Apple iPhone SE
The iPhone SE may be the small phone of your dreams. As anticipated, it's mostly an Apple iPhone 6s crammed into an iPhone 5s body—and because of its smaller size and lower screen resolution, it should have even better performance. At $399 and $499, it'll be a real test of whether people actually want smaller phones.
I spent a healthy amount of time with the SE today after the phone's introduction. The design is very, very similar to the 5s. It's really hard to tell the two phones apart. The buttons are in the same place, there are exactly as many speaker holes, and the color of the materials looks about the same. But performance wise, it's ace. Gaming performance on the 6s is already good, but I expect it to be even better here, because the same A9 processor is pushing fewer pixels.
Now, I've been using 4.7- to 5.1-inch devices for a while now, so I can't deny that the 4-inch iPhone definitely feels small. The SE has the same 1,136-by-640 screen as the 5s, which is the same 326ppi pixel density as Apple's larger phones, so it doesn't feel low-res—it's just smaller. The smallness of the phone mostly hits me when trying to use the touch keyboard.
And one of the biggest changes is invisible, and very important. Apple stepped up to a better modem from the 5s. It adds Band 12 for T-Mobile, which dramatically improves LTE reception, and the Spark bands for Sprint, which will probably improve download speeds by 50 percent over the 5s. Apple told me this isn't the 6s's modem. It's LTE Category 4, not Category 6, so it won't be able to take advantage of some of the tricks Sprint and AT&T are running to make their networks faster. But it's definitely better than the 5s's modem.
So, it looks like the 5s, almost disturbingly so (iPhone SE vs. iPhone 5 below), but it's faster with apps, faster on the Internet, and has better cameras. That's pretty much the experience.
Apple iPhone SE vs. iPhone 5
Apple also claims up to 50 percent better battery life for the SE over the 5s because of more efficient components, although of course we haven't tested that.
There are a few small caveats here. One of them is that the SE's cameras aren't class-leading any more. As I saw when testing the Samsung Galaxy S7$672.00 at Verizon Wireless and LG G5, the iPhone's 12-megapixel main camera doesn't quite measure up to those in low light. It's really good, though, especially considering this is a $400 phone and the Galaxy S7 costs $650. The SE also drops back to a 1.2-megapixel front camera from the iPhone 6s's 5-megapixel offering. That just isn't a lot of pixels for a $400 phone nowadays, making for blocky selfies.
Some of my friends have been lamenting the lack of a 128GB model. There's still some of the "smaller means cheaper" mentality going on with this product, and Apple wants to drive people who want 128GB to the bigger, more expensive phones. I think almost everyone who wants the SE will be happy with 64GB; that's a lot of storage!
I'd consider the lack of 3D Touch less of a caveat. I was crazy about 3D Touchwhen it first came out on the iPhone 6s, especially in the things it could do for gaming. But I haven't seen third parties making much use of it.
Should you replace your iPhone 5s with the SE? If you're on Sprint or T-Mobile, absolutely. No question. Right now. The difference in modem performance is so huge, many connectivity frustrations will go away when you pick up your apparently identical little phone.
If you're on AT&T or Verizon, it's a tougher call. If your battery is running down or your phone is lagging, go for it. You'll get the performance you expect from the latest iPhone, in a more familiar form that's $250 cheaper. But if your 5s is fine, the SE doesn't have a killer feature to make you recycle a perfectly good phone.
The iPhone SE pre-orders start March 24, and will arrive in stores on March 31. I'm really looking forward to getting it into the Labs for testing.
Sascha Segan is live from Apple with his hands on impressions of the iPhone SE and new iPad!
Posted by PCMag on Monday, March 21, 2016