The new iPhone SE is barebones basic, but that’s not what anyone who loves the iPhone is looking for. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni
KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 — On paper the new iPhone SE seems a good idea; an iPhone priced lower than the rest of its range with most of the features except the ones considered superfluous.
It isn’t just a cheaper iPhone; more like a cheaper iPhone 13 as both phones share the same A15 Bionic Chip which makes them both fairly powerful even when compared to most Android phones in their respective price ranges.
That’s where the similarities end. One big difference is the price. iPhone 13 prices start from RM3,899 while the cheapest iPhone SE is RM2,099.
The iPhone SE also has smaller storage capacities, starting from 64GB to a maximum 128GB while the iPhone 13 starts from 128GB and maxing out at 512GB.
Another change is the SE’s cheaper, smaller 4.7-inch Retina HD screen compared to the Retina XDR screens on the other iPhone 13 models, that is likely a huge contributing factor to their cost.
Objects of desire
What Apple probably should have figured out from the beginning is that its core fanbase does not really care much for the tags “cheaper” or “more affordable.”
The iPhone’s allure has been its sex factor. You might not need an iPhone (probably) but boy, do you want one.
That demand for the phone is something our local telcos have taken advantage of by having special plans to make iPhones within reach of more people, with the ability to upgrade to new ones in a couple of years.
So why would an iPhone-loving Malaysian settle for the staid-in-comparison iPhone SE when they could happily shackle themselves to a telco for the promise of a sexier, more powerful phone?
Nothing terrible
The iPhone XR, also marketed as a more affordable iPhone, did fairly well in the market though you could hardly call it cheap.
I would attribute that to the colours – it had so many colours! I know people who decided they’d take the cheaper XR with its colour options than the fancier X models.
The popularity of transparent cases has also something to do with that. Before, it seemed silly to care about the colour of your phone when a case would obscure it.
Now, you can have transparent phones that not only show off your phone colours but often have colour accents to complement those phone shades.
Unfortunately the iPhone SE only has Midnight (it’s black), Starlight (silvery white) and red.
Black phones are just so early-mid 2000s and while the Starlight shade isn’t bad, it’s simply not exciting. I’d assume people who chose that shade are the kind who only order vanilla ice cream.
As for the red, well. Red was an exciting and desirable shade during the time when red phones were such a rarity but when the other iPhones have vibrant shades of blue, purple, pink and green… it’s hard not to feel let down.
The only reason to get the iPhone SE is if you really don’t want to spend more than X amount on a phone… but then it’s hard to argue that you couldn’t instead just buy a secondhand iPhone 12 model. Better specs, more colours and still sexier than the iPhone SE.
The budget iPhone mini
What I did notice about the iPhone SE is that it’s so small. As I have gorilla hands and old person eyes, you can bet I did not have fun.
Performance-wise though, thanks to the chip, the phone is tiny and zippy – able to power through games and apps that a similarly-priced Android phone would not do as well.
The camera, however, is just a single wide angle 12MP camera with optical image stabilisation but no zoom.
It’s decent enough now that you can get decent-ish photos indoors and in low light, but the best photos will still be the ones taken outdoors with plenty of daylight.
It’s 2022 and I still don’t get why Apple is just so stubborn about adding more optical zoom or at least matching the levels of digital zoom available on competing phones.
For RM2,129 you could get the Samsung S20 FE that comes in six very pretty shades, 256GB, a 6.5-inch display and 30x digital zoom as well as 3x optical zoom.
Sure, the S20 FE came out last year and its chip isn’t anywhere near as powerful as the A15 Bionic but at least you feel like you get a lot more features with comparable build quality.
To summarise – the iPhone SE isn’t terrible but the low price point just isn’t enough to persuade either the Android faithful to switch or the iPhone hopefuls to “settle” for the least exciting model just because it’s cheap.
At the very least, Apple could have made a model-exclusive shade for the iPhone SE or even bring back popular favourites such as apple green or light purple.
In spite of the newer chip, I would, sadly recommend either secondhand units or previous generation iPhones over the iPhone SE if you want to save some ringgit.
Here’s hoping that if the iPhone SE does come back again there will be more things to love besides its price.