The 2020 iPhone SE
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
For me, a bigger screen isn't a plus - after years of following the trend and being on my phone more and more, I managed to kick the habit and I'm very happy that my phone has now found its rightful place as a utility when I'm off my computer, rather than as a primary computer. I use it for maps, e-tickets, answering the occasional im. But it's not as convenient as my computer, it's not for leisurely browsing or media consumption, and I don't want it to be - it means that when I'm off my computer, I'm really off.
So this push toward bigger screens runs counter to what I want a phone to be for me. A bigger screen invites you to grab it with both hands. A bigger screen invites you to watch more stuff on it, watch movies, browse reddit and whatnot. I don't want any of that, I'd in fact prefer if it wasn't good at that, just like I don't want more sugar in my food.
I eventually went for an iPhone SE (2016) in the last year, after it was discontinued and managed to get a boxed, new unit for less than even the low-end android market phones go for. Thus far it's the most enjoyable phone to use having moved from an S8 which was certainly "better" on paper.
The size is incredibly portable and easy to handle, the battery, despite only being 1500mAh, does a very good job lasting me the day (though I certainly expect it won't continue to do so) and the screen is acceptable but annoying enough that I don't want to be using it for long stretches. It's got the lastest iOS and I fully expect the lack of iOS 14 support will be the reason I have to swap it for a new model once software support falls away.
It seems like this new SE model is still the smallest phone you can get despite the increase in dimensions and weight that you mention. It's nice to see a comment that shares my view and I hope a market for the smaller phone will come back around similar to that odd stage in the early 00s where handsets suddenly became impossibly small.
For what it’s worth, Apple last updated iOS 12 on March 24th, so they seem to be supporting not only the most recent major version of iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222
And of course I can’t use headphones, I ordered a dongle from newegg and waited weeks and now it hasn’t come. I’ve mostly given up on using my phone for music because of this.
The water resistance is nice though, that’s probably the only feature I’ve actually enjoyed.
I have however had a smashed screen once, and the bigger a phone is, the harder it is to hold, the more likely the screen will smash
The old macbooks were great with the maglock power lead not pulling them off the desk. I believe new ones have downgraded the connector?
I couldn't too, then I fell into a channel. No harms to me and my bicycle but I had to turn off the phone and let it dry for a day before I could use it again.
I have been using this Magnetic USB C Adapter and am very happy with it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0816PV1YZ/
The risk is probably not worth it.
Then it's not for you. But given that phone manufacturers go to the expense of putting water-sensing strips inside phones, someone is going to put that water resistance to use.
Once _Settings - Battery_ indicates you need a new one, the $59 (or equivalent) that Apple charges is well worth it. You will also likely notice a performance increase as well!
This functionality degradation for the sake of design mania indicates utter madness and gross incompetence!
But the additional flexibility offered via software updates is the core power of software. Where we are able to replace hardware with software functionality, there's additional flexibility for improvement and iteration. That's a valuable add.
It is bad putting software into anything and everything, just because we do it frequently to other things. It should have much better reason for that. Complicating unnecessarily and many times introducing risks and troubles is a no good.
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Sadly, we forget this simple fact.
Automatically that view is disqualified because we are talking about Bluetooth headphones; there must be software on them to communicate efficiently with paired devices.
AirPods receive firmware updates to make adjustments to the audio, and AirPods Pro receive further updates to make adjustments to balance audio quality and the way the noise cancellation works in order to make sure that the AirPods fit properly in peoples' ears.
I don't know that (A) connectivity, (B) audio quality, and (C) fitting in peoples' ears are contrived in any way.
Personally, I would never want to go back to the crappy headphone connectors. The connector always wore out on me. So while I understand why you might want a headphone port (and some people likely want an in-built parallel or ADB2 port), it's hyperbolic to call it "utter madness and gross incompetence".
In reality, it's just someone having different values than you. Why is that so difficult to accept for some people?
I stand by the phrasing of 'utter madness and gross incompetence' when usability is degraded and things get unnecessarily complicated in an essential functionality. All of this for questionable changes (I wouldn't dare calling it improvement, I feel improper just to mention this word in this context, the whole thing is very far from improvement).
What I also need to add how strange is that certain groups of people get offended on strong and grounded opinion about some consumer product like if it was a central element of their life not a utility of an auxiliary topic.
There must be some sort of an internet rule one party intends a statement to be about the other, but it really applies to the author.
It would be like Mercedes suddenly deciding cars didn't need air conditioners any more and refusing to build cars with that option. "We're Mercedes. We know best. You don't need an A/C. Open the window if you're too warm."
