Compared to my first gen SE, I'd like the faster processor, better camera and better battery life. But I'm not sure I'm willing to go up in size and weight, and get the rounded edges that make it even harder to grip one-handed.
For me, a bigger screen isn't a plus - after years of following the trend and being on my phone more and more, I managed to kick the habit and I'm very happy that my phone has now found its rightful place as a utility when I'm off my computer, rather than as a primary computer. I use it for maps, e-tickets, answering the occasional im. But it's not as convenient as my computer, it's not for leisurely browsing or media consumption, and I don't want it to be - it means that when I'm off my computer, I'm really off.
So this push toward bigger screens runs counter to what I want a phone to be for me. A bigger screen invites you to grab it with both hands. A bigger screen invites you to watch more stuff on it, watch movies, browse reddit and whatnot. I don't want any of that, I'd in fact prefer if it wasn't good at that, just like I don't want more sugar in my food.
I'm with you here, I went through a period of moving to feature phones and ditching the smart watch to reduce the phone back to utility rather than a distraction. But feature phones, even those running kaiOS, just don't have the support for communication tools and things like 2fa authenticator apps.
I eventually went for an iPhone SE (2016) in the last year, after it was discontinued and managed to get a boxed, new unit for less than even the low-end android market phones go for. Thus far it's the most enjoyable phone to use having moved from an S8 which was certainly "better" on paper.
The size is incredibly portable and easy to handle, the battery, despite only being 1500mAh, does a very good job lasting me the day (though I certainly expect it won't continue to do so) and the screen is acceptable but annoying enough that I don't want to be using it for long stretches. It's got the lastest iOS and I fully expect the lack of iOS 14 support will be the reason I have to swap it for a new model once software support falls away.
It seems like this new SE model is still the smallest phone you can get despite the increase in dimensions and weight that you mention. It's nice to see a comment that shares my view and I hope a market for the smaller phone will come back around similar to that odd stage in the early 00s where handsets suddenly became impossibly small.
My iPhone SE got destroyed and I got a 7 to replace it since they wouldn’t give me another SE. The larger screen isn’t nicer and just makes the phone harder to hold. I actually feel like I have a harder time touching things accurately as well, I think the 7 detects touches at a different place on your finger.
And of course I can’t use headphones, I ordered a dongle from newegg and waited weeks and now it hasn’t come. I’ve mostly given up on using my phone for music because of this.
The water resistance is nice though, that’s probably the only feature I’ve actually enjoyed.
Be careful with that; during disconnection of the magnetic part, the pins carrying 20 V on the cable can make momentary connections with other pins on the portion of the connector remaining in the machine; if this happens, the port may never work again (for charging, or for anything else).
I can't think of any point when I've needed water resistance.
Then it's not for you. But given that phone manufacturers go to the expense of putting water-sensing strips inside phones, someone is going to put that water resistance to use.
> I can't think of any point when I've needed water resistance.
I couldn't too, then I fell into a channel. No harms to me and my bicycle but I had to turn off the phone and let it dry for a day before I could use it again.
If I got a different phone it would have to be one with a reasonable size or one that let me leave gcc/openssh installed for more than a few weeks at a time.
> It's got the lastest iOS and I fully expect the lack of iOS 14 support will be the reason I have to swap it for a new model once software support falls away.
For what it’s worth, Apple last updated iOS 12 on March 24th, so they seem to be supporting not only the most recent major version of iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222
> the battery, despite only being 1500mAh, does a very good job lasting me the day (though I certainly expect it won't continue to do so)
Once _Settings - Battery_ indicates you need a new one, the $59 (or equivalent) that Apple charges is well worth it. You will also likely notice a performance increase as well!
I hear you. I was like you for the longest time. I had an SE for 3~ years and I absolutely loved it. I researched and researched to find another phone with the exact same dimensions. Couldnt find anything. The thought of moving up to a bigger phone pained me.
I eventually bought the iphone 8 about 6 months ago. And my god, it is just as good if not better. The size that scared me so much? Turns out I like it even more. The speed has been great, and I never knew how much I'd appreciate the larger screen. Point is, I know where you're coming from. But trust me, the iphone 8 size still feels relatively easy to hold (I can still comfortably hold it with one hand 100% of the time), and I have 0 regrets whatsoever about the upgrade.
>rounded edges that make it even harder to grip one-handed
I don't get this criticism - I owned a 5 series iPhone and the anodized finish was anything but easy to grip. It looked nice but massively reduced the friction between your hand and the surface, making it the easiest phone to drop that I have ever held. Their lightness didn't help either.
Conversely the newer iPhones with glass backs stick to your skin almost like glue in comparison, and if anything I find the rounded corners increase the amount of the phone surface in contact with your skin.
What climate do you live in? I live in the north (Canada) and during the winter my skin gets very dry. The glass and metal of recent iPhones feels extremely slippery to my dry skin. I use a rubberized case which makes the phone much more grippable, at the cost of even more bulk. I really want a small, lightweight, grippable iPhone.
This was in the UK so not very humid. Interesting that everyone's experience is so different. I just dried my hand and holding it flat with my XS placed on top, I can tilt it to about 15-20 degrees off vertical before it starts slipping off!
I used iPhone 4S for 4 years and did not drop it once. I dropped iPhone 8 first day, I have no idea how to hold it, so I bought case immediately. Now it's bearable. Another reason for using a case is a terrible camera protruding from the phone.
The slightly bigger body I could accommodate, the rounded edges are f* ugly but can handle that too if I must, even the dumb protruding camera may not repel me if I meditate enough but not having audio connection without some kind of adapter or adapters - considering the various use cases - is just incomprehensibly idiotic. I will never ever go for such. I rather have a granny-phone and paper+pen address book, relearn using printed maps and never carry around e-tickets than giving that amount of money for a defective product design, for an audio device without audio connection (that'd also spare me of annoying update and uninvited functionality frenzy as an extra btw.).
This functionality degradation for the sake of design mania indicates utter madness and gross incompetence!
Let's say Apple comes out with a phone with a perfect folding screen, a battery that holds a charge for a month, perfect offline speech recognition, and it costs $100. I still wouldn't buy it if it didn't have a headphone jack, because I'd consider it a bad design. Does that make me stupid? Perhaps. But as an engineer I'd find such a phone insulting: There's no valid engineering reason not to include a headphone jack. The only reason is for Apple to thumb its nose at people who actually care about good design by saying "We're Apple. See what we can get away with?"
It would be like Mercedes suddenly deciding cars didn't need air conditioners any more and refusing to build cars with that option. "We're Mercedes. We know best. You don't need an A/C. Open the window if you're too warm."
The whole premise just sounds insulting, and if it happened you'd never buy a Mercedes again.
So, just don't buy it? I dunno what to tell you -- it sounds like a lot of your identity and mental health is wrapped up in what Apple's product people want to develop.
Personally, I would never want to go back to the crappy headphone connectors. The connector always wore out on me. So while I understand why you might want a headphone port (and some people likely want an in-built parallel or ADB2 port), it's hyperbolic to call it "utter madness and gross incompetence".
In reality, it's just someone having different values than you. Why is that so difficult to accept for some people?
That was the point exactly, you do not need to analyze and put so many uninvited speculation into a simple fact that I see tings differently and doesn't like certain things. Yes, the point was not to buy the device, exactly!
I stand by the phrasing of 'utter madness and gross incompetence' when usability is degraded and things get unnecessarily complicated in an essential functionality. All of this for questionable changes (I wouldn't dare calling it improvement, I feel improper just to mention this word in this context, the whole thing is very far from improvement).
What I also need to add how strange is that certain groups of people get offended on strong and grounded opinion about some consumer product like if it was a central element of their life not a utility of an auxiliary topic.
You can stand by the phrasing, which I think most reasonable people would deem hyberbolic. It is a misuse of language to make such a strong emotional statement about a design decision where you have zero knowledge of the considerations involved, and what tradeoffs were considered.
There must be some sort of an internet rule one party intends a statement to be about the other, but it really applies to the author.
We live in an age where cars reboot while driving (Tesla). It's bizarre because we never experienced it before.
