Five reasons not to buy iPhone SE (2020)

Back in April, Apple announced the resurrection of the almost forgotten iPhone SE lineup, introducing the iOS ecosystem to anyone for just US$399 in three stunning colour variants.

It does look like a good choice given the mostly positive opinions from reviewers and the downturned economy we’re living right now.

But if you look just a bit closer, you can see why it’s more like a rip-off instead.

Basically iPhone 8, slapped with new SoC

Clearly Apple is targeting the mid-range price point in the smartphone market with the new iPhone SE.

As mentioned in my previous article, there is already a fierce competition within the Android space and it looks like Apple is trying to squeeze some market share by providing the most powerful chipset in any smartphone, beating the commonly used Snapdragon 7xx series.

Yes the processor is the brain of a smartphone, but it’s just one part of an entire mobile device. There are also other hardware making up a completed package. That’s where the problem comes in.

When you look at the spec sheet, you can see that it has a 4.7" LCD display, a 12MP f/1.8 main camera with OIS, a 7MP f/2.2, a 1821 mAh battery cell and a rounded fingerprint sensor just below the screen. It also shares the same design of iPhones before the introduction of iPhone X and its famous notch.

That’s because it’s an iPhone 8, packed with latest A13 Bionic and one additional gigabyte of RAM. They both are nearly identical.

What is worse is that the iPhone 8 costs just US$200, almost half of iPhone SE (2020)’s price and it is still good enough for a lot of people but mobile gamers.

Do you really need A13, anyway?

There is no deny that the A13 Bionic chipset inside the iPhone SE is a lot more powerful than Qualcomm’s offerings, beating a lot of Snapdragon SoCs in popular single-core benchmark scores.

But I highly doubt if anyone really notices the performance gain in Apple’s silicon compared to Snapdragon 7xx series when what they do are checking social media, browsing webpages, or even playing graphic-intensive games.

Mediocre display in 2020

Yes, I get that the screen of the iPhone SE is small but that doesn’t mean you should compromise on it either.

It is 2020. OLED display, which is arguably better display technology due to lower battery drain in dark mode, better colour accuracy and the ability to show true blackness (infinite contrast ratio), has become so affordable that many Android counterparts already have them.

Bad battery life

I’ll keep this part short as well since it does not require much explanation. Using SoT (screen-on time) to measure battery life is always unfair because different people have different phone usage, thus having different results. But having a tiny 1,821 mAh battery won’t do any magic.

It’s really disappointing to see just 59 hours in GSMArena’s battery test when modern Android midrange phones like Mi 9T and Realme 6i easily scores high ratings (100 hours and 162 hours respectively).

And don’t forget battery degradation naturally occurs as well, so be prepared to replace the cell faster than most other smartphones.

Quick reminder: phones with smaller battery capacity are usually more susceptible by the effect.

Underwhelming camera

When I say underwhelming, I’m not implying the single 12MP ƒ/1.8 main shooter in the back is bad. In fact, my daily driver, Pixel 3, also has just one similar rear-facing camera and both of them can take beautiful photos in good situation.

It is just that I expected more from Apple.

One of the headline features mentioned during the launch of iPhone 11 series is definitely Night mode. Here’s how Apple describes how Night mode functions in its product page:

(The camera software) aligns images to correct for movement. It discards the sections with too much blur and fuses sharper ones. It adjusts contrast so everything stays in balance. It fine‑tunes colours so they look natural. Then it intelligently de‑noises and enhances details to produce the final image.

Why am I bringing up iPhone 11 when I was criticizing iPhone SE, you may ask? That’s because Apple actually claims the feature is enabled by the camera and the A13 Bionic chip, also found in the midrange iPhone.

With iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, a new wide camera sensor works with intelligent software and A13 Bionic to let you do what was never possible on iPhone: get beautiful, detailed images in drastically lower light.

Yet, Night mode is mysteriously not featured in iPhone SE. That’s a stark contrast compared to Pixels, when both the Pixel 3a and 4a receive flagship treatment like Night Sight and Astrophotography.

Another letdown is in portrait. While Apple is the first phone maker to introduce mobile portrait to the public, the company doesn’t really seem to improve the technology much.

The more premium iPhone 11 lineup had already been widely slammed for lacklustre portrait shots, but the iPhone SE is even worse when it only relies on machine learning, which is prone to error.

What then?

Obviously the main takeaway is that you should not consider buying the new iPhone SE when it has too many downfalls at $399.

An hour before I started writing, Chinese leaker Kang shared some info on Weibo about the upcoming iPhone 12 event. One of the rumoured iPhones to be announced is iPhone 12 mini, which is a “bezel-less” iPhone with 5.4" screen and in compact dimension for $699. That is probably your best bet.