Another year, another Apple event, and another iPhone SE.
Apple on Tuesday unveiled the new iPhone SE at 'Peek Performance' -- its first event of 2022. The third generation of Apple's "affordable" iPhone is an upgrade to iPhone SE launched in the year 2020.
While rumors were doing the rounds that Apple may bring a new low-cost version of its iPhone SE, people may have to wait for that as the latest iPhone SE is far away from being a "low-budget" phone with a starting price tag of Rs 43,900, that too for a 64GB variant.
Sure, the latest iPhone SE features Apple's A15 Bionic chip and 5G support, the same that powers the iPhone 13, but there is a little delight in using such a powerful chip in a phone with a small and old display and a limited camera setup.
The previous iPhone SE lacked a decent on-battery time, Apple says the latest SE will offer an improved battery life, but it's yet to be seen if it lives up to the expectation.
Some called the latest iPhone SE a missed opportunity as Apple could have offered stiff competition to Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, among others in the mid-range segment if there was a low-cost iPhone available.
What's even disappointing is Apple made practically no design change in the latest SE; at a time when bezels are getting slimmer, Apple iPhone SE 5G comes with chunky bezels.
The 720p display on the iPhone SE 3 is another dampener; an AMOLED display with up to 120Hz refresh rate is quite common in smartphones in this price range.
Although it remains to be seen how the iPhone SE 3 fares overall, on paper, it looks like it has only minor and a few meaningful upgrades over its predecessor.
That said, a few bucks here and there can get you iPhone 12 mini which has a better and bigger (5.4-inch) display and offers 1,200 nits maximum brightness as against SE's 625 nits brightness,
Even the camera is way better is iPhone 12 mini as it offers 12MP Wide + 12MP Ultrawide, and a 12MP front camera.
The iPhone SE has a 12MP primary shooter but there’s no ultra-wide camera. Moreover, it has a 7MP selfie camera. However, the phone gains some software-based photography improvements, thanks to the A15 Bionic processor.
Moreover, you will also have a Face ID feature with iPhone 12 mini which SE lacks.
The key area where iPhone SE gets the edge is performance as with a powerful A15 Bionic chip, it is likely to outclass iPhone 12 mini, and it's slightly cheaper, too. But that's that; rest, it looks all familiar and dated in the first glance.