The whole premise just sounds insulting, and if it happened you'd never buy a Mercedes again.
Cheap phone with big screen and not much else - the "lowest common denominator"
Expensive phone with big screen - the "power user"
Expensive phone with small screen - the mobile user
Laptops tend to come in such groupings, why is the last group ignored when it comes to phones?
Presumably because there isn't actually that much demand for that category. Apple tried it out with the original SE and they have the sales data. If there were tons of people clamoring for a sequel, they would have made one instead of a refreshed iPhone 8.
A $1000 4" phone won't have the same capabilities as a $1000 6.5" phone, and reviewers somehow do not seem to understand it might be ok and will trash the smaller phone.
I don't get this criticism - I owned a 5 series iPhone and the anodized finish was anything but easy to grip. It looked nice but massively reduced the friction between your hand and the surface, making it the easiest phone to drop that I have ever held. Their lightness didn't help either.
Conversely the newer iPhones with glass backs stick to your skin almost like glue in comparison, and if anything I find the rounded corners increase the amount of the phone surface in contact with your skin.
I eventually bought the iphone 8 about 6 months ago. And my god, it is just as good if not better. The size that scared me so much? Turns out I like it even more. The speed has been great, and I never knew how much I'd appreciate the larger screen. Point is, I know where you're coming from. But trust me, the iphone 8 size still feels relatively easy to hold (I can still comfortably hold it with one hand 100% of the time), and I have 0 regrets whatsoever about the upgrade.
Do people really not use a case with their phones?
edit: Can anyone explain the downvotes? is this a bad question?
In fact, my partner's iPhone and my previous one both broke in independent incidents when both were in cases. My new phone, I don't use a case, drop it regularly on asphalt, concrete, and it's even taken a dive into hot dishwashing water — and it's just fine.
I know somebody will come along with a story about how theirs smashed into smithereens but, for my money, Apple builds their phones to last.
this isn't broken??
Fun fact: my phone took its dive after the crack. No water got in at all.
Calling it a crack when it's made with crack-resistant glass doesn't give the right impression of how undamaged it really is, compared to one's expectation that it shattered into a million pieces and embedded itself into my carpet like grenade shrapnel — it ain't like that.
All told, I prefer the one-handed usability of the smaller 6S and that includes losing the newer-design interactions, particularly control center on the XS necessitating two hands to invoke it. In fact, I'm the reverse of Gruber—I'm apt to use old-UI gestures on my XS (not that it happens often, I tend to switch seamlessly).
Fine. Whatever. That's just me. What I find more disturbing is all the words spilled by reviewers about all these devices. At this point, not much is significantly changing in what's offered with new devices, so the simple lists of Pros and Cons capture most everything. Using Gruber's review as an example, I don't find a need for multi-paragraph expositions on the UI changes that took place years ago, and I suspect most of his readers are informed enough that they don't either.
For the average person, battery life is similar among models, all the cameras are impressive, the screens and speed great. The tradeoffs between models are generally minimal but distinct—just list them.
Overall, smartphone innovation has plateaued and so too have the reviews.
Apart from that, I agree that the 6s is still surprisingly smooth and doesn't seen to struggle with recent iOS versions and applications, despite being a 5 year old phone.
The new SE requires very little new manufacturing capacity. The case and probably battery are from the iPhone 8; the CPU/GPU/SOC and most of the rest of the electronics are from the iPhone 11; the camera still seems to be a slightly unknown quantity but the specs suggest it has a lot in common with the iPhone X camera. No doubt a certain amount of tricky engineering was required to put those parts together efficiently, but the SE requires almost no new manufacturing capacity beyond the final assembly line. For Apple it's pretty much a no-brainer.
A hypothetical "iPhone Classic", with modern innards in an iPhone 4/5 form factor case, would be a very different matter. You couldn't combine the 11's CPU with the 5's battery - battery life would be laughable. So you'd need to use a CPU from an earlier model; I suspect you'd have to go back at least to the 8 to find a CPU that doesn't drain an iPhone 5 size battery like water through a sieve. That means keeping one more CPU fabrication line in business beyond its intended life, taking that capacity away from the plants that are making silicon for the iPhone 11 and the coming 12. The camera would of course also have to be based on an earlier model, with all the same downsides again in terms of keeping old technology going and taking up factory capacity. And fitting all that into a 4/5 case would still be a much bigger engineering feat than the actual SE 2.