But the additional flexibility offered via software updates is the core power of software. Where we are able to replace hardware with software functionality, there's additional flexibility for improvement and iteration. That's a valuable add.
The bizarre here is squeezing in matters into things just because we can. Using techniques just for the sake of using those techniques or approaches elsewhere is not a good enough argument.
It is bad putting software into anything and everything, just because we do it frequently to other things. It should have much better reason for that. Complicating unnecessarily and many times introducing risks and troubles is a no good.
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
That's a rather narrow view of things, one that I'm surprised to see on HN.
Automatically that view is disqualified because we are talking about Bluetooth headphones; there must be software on them to communicate efficiently with paired devices.
AirPods receive firmware updates to make adjustments to the audio, and AirPods Pro receive further updates to make adjustments to balance audio quality and the way the noise cancellation works in order to make sure that the AirPods fit properly in peoples' ears.
I don't know that (A) connectivity, (B) audio quality, and (C) fitting in peoples' ears are contrived in any way.
Most of us here work with workstations or laptops, daily. But generally speaking not as many people are using them in their home. A lot of folks do use their phones primarily for media watching and browsing. And that's a big chunk of Apple's market.
> why is the last group ignored when it comes to phones?
Presumably because there isn't actually that much demand for that category. Apple tried it out with the original SE and they have the sales data. If there were tons of people clamoring for a sequel, they would have made one instead of a refreshed iPhone 8.
I think one part is that they're afraid to be grilled by reviews leading to bad sales.
A $1000 4" phone won't have the same capabilities as a $1000 6.5" phone, and reviewers somehow do not seem to understand it might be ok and will trash the smaller phone.
If we're talking about iPhones, they don't necessarily break when you drop it, especially the last few generations. You might get an unsightly scuff on the back or edge, at worst the back glass might crack — but it will do so in such a way that the phone still won't shatter.
In fact, my partner's iPhone and my previous one both broke in independent incidents when both were in cases. My new phone, I don't use a case, drop it regularly on asphalt, concrete, and it's even taken a dive into hot dishwashing water — and it's just fine.
I know somebody will come along with a story about how theirs smashed into smithereens but, for my money, Apple builds their phones to last.
Technically, yes. Realistically, no, because it's not the sort of crack that will make the back shatter; the crack is, somehow, under the surface glass. On my phone, it's entirely cosmetic — it knocks the resale value down, but that's about it.
Fun fact: my phone took its dive after the crack. No water got in at all.
Calling it a crack when it's made with crack-resistant glass doesn't give the right impression of how undamaged it really is, compared to one's expectation that it shattered into a million pieces and embedded itself into my carpet like grenade shrapnel — it ain't like that.
This is a fair point but everything is online and at our finger tips. Having it on your phone just means you’re not sitting at your computer for longer hours, hurting your back, neck and even fingers.
This is anecdotal, of course, but I hurt my body much more by using a phone as my primary computer. Using a desktop (with a proper keyboard) is much less taxing on my RSI than a phone is.
RSI's are a result of prolonged use of the same apparatus, switching to phone after long day of computer use would help in that case. Doesnt help with the eyes or the forward head posture, i agree.
I use both styles of iPhones, an XS as my phone and a 6S as my at-work iPod and device for random moments of RSS-type surfing. I am not a heavy or advanced user. My preference is unquestionably toward the 6S style of size and operation. FaceID on the XS is great when wet fingers are an issue (often for me at work) and for in-app password authentications.
All told, I prefer the one-handed usability of the smaller 6S and that includes losing the newer-design interactions, particularly control center on the XS necessitating two hands to invoke it. In fact, I'm the reverse of Gruber—I'm apt to use old-UI gestures on my XS (not that it happens often, I tend to switch seamlessly).
Fine. Whatever. That's just me. What I find more disturbing is all the words spilled by reviewers about all these devices. At this point, not much is significantly changing in what's offered with new devices, so the simple lists of Pros and Cons capture most everything. Using Gruber's review as an example, I don't find a need for multi-paragraph expositions on the UI changes that took place years ago, and I suspect most of his readers are informed enough that they don't either.
For the average person, battery life is similar among models, all the cameras are impressive, the screens and speed great. The tradeoffs between models are generally minimal but distinct—just list them.
Overall, smartphone innovation has plateaued and so too have the reviews.
I’m with you. I think for casual users who the SE seems to be marketing, the 6S is good enough for a quarter of the price used. Although it will probably not get this year’s iOS update, forcing people to upgrade... Otherwise the 6S really is good enough and compact enough.
I don't know. People do not take cameras with them anymore and the SE 2020's camera system is much better than that of the 6s. So, if you have the money, I think that is worth the new SE alone.
Apart from that, I agree that the 6s is still surprisingly smooth and doesn't seen to struggle with recent iOS versions and applications, despite being a 5 year old phone.
That's true because Apple puts significant effort into making that work. I personally got bugs assigned to me when certain animations were <60fps on the 6s, even if they worked on newer phones like the xs. The 6s is especially prone to this as i recall because the point:pixel scaling is 3x vs 2x/4x on other phones.
Btw - thank you for working hard at making this smooth. My SO had a 6S until 2 months ago and only during iOS 11 it was not smooth. iOS 12 and 13 were perfect and apart from the camera she says she kind of misses the 6S for its smaller form factor. The other benefits of newer generations simply don't matter to many users. WhatsApp/Insta/Email/Maps runs just fine on an A9 or A13 and her main game is 2D chess....
There's a good reason why Apple aren't making the small form factor phone lots of you are asking for: logistics.
The new SE requires very little new manufacturing capacity. The case and probably battery are from the iPhone 8; the CPU/GPU/SOC and most of the rest of the electronics are from the iPhone 11; the camera still seems to be a slightly unknown quantity but the specs suggest it has a lot in common with the iPhone X camera. No doubt a certain amount of tricky engineering was required to put those parts together efficiently, but the SE requires almost no new manufacturing capacity beyond the final assembly line. For Apple it's pretty much a no-brainer.
A hypothetical "iPhone Classic", with modern innards in an iPhone 4/5 form factor case, would be a very different matter. You couldn't combine the 11's CPU with the 5's battery - battery life would be laughable. So you'd need to use a CPU from an earlier model; I suspect you'd have to go back at least to the 8 to find a CPU that doesn't drain an iPhone 5 size battery like water through a sieve. That means keeping one more CPU fabrication line in business beyond its intended life, taking that capacity away from the plants that are making silicon for the iPhone 11 and the coming 12. The camera would of course also have to be based on an earlier model, with all the same downsides again in terms of keeping old technology going and taking up factory capacity. And fitting all that into a 4/5 case would still be a much bigger engineering feat than the actual SE 2.
Bottom line: Even if you assume that the "iPhone Classic" market would be as big as that for the SE 2, it's hard to see how it would be worth Apple's time and money to cater to it. If you want to argue that the Classic would be a practical proposition for Apple, you would have to claim that the Classic market would be much bigger than the SE 2 - and given how popular the SE 2 is already turning out to be, that seems really unlikely.
All that makes sense, but forget Apple, one of the Android manufacturers should serve this market. I feel like there's a sizeable niche that could fund one small, high quality Android phone. It's really never been done; all the small phones that have come out have been compromised in some way. Sony's Xperia Compact line came the closest, but it doesn't use stock Android, which is a huge point against it. I feel like it can't be _that_ hard: there are so many huge phones on the market. Just nix one of those models, put mid-to-high-range components in it, put a small display on it, chuck stock Android on it, and boom, you've just dominated a niche.
How did I not know about this? I just replaced my phone, so I can't really justify the switch, but that is almost exactly the phone I want! My only nitpick would be 32GB storage seems insufficient since android takes multiple GB of that and music collections plus a few apps will use up the rest quite quickly.
[edit] On My phone "System" is listed as 11 GB, other google apps add up to another couple GB, and my music collection is 14GB so out-of-the-box I could see me having just 5GB free with no other apps.
I just learned about it, too. Your complaint doesn't jive with the purpose of the device: A communication device.
It makes specific points to say that it is meant for those who don't want the phone to be a distraction. I don't recall the camera specs, but I can't imagine it's good by 2020 standards. Music, sure - it seems like the right size for a good MP3 player (remember that term, kids?)
