Comment by bironran | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bironran | Hacker News Reader

Not having the Touch ID lose Apple at least one, if not more, upgrades. At least in my case. I’m on an iPhone 7 that’s definitely showing it’s age. I would e upgraded a long time ago but held off “because maybe the next version will have Touch ID back.”

Well, that never happened and I’m now in the position of having to upgrade a phone that’s starting to crash due to battery issues, will probably be out of iOS updates in September and is frankly getting too slow for even simple yet surprisingly power demanding apps.

I don’t know what I’ll upgrade to. Likely an iPhone, but which? I hate buying something that’s not the current generation but the thought of having to deal with Face ID multiple times a day leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

The iPhone SE, described in the article, has Touch ID.

Yeah, but “not latest tech”. Hard to swallow that.

I guess it depends on which “tech” specifically you care about. The jump from an iPhone 7 to the 3rd gen SE will probably feel amazing, considering it has the same SoC as all the iPhone 13 models. Sure, the SE doesn’t have the nice camera system like the high end models, but again, coming from a 7, it will be quite an improvement for you.

Most of latest tech? I found it to be a great upgrade coming from the iPhone 8: overall faster, slightly better battery life, better camera with a few new tricks. As I wrote in the article, I wouldn't mind upgrading every four or five years to new versions of this phone with newer internals. It just works.

why do you care about latest tech if it doesn't do what you want?

I'll second the new SE recommendation. It's the best iPhone available right now unless your most important use case is the camera, which it can't be for you, because you'd have upgraded a long time ago otherwise.

Can confirm, moved from an iPhone 7 to a 13 mini, Face ID fails ~40% of the time, it sucks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com