iPad mini (7.9 inches) it makes very little sense to think about working seriously with video or audio editing software. Not to mention that especially for LumaFusion it is highly recommended to use Apple Pencil, otherwise it becomes almost impossible to work with your fingertips. However, if we want, they are there and they work, and with Ferrite we were able to record and arrange an interview-podcast. However, we would hardly be able to make a more structured production.
Let's have fun with the guitar
Of course, and very well, all the physical tools that can be attached to the iPhone using the Lightning port work very well. This device is not equipped with an audio minijack, so the old iRig does not work directly but you have to use an adapter like the one that is not present in the box. But the iRig HD 2 works great: not only with GarageBand and with AmpliTube CS also from Modena-based IK Multimedia (which is a great product even if, despite having their own hardware adapter, you have to buy many of the footpegs separately. amplification and adjustment effects) but also with other third-party apps that act as amplifiers or effects: I point out Pedal (for now only for iPad), Amp 2 and Fx by Bias, but also AmpKit and the excellent Amp One by Mercuriall , which the writer is using with more personal satisfaction.
Among other things, thanks to Audiobus, with Inter-App Audio and now Audio Unit v3, it is (not always) possible to connect for example a Bias Pedal with an Amp One amplifier profile inside GarageBand and more. In short, such a small iPhone with an even smaller adapter “disappears” in the guitar bag (or for other MIDI instruments) and becomes a complete virtual pedalboard to carry your own sounds without problems wherever you go.
Video and monocular photography
Until yesterday, having only one video-photographic lens might have seemed obvious, but today it isn't anymore. Apple and the Android world have accustomed us to phones with two, three, four and even five lenses with different focal lengths, functions and resolutions. Computational photography then intervenes on this, that is that which takes images from one or more sensors simultaneously at very high speed and processes them with algorithms and neural networks to produce instantaneous contours, image changes, light changes and “natural” alterations, has made huge strides. How's the iPhone single camera doing?
The starting point is the dual video camera. In front there is a 7 megapixel lens with an f / 2.2 aperture capable of doing everything q What it does on other iPhones: portrait mode with bokeh and depth control. Plus there are portrait modes with six effects (Natural, Studio, Contour, Stage, Stage Mono, High-Key Mono) and 1080p video at 30 fps. It also does HDR auto (that is, he selects the appropriate level to do the multi-exposure and recomposes everything), stabilizes the video, takes live photos and has the “burst shooting” mode.
Behind there is the most “important” camera: 12 megapixels, f / 1.8, 5x digital zoom, portrait mode with bokeh and depth control, portrait mode with the six effects (Natural, Studio, Contour, Stage, Stage Mono, High- Key Mono), Smart HDR, optical stabilization, six elements for the objective lens, Quad-Led for True Tone flash, and then all the modes of the other devices: panorama mode with images up to 63 megapixels, Live photos, image stabilization automatic, capture in Jpeg and Heif (Apple's raw format), sapphire lens protection.
The video is recorded in 4K with 24, 30 or 60 fps, it can also do 1080p and 720p. Digitally stabilized, extended dynamic range, 3x digital zoom, slo-mo at 120 or 240 fps (with 1080p resolution), timelapse with stabilization, and in general cinematic stabilization for all formats. While recording the video in 4K it can take 8 megapixel photos without interruption and encoding in Hevc and H.264, with stereo sound jack. The video has continuous autofocus mode.
Sure, it's a single camera. But we tried with DoubleTake by FiLMiC, one of the apps presented at the launch keynote of the iPhone Pro 11 that allows you to record the video streams in parallel of all the cameras of the device, and even so we can record both with the front camera and with the rear one. The ideal scenario is the interview, in such a way as to be able to have the faces of both subjects (interviewer and interviewee) on two separate streams and then be able to mount alternate fields to move the sequence. On the video we have worked little and substantially indoors, but the yield is remarkable, especially for the precision of the continuous focus.
One goal to rule them all
In the tests we were surprised in a very favorable way by the video sector. For the photographic part, the lens that Apple has created is wide-angle (around 24 mm focal length in full format) with an aperture of f / 1.8 and a good resolution of 12 megapixels which apparently should be less than the impressive equipment of the 11 Pro but instead it is not. In fact, the device has the ace up its sleeve, indeed under the body: the A13 Bionic processor that has power to spare and an extremely powerful digital image processor.
The result is that the device takes pictures with shading, contours, bokeh and light effects even without having the double lens in order to work on the differences between the images. Indeed, the processing is only and exclusively that of artificial intelligence since there are no pixels for the perception of phase and depth: the technique has a complex name, “Single Image Monocular Depth Estimation” and basically means that does all the processor after the image is taken.
This is unlike the iPhone XR which, despite having only one video camera with the SE, uses pixels for focusing, which are offset from each other and which with this tiny difference are able to give the “hardware” indications to process the image. The iPhone SE sensor does not have this capability and instead does everything using the snapshot software.
You understand well by trying to make a blur in portrait mode with an object, with a face (recognized as such) and with a photograph with a face in the foreground. Artificial intelligence “pecks” faces wherever they are and blurs the contours of both the flesh and blood person and of the person appearing in the photograph, while it does not blur (except for a natural and minimal depth of field phenomenon) the objects even if taken in the foreground.