I like the idea of a palm phone. Part of me thinks about getting a phone like it, and then a Oneplus 7T phablet, and swapping the SIM like you would swap a watch for different occasions.
Actually, depending on the response time and the reliability of getting SMS and calls post-swap, that sounds tempting...
Depending on your carrier, you could do this without swapping SIMs -- as far as I know, all of the Big Three in the US (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T) all have "number-sharing" programs normally reserved for things like smartwatches. In fact, Palm specifically advertises that they work with Verizon and T-Mobile, and proposes alternatives for other networks (https://palm.com/pages/companion). If you're serious about this, it sounds worth looking into!
> Music, sure - it seems like the right size for a good MP3 player (remember that term, kids?)
I own a sansa clip plus. It has a 32GB microSD card in it. An out-of-the-box storage of about 20GB would make the Palm phone a downgrade from my MP3 player.
The size of X Compact was perfect. Too bad it was so thick.
Doing it nowadays with a no bezel screen would give me a screen of the size I'd like to have. I mean: my current phone as a larger no bezel screen, but I'd chop away at least 2 cm of it to get a smaller phone the size of the Compact.
Since most phones are glass bricks these days, the assembly cost is approximately the same. Thus the profit margin on a larger phone is larger, and the incentive to build a smaller phone isn't there.
Even Android phones have logistic problems with this. Many of them use similar vendors. Creating a phone with vastly different size and components means a lot more sourcing and upfront cost.
> You couldn't combine the 11's CPU with the 5's battery - battery life would be laughable.
Do you have a source for that? It seems like many of the times Apple upgrades their chip, they advertise greater power efficiency. E.g. for the A13 (from Wikipedia):
> Apple claims the two high performance cores are 20% faster with 30% reduction in power consumption, and the four high efficiency cores are 20% faster with a 40% reduction in power when compared to the A12.
Similarly the A12:
> It has two high-performance cores which are claimed to be 15% faster and 50% more energy-efficient than the Apple A11
And A8:
> Apple states that it has 25% more CPU performance and 50% more graphics performance while drawing only 50% of the power of its predecessor, the Apple A7.
I've searched the web and can't seem to find any source that actually specifies power consumption of Apple's chips by generation, stretching from the A6 to A13.
So for all I know, the 11's CPU with the 5's battery might be far better, not far worse. It doesn't seem like any kind of law that newer processors use more energy. So only actual data will give an answer.
Not the original poster but the iPhone 5 had a 1440 mAh battery while the iPhone 11 has more than double that with a 3110 mAh battery. For comparison, iPhone 5 was rated at 10 hours video playback while the iPhone 11 is rated at 17. So ballpark guess, that hybrid version would have ~8 hours video playback compared to the iPhone 5's 10.
Rough numbers all around, especially since battery usage is largely driven by the display, RAM, and CPU.
I'm not sure you understand what you're saying. The chips are quite a lot more efficient than they were in iPhone 5/8. You might have to scale back slightly on frequency for both power and thermal design but it won't be close to the water through sieve metaphor you put in.
I agree, but with Apple's obsession with making laptops smaller, more powerful - can we have that in a model of phone too? Ya know like innovation for this ..? I do think there is a market here for a small, powerful phone in old SE form factor.
But I know the reason here is tackle low cost and leveraging what you stated is what gets it there. So I do get it ...
All you say is that it does not serve very well the Apple shareholders to build such a device, because it will have lower profit margins. Not that it will not serve its users.
Of course, judging by most of the comments, the users are completely happy with this. Some are throwing money on their monitors despite saying it is a compromise. So you are right that a different device is/was quite unlikely.
So we never get the cheaper product that similar product hasn't released as flagship or mainstream. I hope Apple releases a modern iPhone with lightweight and fingerprint auth.
I don't really see his attempts to use the new gestures on the old-design iPhone as proof that the new UI is better. People still tell me to "tape" long after it was obvious that DVRs are better. It's simply muscle memory.
Still not sure that this my next phone though, probably going to stick with the old school SE. I had asked work for an upgrade, got the giant XR, and after five days put it right back in the box and handed it back. Presumably someone else at work got it. But I didn't want to carry a brick everywhere. Honestly something the shape of the iPhone 1 would be fine -- a little thicker to put a better camera in and more battery, but doesn't require me to take a dual-wielding feat on my next level up.
The new SE/2 seems workable -- if not what I want in terms of size. But I doubt I'm going to convince my work to buy me a new phone in this economy, and I'm happy with the old SE, so I guess this one is a pass. It's cool that Apple made a cheap phone, but what I actually wanted was a small phone and price wasn't that relevant.
To be fair, different people wanted different things. Some care about cheaper way inside the walled garden, some clanged into their SE for the small size, others keep their old iPhone for the headphone jack, and so on.
To me, this has always been the issue with that ecosystem. If the one or two devices Apple makes fits your preferences, then that's awesome. Otherwise, you're shit outta luck. With Android, there's phones for everyone. Want a hardware keyboard? Check out Blackberry or F(x)tec. Want audio jack with a nice DAC, check out LG. Want stylus support? Check out Samsung Note or Moto Stylus. Gaming phone? Check out Razer or ROG. And the list goes on. There's a phone for everyone.
If you care about width and not height, keep an eye out for new Xperia models. I think I remember some speculation that one of them (Xperia PRO?) might be unusually narrow.
The review states Android 8.1. The current site says Android 8.1[1] The updates section of the FAQ only talks about Google Play updates.[2] That’s not good enough for me.
I don't get it, do people expect magic? How do people think you're gonna fit all the features from a 6" phone into a device literally half the volume. Phones are already packed to the brim. When you make a smaller phone, other than the display, everything else takes the same size and uses the same amount of power.
This is the main reason phones have actually getting bigger. Not because people want huge phones, but because people want wireless charging, NFC, 3 cameras, high refresh rate, etc, and a much bigger battery to support all of those extra features.
It's great that you have those need, but that's too niche even for Android. No one is going to manufacture a small phone without camera or bluetooth or good battery, with Qi and NFC, just for the 5 people out there with your specific needs. Realistically, a small phone can only have 1-2 or the big features most premium phones have, and you might seem some, but you'll never see one that focuses on those two you need unfortunately.
It's cool that Apple made a cheap phone, but what I actually wanted was a small phone and price wasn't that relevant.
I liked small form factors more as well (though I am on an XS now). However, the ATP folks correctly pointed out that while many tech people classified the SE as 'the small iPhone' [1] and are now upset about the size of the SE 2020, for many non-tech people the SE is 'the cheap iPhone'. It is clear that most of the markets wanted bigger phones. And to them, the SE 2020 is a bigger phone than the old SE (thus good), while still being very price competitive in the iPhone lineup.
[1] The question is if Apple really wanted to make a small phone or just something that fills a price range. And one way to reduce the production price of the iPhone SE was to reuse the iPhone 5s and now iPhone 8 production process. Also, it differentiates between cheaper/expensive models. In other words, the size may just be side-effect of what the SE happens to be based on.
It's only cheap relative to Apples other phones, it's still outside of the range I'd consider reasonable. Although it seems the reason most people spend so much on phones is to get better cameras? Which I'm not particularly bothered about - maybe it's worth it for that.
I've upgraded my iPhone five times, just recently to the SE, and each time it's been exclusively for the camera. Literally exclusively, since in many other respects the functionality is going in reverse (loss of home button, touch ID, headphone port, etc.) I swallow it all for a better camera.
Yes, but no reason then to upgrade your phone to get a better camera at premium prices.
How about using the camera phone if you are strolling down the street and want to make a Pulitzer photo and getting a better camera for those times you know you will be making photos like an anniversary, etc.
The thing is: look how much we love convenience! Instead of having two devices (a decent phone and a much better separate camera, both rarely updated) we prefer to constantly upgrade the phone to have a better camera.
But a lot of the times you know you will be making photos in advance. If you go on holiday or you have an anniversary, etc. there's not that much planning required or bother to bring the proper separate (compact) camera.
