Apple iPhone SE (2022) Review: Paying For The Future

The value means different things for different people, but whatever your definition, it’s hard to chat with a brand new iPhone in 2022 for only $ 429. It is the promise of the new iPhone SE (3rd generation), the third exit of Apple for what happened to be a winning formula and is now upgrading with a new chipset, a 5G support and an improved camera and battery performance.

At a time when Apple’s four-digit smartphones – are not the exception, but the norm, the iPhone looks like a change of strategy. It is not so much that cheap phones are unusual, but that the compromise range involved in the typing of a fiscal price tag usually is in addition to a motor experience. Apple is not immune to compromise, but this is where the new iPhone sets its priorities that apart from most rivals.

Your $ 429 offers a phone with 64 GB of storage, in your choice of midnight black, Starlight White, or (product) Red finishes. A version of 128 GB is $ 479, while you get 256 GB storage in the most expensive $ 579 configuration. You can continue to use the same cases and other accessories that you may have had for the previous iPhone, from the outside, it is essentially unchanged.

A familiar design

Apple always spends some time on its green references new products, but nothing reaches the iPhone for recycling. This is another demonstration of the same physical design we’ve seen used for the iPhone 8 back in 2017 (it does not even tell the iPhone 7 before that), with a familiar display of 4.7 inches At the front, a glass setback and a sandwiched chassis metal.

This releases more budget to spend on what is inside, of course, and so the pre-note looks are twinned with the same bionic chip A15 that feeds the last iPhone 13. This is a recipe – flagship processor With a borrowed style – that rivals rely on third-party chipsets do not seem that the numbers work. In the Android world, smaller and cheaper invariably means more slowly, but it’s just not the case for the iPhone SE.The compromises leave here the new iPhone to feel even more than an aberrant value among the rest of the apple smartphones range. In addition to the 4.7-inch LCD panel, there is a touch id Home button and a unique camera at the back. Whenever I choose the iPhone to get up and the display turns on, I’m surprised in the way the unused fascia space is greater than it.

Solid screen pales next to OLED

The retina screen itself is well, although far from the tip of the tip at this point. Its resolution 326 ppl is adequate for a display of this size and you get such a temperature tone automatically at the temperature of the ambient lighting. It’s one of those things that once you live with, you do not want to give up.

Nevertheless, compare it side by side with the OLED capable HDR on the iPhone 13 series, and you could start considering a mini-iPhone $ 699. The new screens are more colorful and have much better contrast, with deeper blacks and improved brightness. Inside, the 600 nits of the iPhone are well, but outside, I missed the 800-1200 nits of the OLED panel.

Touch ID, the fingerprint sensor built into the house button, always has its legion of fans, and I can understand their affection. The possibility of unlocking face iphones equipped with the face while wearing a mask just added only in iOS 15.4 – unless you do not have an Apple watch, and even what could be glitchy sometimes – so Relying on your finger instead of using your finger. . I just wish Apple can include the sensor in the power button because it does it on the button (certainly larger) of the iPad air.

Finally 5G

As with the iPad Air 2022, this third-generation iPhone also wins a 5G stand for the first time, although it is not quite the same implementation as in the iPhone 13 or iPad Pro. What you get is that the support of Sub-6 GHz, the networks generally faster than the LTE that predominates in the United States and elsewhere for the moment. Absent, however, the MMWave 5G support: this can be significantly faster, on the hypothesis that you can actually find a service.

It is this practical limit that means that the partial embrace of the iPhone is 5G is not just as much headache in practice. Of course, if you live in some cities where select US carriers offer MMWave 5G, its absence can be included, but for most people opportunities to connect to these networks are rare. I am much happier to see the wifi support 6, for example, and there is a lot to say for the way Apple smooths the Bluetooth connectivity process with its air air headphones and other accessories.

An unexpectedly good camera

On the back, there is only one 12 megapixel camera. No ultra-wide and non-optical zoom, but you get an optical image stabilization, a deep fusion of Apple and an intelligent HDR 4 calculation photography, as well as portrait mode. For 2022, it is the intelligent software – activated by the new chipset – which seemed to make the heavy lifting in terms of improvement.

The results must push the limitation of the Apple sensor and are unexpectedly, even with respect to what an iPhone 13 Pro Max can produce in the same situation. I am particularly impressed by the way the new iPhone manages scenes with extreme lighting, such as when the objects are backlit by the sun. This can easily explode details in the foreground on lower cameras, but Apple’s HDR treatment manages well.

You certainly do not get the complete experience found elsewhere in the iPhone Line-up, the mind. Portrait mode, for example, will work with people and pets, but not for inanimate objects. There is no night mode, either, the low light enhancement setting that can draw impressive detail levels. Although the iPhone can pull up to 4,000 stabilizing videos, intelligent mode – but maybe gimmicky – in cinematographic mode that the iPhone 13 series offers are missing.

Longevity is the key

Overall, however, it’s hard not to see the biggest draw of the iPhone gets her chiptet. IOS on the advanced silicon of Apple simply changes flies, but it is reassured that buyers can be assured of many years of upcoming software updates that have real budget implications.