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iPhoneSEFeature

Last yr, Apple launched the iPhone SE. It's the company'south last remaining 4-inch device, and it uses the same chassis every bit the iPhone 5s, but packs iPhone 6s hardware into the form factor. The diminutive smartphone was reviewed extremely well, simply for i attribute of its design: Its low-end model was limited to 16GB.

Now, Apple has removed that brake and bumped the basic storage to 32GB, while keeping the same $399 toll tag. In doing then, it'due south transformed the iPhone SE into the all-time iPhone on the market, in my personal opinion, even if the guts of the scrap are now eighteen months quondam. Hither's why:

First, the iPhone SE is all the same the easiest iPhone to grip and utilise with one manus. The iPhone 6, 6s, and 7 may only technically be slightly larger, but that small difference is increased when yous add together a protective case. It may not exist a huge difference (in fact, it can't be when you consider we're talking almost millimeters) only every millimeter counts. I am aware, of course, that there are enough of people who love giant phablet phones, and some won't be happy until the skit below becomes reality:

Yet, as a person who likes the ability to answer a call, type a text, or flip through menus while securely gripping my phone, the original iPhone five'south chassis is superior to anything Apple has built since.

Second, there's battery life. Despite being built on older technology, the iPhone SE's bombardment life beats the iPhone vii, every bit shown in the chart below, from Ars Technica's review of Apple's latest hardware.

The only Apple tree device that manages to beat the iPhone SE is the iPhone 7 Plus, which wins past a whopping 3 percent. In gaming tests, the iPhone SE is tied with the 7 Plus and vi Plus as the longest-lasting smartphone, at ~374 – 377 minutes.

Third, there's price. True, the iPhone SE isn't equally fast equally either the iPhone 7 or 7 Plus, but it'southward also a heck of a lot cheaper — and you may never discover the processor deviation since it'due south pushing fewer pixels than the ii larger phones. A 32GB iPhone SE is $399, an iPhone vii starts at $649, and the 7 Plus is $769. That's the base of operations price for 32GB of storage for all three phones. You may not be getting quite every bit much overall performance, but even the iPhone 7 is i.62x more expensive than the SE.

4th, you get to keep your headphone jack. I won't belabor this point; yous either intendance about having a headphone jack or you lot don't.

5th, while mobile benchmarks are peachy for showing big numbers on devices, they aren't so great at really capturing the experience of using the device. My personal telephone today is the iPhone 5c (16GB). Information technology's built on iPhone 5 hardware, which ways I'm "rocking" a smartphone effectively built in 2012. I'm non going to tell you that I don't notice the speed divergence betwixt an iPhone vii and my poor 5c. Of class I exercise. Information technology'd be stupid to claim otherwise. But the relative experience of using the 5c has degraded much more than slowly than the discount iPhone 3G I bought in 2009 and was painfully waiting on by 2011. My 5c is finer a yr older than my 3G was when I replaced information technology, but it's far more useful to me at this point in its life cycle than the 3G was. Smartphones, like PCs, don't age as quickly as they used to. (I might love the SE, but I also find the video below to be hilarious).

If you love huge screens and cutting-edge tech, this opinion piece won't change your heed. If you're an Android user, well, I don't expect us to come across eye-to-eye, either. But one of the reasons I've stuck with Apple is because it continues to brand a small phone that suits my preferences at a time when most of the Android market has been chasing larger devices. The but reason I didn't upgrade to an SE already is because the 16GB chapters stuck in my craw, and bumping upwards to 32GB removes that trouble. If the screen size doesn't trip you upward, it'due south arguably the all-time iPhone you can buy today.