I have a 16x20 print on my wall from a 6x7cm negative I took with a Mamiya 7 camera and lens. The print is sharp even under a 10x loupe. This was an image I envisioned in my head, waited for the right time and light, set up on a tripod, took 3 exposures, developed the film and printed with an enlarger.
Still, 80% of the pictures of my kids are on my phone, since the moments pass in an instant, and my phone is always with me.
Not likely to be cheap, but the rumor for this fall's iPhone update is 4 phones, the "standard" model coming in small and medium, and the "pro" model in medium and large.
Unfortunately what passes for the small size isn't as small as I'd like it to be, with the screen diagonal supposedly dropping from 5.8 in the iPhone 11 Pro down to 5.4" in the new base model.
Overall size is probably similar to the iPhone SE (2020) except with the screen being much larger to cover the forehead and chin. At least it's an improvement over the current situation where all three iPhones 11 are physically bigger than the 8.
Also bummed that the smallest size won't have an option for the best camera setup like this year's do. Ah well. We'll see for sure in September.
It's strange that we have yet to see a phone (from anybody, not just Apple) that's the size of the old SE but with a full bezel-less display. I feel like so many people would want one. When you've got 100% screen-to-body ratio, you don't need the screen to actually be all that big, for it to be "big."
>It's strange that we have yet to see a phone (from anybody, not just Apple that's the size of the old SE but with a full bezel-less display.
Simply because it cant be done yet. No Notch is small enough for an old SE Size iPhone with Face ID. The Screen would measure in exactly the same 4.7" except it would be 19.5:9 Ratio.
I think we are still a few years away from that possibilities.
Maybe that’s Apple’s reasoning for not doing it. On an Android phone, it could just be a fingerprint-reader-on-the-back device with no face unlock at all. (Heck, there’s gotta be a market for people who don’t care about front-facing cameras at all! They make laptops without cameras, don’t they?)
> I don't really see his attempts to use the new gestures on the old-design iPhone as proof that the new UI is better.
Maybe it's better, maybe not. Maybe it's just different... but it's inconsistent.
Wife has my old 6S, I had an 8 that got downgraded to a 7 because it disappeared (lost or stolen), and an iPad Pro. There's the double-click/force-press on the side to bring up the app switcher that I can live with, but I always always pull on the right side to bring up Control Center in the iPhones.
It's infuriating, all the more that there is zero reason (technical, UX, UI) that Apple could not move the old devices to the new interaction model and make them consistent across all platforms, except:
- don't alienate people with old habits and TouchID phones (but... still having the double-click work doesn't prevent the slide from the bottom to work too, as long as the slide from top right is implemented)
- make a clear usage distinction between X/FaceID and non-X/TouchID phones (but... not devices! the TouchID iPads have it...)
The net result is that people with TouchID phones just have an inconsistent experience, which is what makes it terrible at the end of the day.
Ahaha! Found in Infoworld Vol. 10 Issue 1 (January 1988)...
Headline: “RUNNING OS/2 ON THE MAC II: DO USERS CARE?”
Choice quotes: “The Mac 286 has everything necessary to run OS/2, but we haven’t tested it” ... “If a guy’s already got a Mac II, the idea of running OS/2 is pretty ludicrous.”
> It's cool that Apple made a cheap phone, but what I actually wanted was a small phone and price wasn't that relevant
Smaller phones have smaller batteries, and less space for components like cameras, etc. So they look worse on paper, because on paper you can't feel how big it is. Thinness has been fetishized. Please make overall smallness or "hand feel" a top selling point!
> Once you get used to the post-iPhone-X interaction model, there’s no going back. A week with the new SE has not shaken my belief that the X-style interaction design is superior. Not one iota.
I have an iPhone 8 (TouchID) and an iPad Pro (FaceID) and personally the multi-tasking gestures are ridiculously inferior to the home button. FaceID is nice (ApplePay, unlocking, etc) but switching to another app (multi-tasking) is painful in the "post-iPhone-X interaction model". Am I alone in this or is it a learned behavior that I simply haven't gotten over the hump yet?
EDIT: Turns out there is some nuance to iPad vs iPhone. I should also note that I'm probably referring moreso to the multi-app interface on an iPad (where you can have two apps running at the same time), which is still weird to me. Sliding left and right makes sense - get it now, but you have to remember what your last app interaction was. Also, weird downvotes?
I don’t find getting into the multitasking switcher meaningfully harder on the newer devices— it’s just a swipe-up-and-hold gesture, which I’ll occasionally time wrong and end up at the home screen, but not often enough to be “painful” (and it’s just another swipe away if I do mess up).
What is vastly better on the X-series devices, though, is switching between your two or three most recent apps. Just swipe left and right at the bottom of the screen (on the bar)— this lets you flip between apps in the order that they’re in the switcher. This means I very rarely actually enter the full multitasking switcher in normal use.
(The other, minor benefit of the new-style gestures is that they’re all cancellable and map directly to finger movement, but that’s more of a “feel” thing than a major usability win. Makes it feel Apple-y, though.)
> Just swipe left and right at the bottom of the screen (on the bar)— this lets you flip between apps in the order that they’re in the switcher. This means I very rarely actually enter the full multitasking switcher in normal use.
Did Apple make this a all or nothing thing or do some of these gestures also work on home button devices?
All or nothing, IIRC. Home button devices do have a gesture to switch directly between apps (3D touch on the left edge of the screen), but I always found it difficult to activate reliably, especially with a case on my phone.
Home button iPads get some of the X gestures— they get swipe up for home and multitasking, but not the right/left gestures on the home bar (because it’s not there). The loss of those isn’t that big of a deal, though, since iPads have the four-finger multitasking gestures as well.
> What is vastly better on the X-series devices, though, is switching between your two or three most recent apps.
On devices with 3D Touch switching between 2 recent apps became easier once you learned this shortcut: just hard press the left edge of the screen, and depending on how far you drag it to the right, you can either go to the previous app or open the switcher (faster than double tapping the home button).
Just wanted to chime in on this: it doesn’t matter how far you drag it to the right, but how “deep” you press: after pressing once, give it another, deeper press and the app switcher will appear.
> What is vastly better on the X-series devices, though, is switching between your two or three most recent apps. Just swipe left and right at the bottom of the screen (on the bar)— this lets you flip between apps in the order that they’re in the switcher.
That gesture works on iPads as well. Start with a slight updward swipe and go sideways.
Also try four finger pinch and four finger left/right swipe.
I do miss the home button for authentication. FaceID requires "full attention", while TouchID works even while distracted, and (crucially) in landscape.
But for multitasking, I really do prefer the swipe-up gesture. I don't find it painful at all, it feels very natural: touch from the bottom, slide up, and then horizontally to select what you want.
I have held out for a while upgrading my LG G7 on android due to one crucial feature for me: Notification LED for my personal phone. (PS: "NotifyBuddy" looks like something that could satisfy my minimum requirement on OLED screens)
I like Apple for work, and I just ordered an SE 2020 on my upgrade plan, to replace my 8.
Why? Other than liking a small phone for work, I do not want to lose fingerprint auth. FaceID means no masks, no landscape, trouble in darkness (I think), trouble in bed or with smooshed face, trouble when the phone is on a desk and I'm looking at it from an angle.
With under-screen fingerprint readers being possible from Oneplus, it must be a matter of cost/Apple-ian adherence to moving on from a technology with purpose, even when you don't need to.
Oh don't get me started about how many times I have do a weird 90 degrees head turn to unlock my XS when it is in landscape mode. I don't get why it is so hard to compare a 90 degree rotated FaceID match.
Everyone that owns a iPhone with FaceID knows the trouble, for everyone else it looks like I am trying to read something without turning my phone.
I don't think you actually have to do that. At least with my iPad pro, when it is in landscape, I don't have to do anything different with my head. The only issue I have is if I am holding it in landscape with my hands I have to move my hand off of the camera so it can see me.
FaceId is trash but swipe multitasking on the iPhone is an amazing iteration. That said, the tap to hold for an hour to move icons around is also trash. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve found it’s helpful if you make a slight half circle from the multitasking bar (whatever the bottom bar you pull on is called) to instantly go back to the last app.