Bottom line: Even if you assume that the "iPhone Classic" market would be as big as that for the SE 2, it's hard to see how it would be worth Apple's time and money to cater to it. If you want to argue that the Classic would be a practical proposition for Apple, you would have to claim that the Classic market would be much bigger than the SE 2 - and given how popular the SE 2 is already turning out to be, that seems really unlikely.
[edit] On My phone "System" is listed as 11 GB, other google apps add up to another couple GB, and my music collection is 14GB so out-of-the-box I could see me having just 5GB free with no other apps.
It makes specific points to say that it is meant for those who don't want the phone to be a distraction. I don't recall the camera specs, but I can't imagine it's good by 2020 standards. Music, sure - it seems like the right size for a good MP3 player (remember that term, kids?)
I like the idea of a palm phone. Part of me thinks about getting a phone like it, and then a Oneplus 7T phablet, and swapping the SIM like you would swap a watch for different occasions.
Actually, depending on the response time and the reliability of getting SMS and calls post-swap, that sounds tempting...
I own a sansa clip plus. It has a 32GB microSD card in it. An out-of-the-box storage of about 20GB would make the Palm phone a downgrade from my MP3 player.
But I know the reason here is tackle low cost and leveraging what you stated is what gets it there. So I do get it ...
Of course, judging by most of the comments, the users are completely happy with this. Some are throwing money on their monitors despite saying it is a compromise. So you are right that a different device is/was quite unlikely.
Do you have a source for that? It seems like many of the times Apple upgrades their chip, they advertise greater power efficiency. E.g. for the A13 (from Wikipedia):
> Apple claims the two high performance cores are 20% faster with 30% reduction in power consumption, and the four high efficiency cores are 20% faster with a 40% reduction in power when compared to the A12.
Similarly the A12:
> It has two high-performance cores which are claimed to be 15% faster and 50% more energy-efficient than the Apple A11
And A8:
> Apple states that it has 25% more CPU performance and 50% more graphics performance while drawing only 50% of the power of its predecessor, the Apple A7.
I've searched the web and can't seem to find any source that actually specifies power consumption of Apple's chips by generation, stretching from the A6 to A13.
So for all I know, the 11's CPU with the 5's battery might be far better, not far worse. It doesn't seem like any kind of law that newer processors use more energy. So only actual data will give an answer.
Not the original poster but the iPhone 5 had a 1440 mAh battery while the iPhone 11 has more than double that with a 3110 mAh battery. For comparison, iPhone 5 was rated at 10 hours video playback while the iPhone 11 is rated at 17. So ballpark guess, that hybrid version would have ~8 hours video playback compared to the iPhone 5's 10.
Rough numbers all around, especially since battery usage is largely driven by the display, RAM, and CPU.
Still not sure that this my next phone though, probably going to stick with the old school SE. I had asked work for an upgrade, got the giant XR, and after five days put it right back in the box and handed it back. Presumably someone else at work got it. But I didn't want to carry a brick everywhere. Honestly something the shape of the iPhone 1 would be fine -- a little thicker to put a better camera in and more battery, but doesn't require me to take a dual-wielding feat on my next level up.
The new SE/2 seems workable -- if not what I want in terms of size. But I doubt I'm going to convince my work to buy me a new phone in this economy, and I'm happy with the old SE, so I guess this one is a pass. It's cool that Apple made a cheap phone, but what I actually wanted was a small phone and price wasn't that relevant.
I’d like to shout this from the rooftops. All I want is an iPhone I can comfortably use with one hand whether it’s $400 or $1400
To me, this has always been the issue with that ecosystem. If the one or two devices Apple makes fits your preferences, then that's awesome. Otherwise, you're shit outta luck. With Android, there's phones for everyone. Want a hardware keyboard? Check out Blackberry or F(x)tec. Want audio jack with a nice DAC, check out LG. Want stylus support? Check out Samsung Note or Moto Stylus. Gaming phone? Check out Razer or ROG. And the list goes on. There's a phone for everyone.
[1] https://palm.com/pages/product#s-a7c5360d-c3db-4c91-bb73-841...
[2] https://palmsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600181853...
no Qi wireless, which is really problematic with a 4h battery life.
Still, I ordered got one to play with and evaluate the form factor, in the hope the next version will have both NFC and Qi
This is the main reason phones have actually getting bigger. Not because people want huge phones, but because people want wireless charging, NFC, 3 cameras, high refresh rate, etc, and a much bigger battery to support all of those extra features.
I need Qi charging to work around the battery life problem (just drop the phone on a qi craddle), and I need NFC for an enterprise application.
