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Comment by onemoresoop | Hacker News Reader

Currently using the original SE and I'm quite happy with it; as a device it still performs decently too. I don't need more than that for my use so I'm going to hold onto it till it dies out. One issue I've had with the small size is that a lot of websites are not rendering properly with this screen size and make the assumption that my phone's size is larger. It's not the device's problem the websites are broken but it's quite telling that the whole industry moved on to phablets.

A teenager nephew saw my SE recently and he held himself from laughing at it. I take pride in using an old phone.

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I also have an original SE, and it's not only websites that renders strangely, also apps are sometimes unusable. I guess iOS developers forget to test in lower screen resolutions just as much as website developers.

Rather than forget, they may just have reprioritized. Or outright remove it from consideration. It's possible that users of much older phones don't spend enough for them to put time into it.

That's a fair point, but I wonder why the SE users aren't spending enough money/time in those apps ;)

I have the same problem and I hate it. I’m going to get a bigger phone cause it’s so annoying

Is it smaller than the 6S? Some websites that aren’t mobile are tiny on the display but otherwise it’s fine. I don’t use that many apps but never encountered that issue.

Would like to know because once my 6S doesn’t get updates anymore, I’ll probably switch to a SE.

Yes, it's smaller. But the original SE has the same innards as the 6S, so in all likelihood both will stop getting updates at the same time.

Kind of ironic considering that a sizable fraction of people using the new iPhone SE set it up so that the logical screen resolution matches that of the original iPhone SE (that is, they turn on Display Zoom).

Used it for so many years, just last year I switched to the 12 mini. The form factor was my primary decision in using the SE, and when my last one broke I decided that the relative improvement in battery life was worth trading to a larger phone. I'm happy enough but if they make a phone the size of the SE again I'll switch in a heartbeat, and I would not be sad if I had to "down"grade again in the meantime.

I use the old SE and even big company websites are broken on that screen size: if anyone from Airbnb is browsing this forum, your home search is broken on the SE, the date filter popup covers up so much space that you cannot actually submit your query!

I still have my original SE, but I use it as a secondary offline phone precisely because the web and apps are no longer optimized for it.

If I turn off data and WiFi the battery lasts for days and it's still perfectly usable for calling and listening to music since it still has 3.5mm jack unlike my "new" iPhone 11.

How is your OG SE even still functional? On mine the screen started to fall off and the battery started to fail, which, the cost to repair was as much as buying the SE 2020, so that was what I did rather than repairing it.

My OG SE is in perfect shape. Some people are just more careful with things that others. I've had to replace the battery and the Lightning port in January, everything else is still original and works fine.

Hows the battery life?

I've replaced the original but it's still not really great. I do need to recharge my phone at my office...

I am an iPhone 13 Mini user and the battery sucks. I am waiting to see the next gen and i will go for a larger iphone.

How do you use it? I've not had any issues with mine, but I've not been using it super heavily due to COVID/WFH. I don't think it'll be an issue for my normal post-COVID behavior, but I can see it being a stretch when I'm off at a conference, using it a lot, and without easy access to charging. I also expect that 2 years from now it'll probably be borderline for perhaps 20% of my days.

I'd be curious to know what your situation/usage is that it's been unsatisfactory.

My daily usage is mostly whatsapp, twitter, reddit. I don't do heavy apps like TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. Figure that out how much battery but a friend of mine depletes the battery twice as fast as me during a day. The mini and SE would be good for some casual usecases, but for example, when i go offroad and use apps that uses the gps, the battery dies pretty quick. I will not go for the max models, but the middle size models are much battery performant than mine.

I guess I use it differently, but i have absolutely no problems with the battery.

Depends what you use it for (with my 12 Mini). If you use your phone for lots of media consumption, like most do, you'll find it lacking I think. As for me, its a communications device, and handles an hour or so of YouTube in the morning, then gets through my workday and onto my charger in the evening with no issues.

Even if we use iPhone mostly for Whatsapp/email, for us with bigger fingers, typing on smaller screen is more typo-prone. Annoying.

iPhone 12 Mini is still acceptable. iPhone SE? Nahh... pass.

Here in China you can replace a new battery for about 16USD. I've done that 3 times, each of which lasts about 1 year.

1 year? Can you pay more than 16USD to get an OEM quality battery?

I'm replacing my own and my close circle old iPhone's batteries with Nohon brand batteries from China. They work as well and as long as new original ones. Advertised capacity is even higher than original, but I haven't measured it to confirm.

I’ve changed it twice. Long overdue for a third time. It’s still completely manageable.

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