But it’s a memory game with what is on your app stack. Was Duo open last or email or calculator? If you aren’t sure you need to pull straight up into scroll mode... I don’t think there is a great solution to this, Apple has surely spent millions and millions every year on mobile UX.
They're slightly different interactions and I (not the commenter you replied to) use both. I feel like the bottom swipe is a discrete action that takes you straight to the last app, and I use it when I'm very confident, like a one ⌘-tab with no hesitation.
The half circle is more like starting to activate the app switcher, but confirming the next/previous app immediately. The difference is that it gives you slightly more time to see what you're doing and you can bail out into the app switcher if you change your mind in the instant the apps come up. That's actually the only way I ever open the app switcher; I feel like the swipe up and hold is way too slow.
Those benchmarks are impressive. iPhone SE beating the 2019 MBP in single core performance? That's fantastic!
I wish I could comment on or know what he was talking about with the iPhone X vs "old iPhone" interaction paradigm. I personally thought the "single button" hardware interface was an incredible innovation that changed everything. Even Android relies on it. My Galaxy S9+ has a "software home button" (like most Androids do) in place of the iPhone's. I'll have to find a friend with an iPhone X or later to try the new swipe up gestures and see if they are indeed better.
Same with MBP touchpads which many people don't even realise since the feedback works even when the laptop is sleeping. It's a really weird experience when you actually turn it off and... nothing - you can't actually "press" it.
When I had the first generation MacBook 12", people wouldn't even believe that it was not a mechanical click when you told them. I often had to turn the machine off to convince them that it is fake. Which I would happily do to see the look on their faces ;).
I remember pressing the home button on a powered off iPhone 7 a few times. It feels like attempting to take the last step in a flight of stairs when you miscounted by one.
Took me a while to realize this also applies to the magic trackpad and integrated trackpad on macbooks, but it is nice to be able to customize it. The trackpads even have two clicks the second being a "deep" click which requires even more pressure than a regular click.
It's pretty easy to notice with the magic trackpad—it loses its ability to be "clicked" when it loses power/when you turn it off.
(The trackpad on the laptop does as well, but I feel like you're just less likely to try clicking the trackpad on a macbook/MBP if the computer's not on. Whereas with the external one, you'll notice it when you go to pick it up/move it around and it doesn't accidentally click in your hand.)
Also a nice feature, which unfortunately not a lot of applications use, is the haptic feedback. E.g. when you drag an object in OmniGraffle, you will feel very subtle feedback in the trackpad when two objects align.
Almost 20 years ago I had a cool Logitech mouse that did this. The mouse had a haptic (Synaptics, I think?) engine in it, and when you moved the cursor over buttons, menus, or other UI elements, it would give a slight “tick” as you crossed each boundary. It was very cool. There was a lot of customization available for it as well.
I had to ditch that mouse when I switched to Linux. I think it didn’t have any standard HID-type driver or something.
Yeah when I got my 2015 MBP that track pad was mind blowing. I remember turning it on and off and comparing the feeling of trying to click it. It's an incredible innovation. Small, but amazing from an engineering/UX perspective.
How: haptic feedback using a weighted linear actuator.
Why: I suspect because it debuted with the iPhone 7, the first officially water resistant iPhone, that it was a waterproofing move to get rid of possible ingress points.
I've always assumed it was partially about reliability and partially about saving space, since water-resistant physical buttons are fairly standard components.
The phone needs to have some form of haptic motor anyway, and switching to a virtual button allows them to eliminate a complex moving part - removing one potential point of failure - while freeing up a few cubic millimeters of internal volume.
Anecdotally, the home buttons always seemed to be one of the more fragile parts of an iPhone, to the degree that many people started to use the on-screen assistive touch dialogs to avoid wear and tear.
On the older iPhones, the home buttons got problems after a couple of years. My old iPhone 4 had this problem. They got unreliable in registering being pushed. I think that’s also the reason it makes sense to not be an actual hardware button. Less moving parts makes it more reliable and it’s more likely to work after many years.
You shouldn't need to turn it off, it feels like a knockoff of a real button, like a fake designer bag. Don't know what was wrong with a regular button that presses.
Each A13 Lightning core has around 2.5x the transistors of a Skylake core. The Skylake design is also 5 years old and on a node at least a generation out of date. Geekbench is also a short enough test that thermals aren’t a huge concern.
Zen 2 is much more economical in its core area. Lighting cores likely have around 2x the transistors.
Also, and I’m not sure how big of a deal this is, but Zen 2 is the 2nd gen of a practically new arch. Lighting has a lineage of at least 6 generations.
Something to consider Intel's TDP is given at base clock - boost is irrelevant (i.e. they skew the facts the CPUs are way more toasty than TDP). Increasing the frequency requires more voltage, power is proportional to frequency and square of the voltage.
Other than that - x86 cores (skylake) are generally more powerful per clock than any Arm.
I'd not trust geekbench a bit between different platforms. for example:
The LZMA workload compresses and decompresses a 2399KB HTML ebook using the LZMA compression algorithm with a dictionary size of 2048KB. The workload uses the LZMA SDK for the implementation of the core LZMA algorithm.
The test effectively is about L2/3 cache sizes, if it fits there - great result, if not - a horrid one.
Most of the testing lacks any specific data, just what library they use.
If those numbers were in any way real world relevant, the server market would be flooded with ARM servers. 80% power savings for the same computing power would revolutionize data centers in terms of power and cooling needed.
There's much more to server hardware than CPU power and efficiency, and it's difficult segment to enter because of the risk involved making large investments in unproven hardware. But despite that, it still seems like things are actually moving in that direction and ARM is starting to get a serious foothold in the server market now. For example consider Amazon's new Graviton2 CPU's [1], which according to AnandTech 'puts all x86 alternatives to shame' [sic] when it comes to the price per unit of compute time it provides. I think it's entirely likely that the server market will be flooded with ARM servers in the not too distant future.
I imagine even more so than usual when the two things being tested have different operating systems and CPU architectures. Although these benchmark results would still have to be wrong by a lot to stop being impressive.
I think, Geekbench favors bursty performance because it gives very close scores to new MacBook Air with the Y-series Intel chip (7 watt TDP) and newest Dell XPS 13 with U-series chip with TDP of 25 watts.
To Me, having been using the Swipe Up Gestures for years now, I still prefer the Home Button. It is simple and it works.
People are saying the occasional error in Swipe up and back to Home Screen is not annoying are the exact same type of people they prefer the MacBook to have larger track pad, where the occasional false touch didn't matter.
It did to me. I sort of demand zero false positive from trackpad. Which was possible in old MacBook Pro 2015, and not any more since 2016 with larger trackpad.
For iPhone, at least I could understand the trade off, you are wasting lots of potential screen area, and while I prefer to have home button, I dont want to trade the screen area for it.
On MacBook though, I dont understand the need for that slightly larger trackpad. I felt it was the wrong trade off.
Modern stock (Google-flavored?) Android has also taken up buttonless gestures with the last couple of generations of Pixel devices. Depending on your Android version and your phone, you can toggle it on and off in settings by searching for "gesture".
I wonder how comparable Geekbench actually is across different CPU architectures and operating systems though?
Linus Torvalds is quoted here: https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=185109&curpost... as saying that Geekbench 4.0 shouldn't be treated as a valid comparison between desktops/laptops and phones. (However this review used Geekbench 5.0 - not sure what differences there are).
Floating point tends to matter for classic 'number crunching' workloads- crypto, media encoding, anything to do with modeling the physical world, image processing, AI.
Phones tend towards 'control flow', e.g. display an interface, accept a user input, communicate with a server, display information... and media decoding & gps both have dedicated hardware.
FP workloads can be incredibly power hungry, so it's fortunate mobile devices mostly manage to avoid them. But any chip with an FP unit is going to shut it off when running integer code.
Crypto stuff never uses floating point. It might have built-in instructions like AES-NI, though. In the test geekbench consider that - integers ones[0] and definitely not floating point. Media encoding tend not to use floating point, either. (decoders tend to be built-in in the GPUs with designated hardware, so testing on CPU is quite pointless)
SSE/AVX has its own set of registers. It can do floating point and integer operations. It would not be correct to refer to it as a floating point unit.