The old SE that I’m currently using in 58.6mm
Neither google or android serve this market.
> Neither google or android serve this market.
Agreed. I miss my Xperia Mini Pro.
Unfortunately what passes for the small size isn't as small as I'd like it to be, with the screen diagonal supposedly dropping from 5.8 in the iPhone 11 Pro down to 5.4" in the new base model.
Overall size is probably similar to the iPhone SE (2020) except with the screen being much larger to cover the forehead and chin. At least it's an improvement over the current situation where all three iPhones 11 are physically bigger than the 8.
Also bummed that the smallest size won't have an option for the best camera setup like this year's do. Ah well. We'll see for sure in September.
Simply because it cant be done yet. No Notch is small enough for an old SE Size iPhone with Face ID. The Screen would measure in exactly the same 4.7" except it would be 19.5:9 Ratio.
I think we are still a few years away from that possibilities.
It's only cheap relative to Apples other phones, it's still outside of the range I'd consider reasonable. Although it seems the reason most people spend so much on phones is to get better cameras? Which I'm not particularly bothered about - maybe it's worth it for that.
Now I'm wondering if anyone ever made a Mac SE/30 run OS/2.
There was a Mac86 board with an 8086 processor that fit the SE/30’s PDS slot, but I’m pretty sure OS/2 1.x required a 286.
You might be able to install OS/2 on a Mac II with a Mac286 NuBus card, but it seems like a stretch. I can’t find evidence of anyone having done it.
Headline: “RUNNING OS/2 ON THE MAC II: DO USERS CARE?”
Choice quotes: “The Mac 286 has everything necessary to run OS/2, but we haven’t tested it” ... “If a guy’s already got a Mac II, the idea of running OS/2 is pretty ludicrous.”
I liked small form factors more as well (though I am on an XS now). However, the ATP folks correctly pointed out that while many tech people classified the SE as 'the small iPhone' [1] and are now upset about the size of the SE 2020, for many non-tech people the SE is 'the cheap iPhone'. It is clear that most of the markets wanted bigger phones. And to them, the SE 2020 is a bigger phone than the old SE (thus good), while still being very price competitive in the iPhone lineup.
[1] The question is if Apple really wanted to make a small phone or just something that fills a price range. And one way to reduce the production price of the iPhone SE was to reuse the iPhone 5s and now iPhone 8 production process. Also, it differentiates between cheaper/expensive models. In other words, the size may just be side-effect of what the SE happens to be based on.
What most of the world wants is a quality cheap phone, and size isn't that relevant.
This is especially true as the world enters a global recession.
Smaller phones have smaller batteries, and less space for components like cameras, etc. So they look worse on paper, because on paper you can't feel how big it is. Thinness has been fetishized. Please make overall smallness or "hand feel" a top selling point!
Maybe it's better, maybe not. Maybe it's just different... but it's inconsistent.
Wife has my old 6S, I had an 8 that got downgraded to a 7 because it disappeared (lost or stolen), and an iPad Pro. There's the double-click/force-press on the side to bring up the app switcher that I can live with, but I always always pull on the right side to bring up Control Center in the iPhones.
It's infuriating, all the more that there is zero reason (technical, UX, UI) that Apple could not move the old devices to the new interaction model and make them consistent across all platforms, except:
- don't alienate people with old habits and TouchID phones (but... still having the double-click work doesn't prevent the slide from the bottom to work too, as long as the slide from top right is implemented)
- make a clear usage distinction between X/FaceID and non-X/TouchID phones (but... not devices! the TouchID iPads have it...)
The net result is that people with TouchID phones just have an inconsistent experience, which is what makes it terrible at the end of the day.
I have an iPhone 8 (TouchID) and an iPad Pro (FaceID) and personally the multi-tasking gestures are ridiculously inferior to the home button. FaceID is nice (ApplePay, unlocking, etc) but switching to another app (multi-tasking) is painful in the "post-iPhone-X interaction model". Am I alone in this or is it a learned behavior that I simply haven't gotten over the hump yet?
EDIT: Turns out there is some nuance to iPad vs iPhone. I should also note that I'm probably referring moreso to the multi-app interface on an iPad (where you can have two apps running at the same time), which is still weird to me. Sliding left and right makes sense - get it now, but you have to remember what your last app interaction was. Also, weird downvotes?
But it’s a memory game with what is on your app stack. Was Duo open last or email or calculator? If you aren’t sure you need to pull straight up into scroll mode... I don’t think there is a great solution to this, Apple has surely spent millions and millions every year on mobile UX.