The iPhone 11 Pro on the one hand recognizes the face even in photos but does not blur the outline because it “reads” it on the same level, while on the other it blurs objects in the background even when photographing a non-human subject. We found ourselves very well shooting with this phone and the lack of a closer lens did not create problems: the zoom level has an acceptable quality and then for some time the prevalence of shots has been increasingly oriented to the wide angle. Above all, the images taken and compared with those of the iPhone 11 Pro show no particular differences.
Miscellaneous
A single smart phone is practically a world today. There is a lot in it and it is only the tip of the iceberg, since the ecosystem of apps allows us to appreciate usage scenarios that, closed at home, we have difficulty even imagining and testing. We have seen that the sensor for the Touch ID (which should be the second generation one present on the iPhone 8) is very fast and removes the inconvenience of having a mask that prevents recognition with Face ID as on the iPhones with notch.
The audio output in hands-free is good even if according to the writer it is lower than that of an iPhone of more generous dimensions. The two drivers are located at the base of the phone, where there is also the microphone for phone calls, but there is (as in the other latest generation iPhones) a speaker also inside the speaker for listening to phone calls. The amount of sound it emits is considerable, but less deep and clean: it saturates very quickly and sounds recessed and with little bass and not very bright.
The buttons under the cover are extremely comfortable to use, while the gestures – now accustomed to the gestures of iPhones without the Home button – are unsettling: it will take time to get used to them. We have deliberately omitted the autonomy of the phone because in the first days of testing on the one hand the device is in the process of settling down (it is downloading and updating a lot of data) and on the other hand it has always been at home, therefore in unrealistic conditions of use. We have used it a lot and the battery charge nevertheless arrives without problems until the evening. Charging even with its small standard charger is fast because the battery does not have exceptional dimensions and after the initial grace period it could prove a bit weak especially if the phone is used with particularly “heavy” apps. Apple does not reveal the battery specifications, but we know from the teardowns of the old iPhone 8 that it had a 1,821 mAh reserve and we imagine that that of the new SE is more or less that size (within two thousand mAh).
The characteristics of the screen are good even if they mirror those of the iPhone 8: resolution of 1.334 by 750 pixels equal to a density of 326 ppi, 1400: 1 contrast ratio, adaptation to True Tone, Wide P3 color gamut, Haptic Touch (such as the other iPhone Pros) and maximum brightness of 625 nits.
Conclusions
The first sensation with the iPhone still turned off was “it's not that small” compared to the 11 Pro. In reality, when the screen is turned on, the difference can be seen very well and also the color rendering and brightness. The use of the phone has so far been a pure pleasure: as seen it takes excellent photos despite the single camera, has power to sell, flexibility of use and is truly an everyday phone: ideal for those who want to spend little and do not want to. the pockets (or the bag) deformed by an object that is too large and bulky.
We loved the price. For once we can say it: a phone for many pockets and which is more powerful than all of its more expensive Android competitors, in some cases much more expensive than it is. It is a small bomb, with a price tag, however, very different from that of the “beasts” on the market today, which in some cases travel at least twice the price. Sure, they have huge screens compared to the small one. But size does matter up to a point, and the iPhone SE in our opinion gets there with ease at that point.
In our opinion it is the ideal phone for those who want to finally switch to iPhone without fainting, or because they want to update their old device but do not have a huge budget available. It is also a phone that makes a lot of sense for those who want a space-saving item to always carry with them. Those who come from the past will find that the audio jack is missing (and alas the adapter too), those who come instead from a flagship that did not satisfy them will probably be a bit disappointed by the screen technology that is neither Liquid Led nor Amoled, and perhaps by its small size (especially difficult for those who cannot see well). 
What you will discover is a phone with very few defects, with power to sell, which means above all a phone that will not become obsolete for long. time, as it will be able to withstand the next generations of Apple's operating system. A small iPhone that is future-proof, not a repackaged device presented two years earlier and packaged in a new version.
We have not been able to fully test neither the battery life nor the performance of the device in urban and extra-citizen contexts different from those of our home due to lockdown. For the stability of the reception of both the home Wi-Fi and the 4G network, however, we did not perceive any problems. We advance a doubt, more instinctively than not tested in the field, regarding the battery life: we fear that it is not a champion of duration and this will be noticed when the physiological wear and tear of the energy accumulator increases with use and charge-discharge cycles after a few months. In the very first few days, which are also settling down for the device (copying and indexing a lot of data) the SE performed very well although not amazingly. From experience, this is the sign of a good but not great battery: therefore, those looking for a “long performer” in terms of energy efficiency in this small phone, may be disappointed.
The final advice, if you don't have an iPhone and want one, with a more than reasonable budget, is to buy it without a doubt or fear. The ideal memory size is 128 GB. It is also the right phone if you want to upgrade from an old device. If you have an iPhone XR or later it's not worth it. Finally, if you want to upgrade from an iPhone X or XS, the choice is more complicated because the overall performance is unbalanced by the form factor: if you are happy to “live” with a 4.7-inch screen and Touch ID, then you are on horseback. If, on the other hand, you have become “slaves” to the borderless form factor with automatic face recognition notch, you risk a great frustration.
Pro : It's as powerful as the iPhone 11 Pro, but it's smaller and much cheaper. What more do you want?
Versus : wanting to find defects at all costs, it has a small battery, you have to get used to a screen with such important frames and the speakerphone is less soft.
Price and availability
The new iPhone SE 2020 is available in white, black and also red (prodcut) RED in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB memory sizes starting from 499 euros: you can buy it on the Apple Store or from this Amazon page.
