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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

The (actual) perfect phone is the gen 1 SE. I literally just returned my gen 3 and ordered two new sealed in the box gen 1 SE’s on eBay for $150 a piece. I’ve been using this model for 8 years. I’m set on phones for the next decade.

I’m hoping and praying that Apple will someday make a modern 5G phone with the dimensions and features of a gen 1. But until then this is my phone. It is literally perfect and there’s nothing on the market remotely similar.

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Care to explain why they're "trash"? What didn't you like about it? Just the rounded corners?

They aren't trash. I think the OP is trying to say they don't like the way the current SEs look.

I just bought my kids their own SE current generations, and me with my 13 Pro is kind of jealous of how ergonomic, pocketable, and usable (home button) they are.

Edit: OP edited their comment to remove the "they are trash" verbiage.

I stopped caring about the look after I started putting my $650 12 Mini in a Quadlock case which by itself is kind of dorky. I don't even care about the color anymore. Whenever I take it out to clean it looks brand new.

I also upgraded from an SE 1 to an SE 3, and I've been really happy with mine. The larger size was a little annoying at first but I've adapted.

I too would rather have had a phone with the smaller size of the original SE, but I've found the larger phone an acceptable trade-off for the speed, memory, and battery life upgrades I got going from the SE 1 to the SE 3. Let's just hope the SE 4, if there is one, isn't much bigger.

I 100% agree, the iPhone 5 form factor was and still remains the closest to the perfect phone.

> I’m hoping and praying that Apple will someday make a modern 5G phone with the dimensions and features of a gen 1. But until then this is my phone. It is literally perfect and there’s nothing on the market remotely similar.

That's probably not going to happen realistically; the mini and iPhone 8-form factor SEs are still pretty good phones.

I bet in the future though the current mini iPhones will probably end up being a future generation SE.

13 mini? I have an iPhone 8 which is just perfect, I switched to my old iPhone 11 Max 2 days ago but I decided to sell it and go back to the 8. No reason at all to upgrade from the 8 except for better camera on the SE’s or minis. All apps and everything runs the same for 1/3 the price.

What do you do about the battery life on old SE's from ebay? Do you upgrade the battery?

Yeah they are honestly 50/50 at this point whether they even work out of the box. Fortunately the battery is really easy to replace.

What? I'm not sure if you're aware, but all the SE models have the same "bubble" exterior you describe, so I'm not sure how one can be better than another in that aspect.

Also what? The 3rd gen iPhone SE has 5G.

the 1st gen SE design looks nothing like the newer models, it was actually based on the iPhone 5 design, see pictures here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_SE_(1st_generation)

The SE 2nd and 3rd gen on the other hand are based on the iPhone 6/7/8 design which is quite different

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