The half circle is more like starting to activate the app switcher, but confirming the next/previous app immediately. The difference is that it gives you slightly more time to see what you're doing and you can bail out into the app switcher if you change your mind in the instant the apps come up. That's actually the only way I ever open the app switcher; I feel like the swipe up and hold is way too slow.
But for multitasking, I really do prefer the swipe-up gesture. I don't find it painful at all, it feels very natural: touch from the bottom, slide up, and then horizontally to select what you want.
Everyone that owns a iPhone with FaceID knows the trouble, for everyone else it looks like I am trying to read something without turning my phone.
I like Apple for work, and I just ordered an SE 2020 on my upgrade plan, to replace my 8.
Why? Other than liking a small phone for work, I do not want to lose fingerprint auth. FaceID means no masks, no landscape, trouble in darkness (I think), trouble in bed or with smooshed face, trouble when the phone is on a desk and I'm looking at it from an angle.
With under-screen fingerprint readers being possible from Oneplus, it must be a matter of cost/Apple-ian adherence to moving on from a technology with purpose, even when you don't need to.
What is vastly better on the X-series devices, though, is switching between your two or three most recent apps. Just swipe left and right at the bottom of the screen (on the bar)— this lets you flip between apps in the order that they’re in the switcher. This means I very rarely actually enter the full multitasking switcher in normal use.
(The other, minor benefit of the new-style gestures is that they’re all cancellable and map directly to finger movement, but that’s more of a “feel” thing than a major usability win. Makes it feel Apple-y, though.)
That gesture works on iPads as well. Start with a slight updward swipe and go sideways.
Also try four finger pinch and four finger left/right swipe.
On devices with 3D Touch switching between 2 recent apps became easier once you learned this shortcut: just hard press the left edge of the screen, and depending on how far you drag it to the right, you can either go to the previous app or open the switcher (faster than double tapping the home button).
Did Apple make this a all or nothing thing or do some of these gestures also work on home button devices?
this is an interaction that not many people know about, but it is so much faster than swiping up, and then choosing the right app.
I wish I could comment on or know what he was talking about with the iPhone X vs "old iPhone" interaction paradigm. I personally thought the "single button" hardware interface was an incredible innovation that changed everything. Even Android relies on it. My Galaxy S9+ has a "software home button" (like most Androids do) in place of the iPhone's. I'll have to find a friend with an iPhone X or later to try the new swipe up gestures and see if they are indeed better.
If you have an iPhone 7 or 8, try turning it off and try to press the button.
(The trackpad on the laptop does as well, but I feel like you're just less likely to try clicking the trackpad on a macbook/MBP if the computer's not on. Whereas with the external one, you'll notice it when you go to pick it up/move it around and it doesn't accidentally click in your hand.)
I had to ditch that mouse when I switched to Linux. I think it didn’t have any standard HID-type driver or something.
Why: I suspect because it debuted with the iPhone 7, the first officially water resistant iPhone, that it was a waterproofing move to get rid of possible ingress points.
I've always assumed it was partially about reliability and partially about saving space, since water-resistant physical buttons are fairly standard components.
The phone needs to have some form of haptic motor anyway, and switching to a virtual button allows them to eliminate a complex moving part - removing one potential point of failure - while freeing up a few cubic millimeters of internal volume.
Anecdotally, the home buttons always seemed to be one of the more fragile parts of an iPhone, to the degree that many people started to use the on-screen assistive touch dialogs to avoid wear and tear.
Linus Torvalds is quoted here: https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=185109&curpost... as saying that Geekbench 4.0 shouldn't be treated as a valid comparison between desktops/laptops and phones. (However this review used Geekbench 5.0 - not sure what differences there are).
[0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro... (scroll down to the 2nd last plot, look at the right half)
Phones tend towards 'control flow', e.g. display an interface, accept a user input, communicate with a server, display information... and media decoding & gps both have dedicated hardware.
FP workloads can be incredibly power hungry, so it's fortunate mobile devices mostly manage to avoid them. But any chip with an FP unit is going to shut it off when running integer code.
I thought bitcoin mining was floating point, and that was why GPUs were so adept.
SSE/AVX has its own set of registers. It can do floating point and integer operations. It would not be correct to refer to it as a floating point unit.
GPUs are good at mining because they can do so many calculations in parallel. They're just as capable of integer operations as the SIMD units on a CPU.
[0]: https://www.geekbench.com/doc/geekbench5-cpu-workloads.pdf
For A13 with unified L2, I used L2 per core.
