iPhone SE (2020) Review

The pitch was a spreadsheet. Take the iPhone 8 chassis, an aluminium frame and glass back rated IP67, with Touch ID under the 4.7-inch 1334 by 750 LCD, and drop in the A13 Bionic that the $999 iPhone 11 Pro was still shipping with, at $399 for 64GB. In April 2020 nothing near that price was within a generation of it on speed, and six years on it is still not slow. The single 12-megapixel f/1.8 camera with optical stabilisation leaned on the A13 for Smart HDR and a portrait mode that worked only on people because there was no depth hardware; it shot 4K at 60 fps and stayed a step behind the $349 Pixel 4a on stills, with no night mode at all.

The screen was the compromise you could see: 326 ppi, 60 Hz, thick bezels top and bottom while the 4a put a 1080p OLED in the same money. The 1821 mAh battery was the compromise you felt, heavy users reaching for a charger by mid-afternoon; 18 W wired and Qi wireless helped. It shipped on iOS 13.4, and because it carries the iPhone 11's chip it has taken every release since, iOS 26 included, long after Android flagships that cost three times as much in 2020 took their last version. Nothing about it was new, which was the point: a known-good design, a Pro chip and a price that made the rest of the budget market look like a bad bargain.