GPUs are good at mining because they can do so many calculations in parallel. They're just as capable of integer operations as the SIMD units on a CPU.
Yeah, "statically linked" is a bizarre thing to say about iOS. I believe the only statically linked code on iOS is dyld itself. It's not possible to make a statically linked app on iOS, and certainly all the number crunching routines (and compression etc.) are dynamically linked. Maybe geekbench doesn't link them and does it in-process? But you would see the same effect on PCs then.
the real question is why we need that performance in your phone? I'm honestly asking, because with every flagship phone (no mater the brand) there is the hype about performance (X's processor is 2x quicker than Y) and it always makes me think. I don't think that in the last 10 years I ever had thought "I wish my phones CPU had higher clock speed"...
First, the whole phone needs to be well architected - the CPU, GPU, Flash, wireless and cell radios can each be bottlenecks for good performance.
As the screen size and refresh rate increase, the needs of the CPU/GPU and Flash will increase.
Mobile phones tend to be more interactive and thus have a larger negative experience with slow/jerky scrolling, slow response to taps including app launch, etc.
Microcontrollers tend to have options from slowing down the clock rate to going into a deep sleep mode when there is no scheduled work. There has been a lot of work to optimize the scheduling of network/driver/app tasks to minimize power draw. It is also fairly common to see a CPU have lower power cores, typically for the OS to leverage for hardware support and background tasks separate from what might be considered the 'main' CPUs for this reason.
Likewise, Apple has stopped shooting for a 50-100% increase in performance year over year, instead going for a mix of performance and power efficiency improvements. They have also started to do significantly more custom silicon design to support their hardware features, such as the Secure Enclave and neural engine additions used to support Face ID.
10 years is a long time though. Four years ago would be what, the iPhone 3GS? Apple went several years doubling the CPU, GPU, _and_ Flash performance and it was extremely noticeable.
> I don't think that in the last 10 years I ever had thought "I wish my phones CPU had higher clock speed"...
Thats a thing with the computer industry, everthing is getting faster all the time but everthing keeps feeling getting slower.
For me the pinnacle of UI was Mac OS 9, it was just so snappy and responsive. It's (pre emtive) multithreading was a pain to wait for but the UI itself was tactile. Apply only approached this on Mac OS X with (I believe) 10.7 Lion when they overhauled stuff under the hood (after upgrading to that version it felt like I bought a new machine). After that it's been downhill again.
I believe Apple uses the iPhone as a test bed for its CPUs that they will eventually put into their Mac line. The Mac line doesn't make enough money to justify putting that much engineering into making a new CPU for them.
This is exactly the phone my wife wants to upgrade from her showing-its-age, 5-year-old 6S. It'll fit into her existing case. It's not too big. It's affordable. It still has a home button.
She's hardly a power user, so this might be the one phone she gets for the next five year, too.
I stayed with the 6S because of the headphone port and Touch ID. It also was a testbed for the water-resistance for the 7, so it more-or-less is IP67 except for the headphone jack.
The SE seems a compelling upgrade because it doesn't have a notch, unlocks without requiring lighting and a camera, isn't a massive brick, and doesn't cost several fortunes.
Why is this a benefit? The removal of the home button might have been the best thing since the home button itself. The gesture that replaced is an order of magnitude better.
Similarly, it's annoying that you can't reach over to unlock the phone and read a notification if the phone is sitting flat on a table - you have to pick it up and angle it toward your face.
Other than that, I really liked Face ID until it became compulsory to wear a mask at all times while outside the house. My kingdom for a temporary Touch ID sensor.
Same, switched to Samsung A70. Every night at bedtime I swear at the FaceID not working nor (!) the under the screen Touch ID until the 8:th try. Even a headphone cable touching the screen will wake the screen up.
Having rounded sides is also something that just reeks of Windows XP blue theme to me. Playful but utter useless (for the grip). I have to remember to not squeeze the phone too hard every time because then it will hit the ground or clicking on the sides.
The old iPhone SE was amazing. I wish the new one had the same form-factor with better battery but put the touch id on the back to allow for a near edge to edge screen (but keep the steel border so I don't accidentally touch the screen).
While dreaming, I wish the reviewers would actually try living with the phones, because pretty much all the reviewers can be replaced with a spec-sheet at this point.
Hm.. have you tried the Face ID on iPhones or just the Samsung A70 and other single-camera style Face ID? My iPhone 11's Face ID works without issues even at night in bed, but I've used Honor 10 before and had a lot of issues with its face recog including night usability, so I rather disabled it..
Also headphone cable doesn't wake up my iPhone 11.
For a good chunk of the day I can’t unlock my iPhone with Face ID while wearing a mask. At night and in the morning I can’t unlock it because I’m horizontal, hair obscures part of my face and/or it’s too dark. Punching in the passphrase gets old quick.
I read about Apple’s patent on buttonless Touch ID underlying the screen and I’m holding off until next event to get either a phone with that technology, or SE 2.
Sure, nothing is stopping you from preferring inferior options. The button is objectively worse. It is more complicated mechanically, it is slower for all of its functions, and it wastes almost an inch of screen space to nothing. The redeeming aspect of it is Touch ID if the pros outweigh the cons for your preferred use case vs. Face ID.
"Objectively" is not the right word here. There's a reason I used the word taste, rather than looking at specs or technology or performance: it might be that a $0.99 McDonald's hamburger is "objectively" inferior to a $20 organic grass-fed medium-rare burger from a fancy restaurant; but if I prefer the McDonald's one, it's useless to tell me that my tastes are wrong.
Maybe I like the ritual of thumb-to-unlock, since it feels more under my control. Maybe there's instances in which I want to look at the phone without unlocking the device. Maybe I hate the stupid notch, and I want my screen to be a rectangle and not a rounded rectangle. Just because you don't value these things doesn't make your preference "objectively" correct.
> wastes almost an inch of screen space to nothing
(I also have a huge pet peeve with the bezels shrinking on recent iPads. However good the fancy touch-canceling algorithms get, they'll never compete with "I'm not touching the screen at all, so I'm 1000% sure this grip won't invoke an action.")
If you're already satisfied by your experience on the phone, and you don't have to relearn anything, that could be a pretty compelling reason to go with the SE.
I thought the same thing. Until I got an XS. Then was annoyed while I figured out the gestures.
Now anytime I have to use a phone with a home button, it’s painful. Things are a lot easier now in ways I didn’t realize until I got used to them.
I’m assuming you don’t use an iPhone without a home button. If you did and got used to it, I don’t think there’s any way you’d want to go back. (I’ve yet to hear anyone say they wish the home button would come back after getting used to not having one.)
> I’ve yet to hear anyone say they wish the home button would come back
Easier, harder, better are all relative preferences. I have iphone 7 and my partner has the iphone 11 max. I use both mechanisms everyday and hate the gestures, the weight, the loss of one hand operation.
It puts more strain on the tendon which is what ends up getting injured first. If you have both types of phones go do each one 1000 times in 20 minutes each on separate days. See how your hand feels after each one.
I can second the strain, quickly noticed after getting the new buttonless phone.
The most ergonomic way to press on the home button for me was by sliding the old SE closer to fingertips, so that the thumb can rest on the button while being extended and relaxed. From that position a swipe-up gesture isn’t possible.
I would also rotate my old SE upside-down for unlock occasionally while pulling it out, since it doesn’t affect the fingerprint reader and I don’t need to stare at my phone for it to work. It would be a little more precarious with a bigger phone, though.
You're doing the same motion for both cases, except with one you're pressing down tightening your hand, and the other you put your thumb back to where it was before with minimal pressure. I don't believe what you're claiming.
> "What this source told me is that while developing the iPhone X, members of the team would typically carry two phones with them: a prototype iPhone X they could use, but (of course) not while in the presence of anyone who wasn’t disclosed on the project, and an older iPhone they could use in front of anyone. These team members would spend time, every day, using both phones. They knew they were onto a winning idea with the new interaction design for the iPhone X when they started instinctively using the X-style gestures on the older iPhone, and never vice versa. When a new design is clearly better than an old one, it’s a one-way street mentally."
Gives some insights into how Apple designers think about UX! Pretty cool!