Of course, transistor density isn’t consistent across the chip, but this should be good enough for the relative comparison I’ve done.
Also, and I’m not sure how big of a deal this is, but Zen 2 is the 2nd gen of a practically new arch. Lighting has a lineage of at least 6 generations.
[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav...
Other than that - x86 cores (skylake) are generally more powerful per clock than any Arm.
I'd not trust geekbench a bit between different platforms. for example:
The LZMA workload compresses and decompresses a 2399KB HTML ebook using the LZMA compression algorithm with a dictionary size of 2048KB. The workload uses the LZMA SDK for the implementation of the core LZMA algorithm. The test effectively is about L2/3 cache sizes, if it fits there - great result, if not - a horrid one.
Most of the testing lacks any specific data, just what library they use.
People are saying the occasional error in Swipe up and back to Home Screen is not annoying are the exact same type of people they prefer the MacBook to have larger track pad, where the occasional false touch didn't matter.
It did to me. I sort of demand zero false positive from trackpad. Which was possible in old MacBook Pro 2015, and not any more since 2016 with larger trackpad.
For iPhone, at least I could understand the trade off, you are wasting lots of potential screen area, and while I prefer to have home button, I dont want to trade the screen area for it.
On MacBook though, I dont understand the need for that slightly larger trackpad. I felt it was the wrong trade off.
As the screen size and refresh rate increase, the needs of the CPU/GPU and Flash will increase.
Mobile phones tend to be more interactive and thus have a larger negative experience with slow/jerky scrolling, slow response to taps including app launch, etc.
Microcontrollers tend to have options from slowing down the clock rate to going into a deep sleep mode when there is no scheduled work. There has been a lot of work to optimize the scheduling of network/driver/app tasks to minimize power draw. It is also fairly common to see a CPU have lower power cores, typically for the OS to leverage for hardware support and background tasks separate from what might be considered the 'main' CPUs for this reason.
Likewise, Apple has stopped shooting for a 50-100% increase in performance year over year, instead going for a mix of performance and power efficiency improvements. They have also started to do significantly more custom silicon design to support their hardware features, such as the Secure Enclave and neural engine additions used to support Face ID.
10 years is a long time though. Four years ago would be what, the iPhone 3GS? Apple went several years doubling the CPU, GPU, _and_ Flash performance and it was extremely noticeable.
Thats a thing with the computer industry, everthing is getting faster all the time but everthing keeps feeling getting slower.
For me the pinnacle of UI was Mac OS 9, it was just so snappy and responsive. It's (pre emtive) multithreading was a pain to wait for but the UI itself was tactile. Apply only approached this on Mac OS X with (I believe) 10.7 Lion when they overhauled stuff under the hood (after upgrading to that version it felt like I bought a new machine). After that it's been downhill again.
She's hardly a power user, so this might be the one phone she gets for the next five year, too.
Why is this a benefit? The removal of the home button might have been the best thing since the home button itself. The gesture that replaced is an order of magnitude better.
My parents prefer physical buttons over gestures. If Apple releases a "max" version of the 2020 SE, I'll be upgrading them to it.
Maybe I like the ritual of thumb-to-unlock, since it feels more under my control. Maybe there's instances in which I want to look at the phone without unlocking the device. Maybe I hate the stupid notch, and I want my screen to be a rectangle and not a rounded rectangle. Just because you don't value these things doesn't make your preference "objectively" correct.
> wastes almost an inch of screen space to nothing
It's a feature, not a bug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_space
(I also have a huge pet peeve with the bezels shrinking on recent iPads. However good the fancy touch-canceling algorithms get, they'll never compete with "I'm not touching the screen at all, so I'm 1000% sure this grip won't invoke an action.")
I read about Apple’s patent on buttonless Touch ID underlying the screen and I’m holding off until next event to get either a phone with that technology, or SE 2.
The most ergonomic way to press on the home button for me was by sliding the old SE closer to fingertips, so that the thumb can rest on the button while being extended and relaxed. From that position a swipe-up gesture isn’t possible.
I would also rotate my old SE upside-down for unlock occasionally while pulling it out, since it doesn’t affect the fingerprint reader and I don’t need to stare at my phone for it to work. It would be a little more precarious with a bigger phone, though.
Maybe that's weird, but it's something that I've been frustrated with every single day since upgrading from the 6s.
Other than that, I really liked Face ID until it became compulsory to wear a mask at all times while outside the house. My kingdom for a temporary Touch ID sensor.
