The iPhone SE combines 2 GB of RAM and always-listening voice control on a one-handable package. So did the Moto X when it dropped at the end of the summer of 2013. It’s still flabbergasting to me that Google didn’t take better advantage of that – it was (and in my opinion remains) the most genuinely innovative phone since the original iPhone, and they utterly flubbed it by combining premium pricing with virtually no promotion. Were circumstances reversed, Steve Jobs would have sold a million Moto X first-gens and probably buried the iPhone – but then that’s why Apple is the world’s most valuable publicly-held company and Moto is now a subsidiary of Lenovo churning out (very good value for money) budget phones.
The thing is, the iPhone 6 (technically the fifth different body style) is just a hair too big, made worse by the fact that you have to put a case on it – partly because the damned camera protrudes from the back, partly because the rounded-off sides make it like handling a bar of soap that’s already at the edge of what you can handle in one hand. My iPhone 6 is in Apple’s leather case, and it’s just a little too big to do everything one-handed. My wife’s iPhone 6S is in a different style of case, and it feels (and even looks) like a larger phone. And looking around the last couple of days, it occurs to me that the whole world has pretty much just shrugged and said “okay, phones are five inches now” and decided that we’ll all two-hand it. Which – I mean, how do you hold your drink? How do you stay upright when commuting? (Actually don’t bother answering that last bit. If I had a nickel for everyone at work that I see whizzing by on a bicycle with both hands on the phone instead of the handlebars, I could pay my bail.)
Nope, the iPhone SE is pretty much Apple’s concession to what I’ve said all along: we crossed the finish line in 2013 and all that’s left is to make the bits better. And they largely did – more RAM, always-on voice control, faster processor, greatly-improved camera (and fully enclosed in the body of the phone!) – not to mention the battery life. My random scribblings and attempts at algebra led me to think there should be a 17% battery life improvement from the 5S. Instead, I got 17% battery improvement from the 6S – which is a substantial premium over the original 5S.
The thing is, if the iPhone 6 were my only device, it would be tough to take the hit on screen size. But it isn’t. I have the iPad for movie watching and heavy reading (not to mention the Kindle, which is ideal for long rides on trains and planes). The kind of reading I do on the phone – RSS feeds, Twitter, text and email – isn’t that diminished by going to a 4” screen instead of 4.7”, and the audio (the endless podcasts, and occasionally even music) isn’t affected in the least.
And the other nice thing: the SE is completely 100% backward compatible with the entire ecosystem of iPhone 5/5S accessories. I already have my Magpul case. I already have a Mophie charge case. I could take this to London without spending a cent on accessory support and could almost certainly make it through a full day without even needing to pull on additional charging (largely because I won’t be playing audio all day and most of what I do will be either photography or navigation).
Long story short: I don’t need to replace my work phone now. But as soon as I do, the iPhone SE is the move, because it’s basically the 6S-Minus – all the same stuff, everything I want and nothing I don’t, in a perfectly-sized package. For the first time in I don’t know when, there’s an Apple product ideally tailored to my needs – if only I needed it.