Beating the laptop is impressive, but the top of the line part was unnecessary and counter productive. More expensive CPUs often have more cores running at a slower speed. For example, the bottom end 16" MacBook Pro comes with a 2.6 GHz CPU and the top end one comes with a 2.4 GHz CPU. Yes, there is Turbo Boost which can in some cases turn off cores in exchange for higher clock frequencies, but good luck getting much out of that given Apple's thermal design.
I don’t think Apple is considering the A13 unnecessarily on the SE2. The A13 will allow for it to be “fast” for like 5 more years. Corporations/governments/non-us lower income counties are going to love this phone especially BRICs imo. This was the absolute best choice Apple could make for a ‘generic’ phone to eat google & androids lunch.
Maybe there is a currency/tax issue driving the price up? One plus 8 is starting at $699USD while the iPhone SE 2020 has been available for $199 at Walmart although it is though an installment plan to keep people with att/Verizon. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tomsguide.com/amp/news/hurr...
This also doesn’t include tax, so it ends up being more like $438 for the base model without promotions.
The 16” MacBook Pro definitely has enough headroom to sustain the top turbo speed for at least most of a Geekbench run. Its not a very large benchmark.
Apple is at least a node ahead and isn’t using a 5 year old µarch. Also, Geekbench is a relatively small test and is not be testing the systems to their fullest extent in terms of thermal capacity or memory depth.
It's baffling because top end x86 CPUs consume significantly more power and run at significantly higher clock speeds. If these benchmarks are actually valid it suggests that we might see ARM ousting x86 on the desktop too sooner rather than later, which would be massive considering PCs have been x86 based for about 4 decades.
Remember though that performance doesnt scale linearly with power though - a 15W laptop CPU is only something like 30% slower in single threaded performance than a 95W desktop CPU (which is what the discussed benchmark is measuring).
ARM is pretty unlikely to oust x86 in Windows PCs any time soon. Even if Intel continues to struggle to catch up to TSMC's fab advantage, AMD is making pretty compelling CPUs using the same fabrication node as Apple. And really, Windows is stuck with x86 largely for compatibility reasons - emulation would be both a performance and power drag. If ARM is destined to defeat x86, its probably going to have to win in the datacenter first, depriving Intel (and possibly AMD, soon) of their highest margin sector.
With a higher power target I don't see why this architecture couldn't have more cores (but I also have no idea what I'm talking about) - looks like it currently has 2 "big" cores and 4 "small" cores.
The obsession with this phone never ceases to amaze me.
I'm really trying to get it but I think there's very vocal minority discussing this: american iphone fans.
I would never imagine buying a 64GB non-expandable phone with a single camera and such absurd screen for 480€ in 2020. New 128GB+sd slot s10e is around 450€ and that did small form factor _right_.
For a tech forum the iphone se obsession just seems so alien to the point where it all feels like astroturfing.
I used android phones up until like two years ago when I got the SE. You have to understand that a huge chunk of SE owners are in the same boat for the same reason. The Android market let small phones die, and so a 6 year old apple product is now literally the best option in the market. I still don't like Apple's ecosystem, but the phone is small and fits my use cases.
I too used to buy phones based on their hardware specs.
Then I got frustrated that I had to buy a new device every 2 years just to get a software update. My 5 year old iPhone got iOS 13.4 at the same time as everyone else.
I'm sorry but if you're looking to use the same phone for 5 years then you're an absolute minority.
Smartphone medium progresses really quick - 5 years is a very very long period of time. Even for laptops - a relative ancient medium that has very little new meaningful inovation - 5 years is still a long time.
Because most phones are junk after 5 years, not because people like to dump $400-$1000 bucks every 24 months. Most people don't want to replace their phone on a regular basis, unless they are enthusiasts. "It got slow" or "the battery doesn't last anymore" or "I broke my phone" are very common reasons why people upgrade.
People want their durable goods to last. Stats have shown that people have been keeping their smartphones longer for the past handful of years as the technology is maturing. This will continue as tech improves, just like it has for every other durable good.
I'm guessing that for most people it's one of the two following:
a. They're used to iOS/integrated into Apple's ecosystem, and this gives them a way to cheaply get a new phone that keeps them on that model.
b. This phone will probably shoot better photos than any Android at this price point, and even a decent chunk above it. Apple has been really focusing on their cameras the last few years, and the only examples of photography on an Android device that I've seen beat Apple's newer phones is from Google's Pixel devices.
All in all, it sounds like this is a case of other people liking different things than you, and that is a-OK :) (and most likely not astroturfing)
I disagree with you, I'm personally not a fan of apple but I admit that majority apple products can really compete even in non-apple countries. It's a bit extra but you get some premium features like stronger frame or higher resolution screen.
With iPhone SE you get absolutely nothing extra other than "apple ecosystem".
I don't know what goes in to the benchmark but if Apple had CPUs that outperform last gen 35-45W chip with a 5-10w one in a passively cooled 5 inch phone everyone and their mother would be reverse engineering their designs and building ARM datacenters. From what I've seen so far all the server ARM CPUs struggle to reach x86 performance.
Looks like a variety of workloads, but lots of things that can be greatly improved with co-procesors. Like cryptography, image compression, image processing, etc.
"Geekbench 5 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1,000 (which is the score of a Dell Precision 3430 with a Core i3-8100 processor)"
There's an echo of early 2000s here. The PowerPC G5 and mobile G4s were humiliated by x86, but the faithful (myself included) clung on because of OS X's strengths over Windows. Now Apple's CPUs are humiliating Intel, and yet again I stick with a Mac because of macOS's strengths over iOS.
I was/am in the exact same boat. I still have a fantasy that someday they will release some sort of “pro developer” edition of iOS with a proper terminal emulator and normal file system access. One can dream.
How usable would that single-core performance even be?
Say that I got an iPhone SE and a 16-inch MacBook Pro, hooked both up to power and started doing some single thread video encodes - would the iPhone actually beat the MacBook Pro? My suspicion at least is that it'd start throttling fairly fast.
Significant but not mentioned is the price for Apple Care is $79 vs $149 for this phone (US prices). With Theft Coverage it is $100 less than other phones. Replacement under that coverage is $50 less.
For me it means if I want to buy my elderly parents an Apple Watch I can buy them this phone and have a cost almost comparable with existing A13 phones by themselves; $399+$399 vs $699($599 XR)+$399
I bought one old SE from the final batch, just because the 113g, its dimensions are perfectly fine with me. I'd like to write some AR code (and might buy an 2020 SE for that), but for normal use, the SE for me is peak iPhone/smartphone.
Does anyone have an answer as to whether the Camera Sensor is really the one from XR? Because so far everyone have it settle on being the same as iPhone 8 apart from Gruber which claims the sensor is from XR.
As an Japanese who often wearing a face mask in winter, I really hope Apple to stop adopting FaceID since they released iPhone X.
And now, people all over the world start wearing face masks.
Even Apple advertises that iPhone SE supports TouchID.
I hope Apple changes the decision for next model.
I prefer the smaller form factor. I'd like to move to a more secure/privacy conscious OS, so I am thinking about switching to this iPhone. Currently using a Pixel 3, I like the phone and well embedded in Google's ecosystem. Wondering how hard it'll be to switch over
Currently I have an iPhone 6. I considered going to an iPhone 11 in the next few months until the iPhone SE was announced.
I like that the SE can fit in my pocket as easily as my current phone. The price is also attractive, although I tend to keep phones until they become too slow and battery life becomes an issue.
However, I'm frustrated constantly by typing on it. Just typing a couple of sentences in a text message can take minutes. (I'm a 60 wpm touch typist on a standard keyboard.) It's become so bad that I'm moving back to a laptop for most communication. My phone is coming close to a read-only device.
Is the 11's size enough help for typing that it's worth the price?
If so, does it fit in your pocket, i.e. how do you keep it on you?
I've never had an issue with pocketability even with the largest phones on the market. I don't really understand the problem. Do you have really tiny pockets?
Thanks for the reply. I tested with my wife's phone. It fit pretty well so I went for the iPhone 11. It came yesterday and I love it, not the least because I can type easier.