Having rounded sides is also something that just reeks of Windows XP blue theme to me. Playful but utter useless (for the grip). I have to remember to not squeeze the phone too hard every time because then it will hit the ground or clicking on the sides.
The old iPhone SE was amazing. I wish the new one had the same form-factor with better battery but put the touch id on the back to allow for a near edge to edge screen (but keep the steel border so I don't accidentally touch the screen).
While dreaming, I wish the reviewers would actually try living with the phones, because pretty much all the reviewers can be replaced with a spec-sheet at this point.
Also headphone cable doesn't wake up my iPhone 11.
No. Its not.
Theres one true way to press a button. Not the same with gestures.
I'd be happy if they put 4 buttons in a row there. But I can live with one too.
Now anytime I have to use a phone with a home button, it’s painful. Things are a lot easier now in ways I didn’t realize until I got used to them.
I’m assuming you don’t use an iPhone without a home button. If you did and got used to it, I don’t think there’s any way you’d want to go back. (I’ve yet to hear anyone say they wish the home button would come back after getting used to not having one.)
Easier, harder, better are all relative preferences. I have iphone 7 and my partner has the iphone 11 max. I use both mechanisms everyday and hate the gestures, the weight, the loss of one hand operation.
I stayed with the 6S because of the headphone port and Touch ID. It also was a testbed for the water-resistance for the 7, so it more-or-less is IP67 except for the headphone jack.
The SE seems a compelling upgrade because it doesn't have a notch, unlocks without requiring lighting and a camera, isn't a massive brick, and doesn't cost several fortunes.
Gives some insights into how Apple designers think about UX! Pretty cool!
This is baffling.
iPhone SE is by no means a "budget" phone in our country
This also doesn’t include tax, so it ends up being more like $438 for the base model without promotions.
I mean, maybe you're suggesting they should just use the phone CPU for a laptop, but I guess it's not suitable?
ARM is pretty unlikely to oust x86 in Windows PCs any time soon. Even if Intel continues to struggle to catch up to TSMC's fab advantage, AMD is making pretty compelling CPUs using the same fabrication node as Apple. And really, Windows is stuck with x86 largely for compatibility reasons - emulation would be both a performance and power drag. If ARM is destined to defeat x86, its probably going to have to win in the datacenter first, depriving Intel (and possibly AMD, soon) of their highest margin sector.
So would it sound as impressive if they said the latest iPhone processor was faster than the $899 Apple laptop?
I would never imagine buying a 64GB non-expandable phone with a single camera and such absurd screen for 480€ in 2020. New 128GB+sd slot s10e is around 450€ and that did small form factor _right_.
For a tech forum the iphone se obsession just seems so alien to the point where it all feels like astroturfing.
a. They're used to iOS/integrated into Apple's ecosystem, and this gives them a way to cheaply get a new phone that keeps them on that model.
b. This phone will probably shoot better photos than any Android at this price point, and even a decent chunk above it. Apple has been really focusing on their cameras the last few years, and the only examples of photography on an Android device that I've seen beat Apple's newer phones is from Google's Pixel devices.
All in all, it sounds like this is a case of other people liking different things than you, and that is a-OK :) (and most likely not astroturfing)
Then I got frustrated that I had to buy a new device every 2 years just to get a software update. My 5 year old iPhone got iOS 13.4 at the same time as everyone else.
People want their durable goods to last. Stats have shown that people have been keeping their smartphones longer for the past handful of years as the technology is maturing. This will continue as tech improves, just like it has for every other durable good.
> $3,000 top-of-the-line
> MacBook Pro in single-core
> CPU performance.
Whenever I see these sorts of benchmarks, it just makes me focus on how much iOS is the limiting factor of these devices.
It at least attempts to simulate ‘general’ workloads.
Looks like a variety of workloads, but lots of things that can be greatly improved with co-procesors. Like cryptography, image compression, image processing, etc.
"Geekbench 5 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1,000 (which is the score of a Dell Precision 3430 with a Core i3-8100 processor)"
Isn't this (more or less) NUVIA's strategy?
I was/am in the exact same boat. I still have a fantasy that someday they will release some sort of “pro developer” edition of iOS with a proper terminal emulator and normal file system access. One can dream.
Say that I got an iPhone SE and a 16-inch MacBook Pro, hooked both up to power and started doing some single thread video encodes - would the iPhone actually beat the MacBook Pro? My suspicion at least is that it'd start throttling fairly fast.
