So it’s real. The iPhone SE is basically the slightly polished body of the iPhone 5S, with most of the guts of the iPhone 6S. No 3DTouch (whatevs), no barometer (feh) and the front-facing camera is more or less the one from the 5S (no auto HDR for video, an f/2.4 aperture instead of f/2.2) – and, of course, a display 30% smaller. And a battery larger than the 5S had, one not very much smaller than the 6S.
The 6S famously has a smaller battery than the 6, to make way for the 3DTouch display. But by eschewing that, and pairing the presumably-more-efficient chipset with the smaller screen, Apple has turned out a phone that leapfrogs its parent – the cited battery life on Internet use and HD video playback is across the board at least 20% greater than what was claimed for the 6 or 6S.
Twenty percent, in a phone which is available for $500 off contract in a 64GB model as compared to $750 for the same capacity 6S. The same phone under the hood for one-third off. (And one-third off the screen natch).
I’ve been mulling this one over since September, if you go back far enough. Certainly since the rumors began to pick up steam in December. And out of pocket, it’s only going to run me $360 plus tax. It’s a tough call – on the one hand my work-provided phone is unlocked and certainly good enough for daily use. But it’s a better battery in a smaller phone which would be my own damn phone, not the one from work. The best personally owned phone I have right now is that two-plus-year-old Moto X, which has gotten its last OS update.
It’s not the most irrational thing I’ve ever wanted to spend that kind of money on, no doubt. This is going to be a tough one…and it may depend heavily on whether the battery improvement is as advertised. But I’m tired of having to keep low power mode on all day, and rely on plugging in at the desk…
I know I should wait. I should definitely wait. We’ll see how long and how effectively I hold out.