> I’ve used it exclusively for hours at a stretch and I never stopped expecting it to act like a post-iPhone-X device. I swipe up from the bottom to go home or multitask.
Fairly sure apple could put that interface on these phones. On home button ipads you can swipe up to go home, and swipe left/right along the bottom to switch apps.
I wish apple would add this, but I think they wanted to keep new iphones exclusive. (The more benign possibility is that there wasn’t the space to do left/right swipes without messing with some app functionality)
Here are the measures of iPhone SE (4.7" screen) compared to iPhone XS (5.8" screen):
138.4 x 67.3 x 7.3 mm (5.45 x 2.65 x 0.29 in)
143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7 mm (5.65 x 2.79 x 0.30 in)
For half a cm extra in length I get 2.5 cm extra in screen size with the XS. I would have liked a smaller phone and if this were similar in size to the original SE, I might have switched, but the true size difference between this SE and a phone considered "much larger" is negligible (I own both).
Nice. I might upgrade my 5-year-old iPhone 6 to the new SE. Hopefully the build quality didn’t have to suffer too much and this iPhone SE last another 5 years
I disagree. The home button is a superior interface, as compared to the swipe up.
By removing the home button, Apple took away another physical control interface. You can still swipe up, with the presence of the home button.
Instead of removing the home button, Apple could have used the bottom area to install some other context sensitive touch controls. Like the MacBook Touch Bar.
How the heck are you supposed to go for a jog, and carry a large screen phone on you?
I've got one on order to replace my iphone 5. It's not my ideal but it's getting to the point where not being able to update stuff is a problem, and right now being able to use Applepay is getting to be more of an advantage. At least it won't have face id or any of that crap. I figure since this has the newest cpu at least it should be a while before Apple obsoletes it.
I have been using Sailfish for years which uses swipe gestures similar to the iPhone X et al. I recently had to get an iPhone for work and all they had was the 8. Getting used to the button was really hard.
I have found myself reaching for the home button when using Sailfish though. I am completely convinced that the gesture UI is superior, but I couldn't relate to the whole not reaching for the home button thing mentioned in the article.
I have a phone with a home button, but this is already annoying: going back and forth between a button-phone (control center swipe up from bottom) to an button-iPad (control center top right). I'd prefer if they behaved the same way, I wouldn't mind having the app switcher on the button-phone as well, and just use the button for TouchID.
No information about battery life. From the specs it has the same battery as the iPhone 8, but a more efficient CPU so presumably it's going to last a bit longer? The 8's battery life was generally pretty good IIRC.
For me, an iPhone 6s hold out, this looks like a solid upgrade. The 6s is beginning to show its age (battery is creaky, processor is slower than my wife's 8, camera is so-so.) Tempted to be sure.
I just wish it has a full screen with the same size. I used both iPhone X and Max. Both are too big to operate with one hand, although I do like the full screen experience a lot.
I don't think I can justify, no matter how good the hardware is, relative to the value of the phone compared to other leaders in the market, buying a phone in mid 2020 without 5G support. It lends its self I guess to my opposition to buying every 1 or 2 years.
I honestly don't understand what direct benefit that I, a consumer, get from 5G (mmwave or normal spectrum)? My 4G device already can stream 1080p video at high quality. For every use case that I have with my phone, 5G doesn't appear to offer any material improvement.
Sure, the carriers can make more out of their bandwidth, but that's not really something I'm willing to pay for.
And, it's not like 4G is going anywhere, it'll be continued to be supported for a long time.
Actually, considering the impact on battery life that 5G has on consumer devices... I don't think I actually want it, to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I won't resist a natural upgrade when I upgrade my iphone 8 in 2-3 years, but I'm not seeking it out either.
Yeah, as far as I can tell the carriers want me to want it because it’s better for them. But they have so far failed to convince me that it does anything better than LTE for me. All the sales pitches are about either lower cost to network operation, more invasive IoT, or batshit insane stuff like hosting self-driving car AI in containers that execute in servers at the cell tower and control the car wirelessly. So I’m not inclined to pay anything extra for it.
I had this discussion with another friend yesterday, and for 99% I agree with you. He told me about one thing that stuck with me and why I do see some value in 5G networks.
He told me that 5G is able to handle more traffic (= more connections) per tower. So on some busy places like festivals or other places where there is a huge crowd 5G could help to let all those people access their internet. Of course you could make an argument of "why would all those people need access to the internet" but that isn't the point.
Other than the point above I don't see a value in consumer 5G either.
I do not have a source, so if this is wrong then my/his points becomes complete moot.
I’ve yet to hear one reason for why anyone needs 5G, let alone a reason for why you’d even want it.
I’ve found it quite perplexing (bordering on annoying) that phone companies are getting away with so much BS marketing around 5G. I guess they’re just that desperate for something new to sell. 5G is useless to the average consumer, in my estimation.
I am no expert in the topic but I believe the issue with 4G versus 5G for the carriers is one of capacity more than any other marketing argument.
Using the example one of the replies mentioned, you are able to stream 1080p video over the network but that's because the majority of the network users are not using 4G.
Once everyone (or the majority of users) has a 'heavy-usage' profile then, over a 4G network you would likely need to throotle during peak usage periods.
What exactly about $current_year stops an Apple-related blog being relevant when Apple still exists, makes products worthy of scrutiny, and is one of the biggest companies in the world?
I fail to see what it is about $current_year that makes careful, cogent, and balanced discourse about Apple irrelevant.
The most annoying part of Apple is that they make excellent products but their "fandom" talks about the appearance of the computer for the first good chunk of the review.
Yeah whatever. One thing all the iPhone SE reviews from the pundits I've read miss is how Apple, mighty Apple, with all it's brand loyalty and design excellence was forced by the market to take a stable version of the design and release it for a third of the cost of its flagship. Reasons?
* iPhone sales have been dropping consistently.
* No new gimmick to drive flagship price higher.
* Economy is heading to the dumpster
* Apple Services are generating more revenue. So Cheaper entry level device = more device sales = more service sales = money keeps flowing.
I could see why this might've entered into part of the discussion in a review for the original iPhone SE in 2016, but for a second iteration of this model it seems like trodden ground to point out that many average consumers don't like or need change, nor the price tag that comes with that change.
On the other hand, the 10s saw a dramatic increase in model variation in Apple's product line. It's been said before but I now have a fair amount of trouble knowing whether an iPhone model is current gen or not, I see people talking about iPhone 8, iPhone X, iPhone 11, iPhone XR, iPhone 11 Pro and now the iPhone SE has had a refresh again. A far cry from the canonical product line where Apple insisted one device was perfect for all... Whether that's a positive or a negative is up for debate. Samsung were doing fairly well until the S10 line where there were three versions of the Note and non-Note models. Google's Pixel line appears to be the last to keep with roughly one phone a generation (though the 3a slightly disrupts that rule).
Like the first SE (and the far less successful iPhone 5C) this is an attempt to sell to a more price-sensitive market that wouldn't consider their flagships in the first place. It's also not exactly unique; Samsung has everything from 100 euro units to those folding phones that cost twice as much as an 11 Pro, say.
The original SE didn't noticeably cannibalise the flagships, and it was in some ways a more appealing device than this (it filled the "smaller" niche, whereas it's hard to see how this one is in any way better than an 11 Pro).
The first SE and the 5C were redesigned models. This version is unique in that it is not unique. Its a goddam rebrand of the iphone 8 sold at prices cheaper than any of the iphones ever.
5c was priced $649 for a 64 GB unlocked version.
For me, a bigger screen isn't a plus - after years of following the trend and being on my phone more and more, I managed to kick the habit and I'm very happy that my phone has now found its rightful place as a utility when I'm off my computer, rather than as a primary computer. I use it for maps, e-tickets, answering the occasional im. But it's not as convenient as my computer, it's not for leisurely browsing or media consumption, and I don't want it to be - it means that when I'm off my computer, I'm really off.
So this push toward bigger screens runs counter to what I want a phone to be for me. A bigger screen invites you to grab it with both hands. A bigger screen invites you to watch more stuff on it, watch movies, browse reddit and whatnot. I don't want any of that, I'd in fact prefer if it wasn't good at that, just like I don't want more sugar in my food.