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At a time when smartphones have only been getting bigger, Apple has taken the conscious decision to step back and go the other way with the iPhone SE.
The device is identical to the iPhone 5s at first glance, but there are some key changes that make the SE stand out, and indicate how it plans to wow those consumers who might be tempted by Apple, but not by the flagship 6s and 6s Plus.
Here’s what we made of it in our first encounter.
When you lay eyes on the SE you can’t help but think of 5s. The white strips that run along the top and bottom of the device are there, as is the added thickness and the round volume buttons that were last seen on the 5s.
Seeing a smaller screen on a new iPhone is a slightly surreal experience – particularly if you’ve been using the iPhone 6 or 6s over the last two years.
But this is where the similarities end, mainly because the screen is much brighter and sharper than the one that appears on the 5s. On top of that, because it’s running iOS 9.3, it has Night Shift, the feature that uses your phone’s clock and geolocation to adjust screen colours based on the time of day.
One of the most impressive parts of using the SE is the performance. The 64-bit A9 chip means the SE is much more rapid in everything it does than other phones its size. The form-factor almost makes you notice it more, and you have Touch ID and Apple Pay too.
In cold, hard numbers the SE has double the processing power and around four times the graphics performance of the 2013 5s, and that really shows when play games for example.
However the SE doesn’t have 3D Touch, the pressure sensitive screen of the iPhone 6s. But in truth this isn’t a huge miss, as the users this device is aimed at are unlikely to have encountered 3D Touch previously and so won’t feel as though they’re missing anything.
Not only that, panoramic photos can now be shot in 63-megapixels, which in practice bring a great level of detail to those sweeping images, particularly when you zoom in.
What’s also extremely satisfying is the 4K video record and playback. On a screen that size to be able to record and watch back in four times the quality of HD is great – and the ability to edit two simultaneous streams of 4K will be very appealing to the creative users out there.
The iPhone SE offers a lot for the size it is. There are definitely questions over why Apple is retuning to a design that is two years old – but the logic that most first-time iPhone buyers tend to go for a smaller device means taking that design and beefing up the features housed in it does make sense.
The SE feels like a play for market share rather than an innovative step forward, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a very good smartphone – at first look at least.
