What’s in a flagship phone in 2020?
Chances are you’ll get a bucket-load of tech that costs a heap of money. Case in point, the Samsung Galaxy S20+, the Huawei P40 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro – all of which cost more than US$950 a pop.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with showstopping smartphones. They are immensely good at what they do. But what of the person who doesn’t have a spare thousand dollars burning a hole in their bank account?
What of the person who doesn’t want a phone with a screen big enough to burst their pocket? And what of the person who just wants a really good phone to be just that, a good phone.
Apple says it has the answer; enter the iPhone SE for 2020.
iPhone SE (2020): What’s the hype?
Apple has upgrade the SE (which while Apple has never said so, purportedly stands for ‘Special Edition’) for 2020, upgrading just about everything under its familiar-looking hood.
Yes, the iPhone SE looks very much like an iPhone 8. In fact, it looks exactly like an iPhone 8 save for the new black bezels around the front of the device.
Fortunately, Apple has installed the same blazing-fast A13 Bionic processor (the same one currently found in its flagship iPhone 11 Pro), given the camera some new skills and also boosted storage. More importantly, it has tweaked the price.
The new iPhone SE for 2020 can be had for US$400.
iPhone SE (2020): Is it any good?
So what do you get for your cash?
The build of the new iPhone SE is solid – this an Apple device after all – with a 4.7-inch LCD screen. Despite ‘just’ being an LCD, Apple has been churning out great displays for the past couple of years. And for everyone who thinks it’s a tad small, there is someone else who hates the fact that all phones these days start at six-inches and up. On the front, you also get a built-in fingerprint reader.
Apple has spent some time upgrading the camera, with a 12-megapixel snapper on the back and a front-facing 7-megapixel selfie-camera. Considering the price of the device, images are fantastic. In decent light images are detailed and punchy. The SE also comes with portrait mode, letting you take buttery bokeh-images via either front or back cameras.
Video is good, too. Especially considering the iPhone SE can take ultra-detailed 4K video at 60 frames per second. There’s even optical image stabilization.
iPhone SE (2020): The tradeoffs
No phone that costs less than half of many of 2020’s flagship smartphones can ever really compete, right? Not exactly.
The new iPhone SE was never meant to go head-to-head with the likes of the iPhone 11 Pro. It does not have a multi-camera sensor, or a posh OLED screen. But that shouldn’t take away from the fact that this is a very solid smartphone, one that most people will see as a small-screened – but upgraded – iPhone.
iPhone SE (2020): The Verdict
If you want a new smartphone – or to be more precise, a new iPhone – but don’t want to spend a thousand dollars, then the iPhone SE isn’t just a good upgrade, it’s a great one.
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