For me it means if I want to buy my elderly parents an Apple Watch I can buy them this phone and have a cost almost comparable with existing A13 phones by themselves; $399+$399 vs $699($599 XR)+$399
I like that the SE can fit in my pocket as easily as my current phone. The price is also attractive, although I tend to keep phones until they become too slow and battery life becomes an issue.
However, I'm frustrated constantly by typing on it. Just typing a couple of sentences in a text message can take minutes. (I'm a 60 wpm touch typist on a standard keyboard.) It's become so bad that I'm moving back to a laptop for most communication. My phone is coming close to a read-only device.
Is the 11's size enough help for typing that it's worth the price?
If so, does it fit in your pocket, i.e. how do you keep it on you?
Fairly sure apple could put that interface on these phones. On home button ipads you can swipe up to go home, and swipe left/right along the bottom to switch apps.
I wish apple would add this, but I think they wanted to keep new iphones exclusive. (The more benign possibility is that there wasn’t the space to do left/right swipes without messing with some app functionality)
138.4 x 67.3 x 7.3 mm (5.45 x 2.65 x 0.29 in)
143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7 mm (5.65 x 2.79 x 0.30 in)
For half a cm extra in length I get 2.5 cm extra in screen size with the XS. I would have liked a smaller phone and if this were similar in size to the original SE, I might have switched, but the true size difference between this SE and a phone considered "much larger" is negligible (I own both).
By removing the home button, Apple took away another physical control interface. You can still swipe up, with the presence of the home button.
Instead of removing the home button, Apple could have used the bottom area to install some other context sensitive touch controls. Like the MacBook Touch Bar.
How the heck are you supposed to go for a jog, and carry a large screen phone on you?
I have found myself reaching for the home button when using Sailfish though. I am completely convinced that the gesture UI is superior, but I couldn't relate to the whole not reaching for the home button thing mentioned in the article.
I hope there's a way to upgrade the CPU.
Lies, damn lies and benchmarks? I don't believe that for a second.
Sure, the carriers can make more out of their bandwidth, but that's not really something I'm willing to pay for.
And, it's not like 4G is going anywhere, it'll be continued to be supported for a long time.
Actually, considering the impact on battery life that 5G has on consumer devices... I don't think I actually want it, to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I won't resist a natural upgrade when I upgrade my iphone 8 in 2-3 years, but I'm not seeking it out either.
He told me that 5G is able to handle more traffic (= more connections) per tower. So on some busy places like festivals or other places where there is a huge crowd 5G could help to let all those people access their internet. Of course you could make an argument of "why would all those people need access to the internet" but that isn't the point.
Other than the point above I don't see a value in consumer 5G either.
I do not have a source, so if this is wrong then my/his points becomes complete moot.
For the US alone.
I’ve found it quite perplexing (bordering on annoying) that phone companies are getting away with so much BS marketing around 5G. I guess they’re just that desperate for something new to sell. 5G is useless to the average consumer, in my estimation.
Using the example one of the replies mentioned, you are able to stream 1080p video over the network but that's because the majority of the network users are not using 4G.
Once everyone (or the majority of users) has a 'heavy-usage' profile then, over a 4G network you would likely need to throotle during peak usage periods.
But thats not a big deal.
Next time I upgrade a household phone (iPhone7 and 2016SE) it will be this one
I fail to see what it is about $current_year that makes careful, cogent, and balanced discourse about Apple irrelevant.
* iPhone sales have been dropping consistently.
* No new gimmick to drive flagship price higher.
* Economy is heading to the dumpster
* Apple Services are generating more revenue. So Cheaper entry level device = more device sales = more service sales = money keeps flowing.
On the other hand, the 10s saw a dramatic increase in model variation in Apple's product line. It's been said before but I now have a fair amount of trouble knowing whether an iPhone model is current gen or not, I see people talking about iPhone 8, iPhone X, iPhone 11, iPhone XR, iPhone 11 Pro and now the iPhone SE has had a refresh again. A far cry from the canonical product line where Apple insisted one device was perfect for all... Whether that's a positive or a negative is up for debate. Samsung were doing fairly well until the S10 line where there were three versions of the Note and non-Note models. Google's Pixel line appears to be the last to keep with roughly one phone a generation (though the 3a slightly disrupts that rule).
The original SE didn't noticeably cannibalise the flagships, and it was in some ways a more appealing device than this (it filled the "smaller" niche, whereas it's hard to see how this one is in any way better than an 11 Pro).
The original SE was a 5S with mostly 6S parts, costing $400.
The 5c was an outlier; it was both more expensive and more unique.