iPhone SE

The definitive verdict on Apple’s most affordable iPhone

- ROB MEAD-GREEN

$399 From apple.com

Features 4.7–inch Retina HD display with Haptic Touch, A13 Bionic chip, 64GB of storage, 12MP Wide camera with f/1.8 aperture and 4K video recording, 7MP front camera, Home button with Touch ID, 802.11ax Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 6), Bluetooth 5.0, up to 13 hours battery life (video playback)

The iPhone SE is back! Two years after the original SE shifted off this mortal coil, its iPhone 8– based replacement has arrived. And it’s a doozy. For just $399 you gain entry to the Apple ecosystem, and that low–cost pricing makes it a great first iPhone for younger members of your household, or those on a budget.

What do you get? All three models of the iPhone SE have a 4.7–inch Retina HD display with 1334x750 resolution, the same A13 Bionic processor as the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, plus a single-lens 12MP Wide camera with an f/1.8 aperture and a 7MP front camera for selfies and FaceTime. The base $399 model gets 64GB of onboard storage, the $449 step-up model has 128GB and the $549 top-end version gets 256GB, which is plenty of wriggle room for most people. That pricing also makes even the most expensive iPhone SE $150 cheaper than the entry-level iPhone 11, and Apple makes it easy to get the iPhone SE for even less. Trade-in your old iPhone and you could pick up the 64GB SE for just $229. Or why not get one and pay by affordable installments of $16.62 a month over 24 months?

Those are the headline stats. Now let’s dig into the detail. As we’ve already said, the iPhone SE is essentially the iPhone 8 from 2017, but equipped with some key features from the iPhone 11 — most notably its A13 Bionic processor.