On April 24, 2020, Apple released the iPhone SE 2020, which was previously mentioned as the iPhone SE 2. The iPhone SE 2020 is the next budget iPhone, the successor of the original iPhone SE from 2016.

Apple discontinued its original iPhone Se in September 2018, and since then, fans of this compact, affordable device have been asking for a replacement. Eventually, they have got it though the 2nd-gen iPhone SE is not as small as the first one.

Of course, compared with the 2016 iPhone SE, the 2020 version is more expensive, considering that it features much higher technologies as well as a larger size. The new iPhone SE price starts at Rs 42,500 and can go up to Rs 47,800 while the 2016 iPhone SE came at a price of Rs 39,000.

Display

Talking about the phone’s screen, the iPhone SE 2020 sports a Retina IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen that measures 4.7 inches with a resolution of 750x1334 pixels. Also, the screen comes with a pixel density of 326 ppi.

The display features a notch-less design, looking exactly like the screen on the iPhone 8, the original iPhone SE, and older models, with a huge bezel on top.

Retina is Apple’s branding for its OLED and IPS LCD screens that feature a higher pixel density than its traditional screens. An Apple product with a Retina display has its UI widget doubled in height and width to make up for the smaller pixels. That means on this type of display, a logical pixel is equal to 4 physical pixels, called the HiDPI mode. The Retina display is meant to make pixels invisible to the naked eye, making images and text appear extremely crisp.

Indeed, the iPhone SE 2020 screen looks gorgeous in reality. The images and text look smooth as if it were a high-end phone though if you look closely, you can still spot the pixels, but they are really tiny. The screen is protected with Ion-strengthened glass and oleophobic coating for durability.

While this smartphone has a decent screen, 4.7 inches is no good for gaming, everything is tiny and it’s hard to navigate in a game with small buttons and big finger tips, as many users have complained.  

Chip

The iPhone SE 2020 is powered by Apple’s newest chip, the A13 Bionic that also powers the iPhone 11 series. The A13 Bionic is currently the most powerful processor on the market. Considering the fact that Apple has used this chip only for the latest iPhone lineup, users of the affordable iPhone SE 2020 will really benefit from this privilege.

With such power coming with this chip and leaving out the unfortunate fact about the screen size, it’s safe to say that this phone can handle games very well.

Storage

The iPhone SE 2020 features 3GB of RAM, which is lower than the average 4GB RAM of these days’ mid-range phones. Besides, it comes with three options of internal memory, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB.  

At 3GB RAM, you shouldn’t expect the phone to excellently handle every task you give it, including multitasking. Especially, 3GB is too low for games despite the power of the A13 Bionic chip. Assuming you play games on such a tiny screen, the device will likely get hot during gameplay.

Battery

Regarding the battery, the iPhone SE 2020 has a really small capacity, just 1,821 mAh that shouldn’t offer long battery life. Testing shows that it has a battery life of nearly 4 hours, much shorter than many mid-range smartphones on the market. However, to make up for that, this iPhone supports 18W fast charging that fills up 50% within 30 minutes along with Qi wireless charging.

The battery capacity of 1,821 mAh is just a little larger than that of the original iPhone SE with 1,624 mAh. It seems that Apple didn’t give much improvement to the battery and it’s not expected to handle gaming very well. Even if you can play games on this phone, you will have to recharge it a lot.

Camera

Regarding photography, there is a single 12MP camera on the back along with a 7MP camera on the front.

The rear camera comes with an aperture of f/1.8 with support for wide-angle shooting, HDR, panorama modes, and quad-LED dual–tone flash. The rear camera also allows for recording videos at 4K resolution with 24/30/60fps frame rate, at 1080-pixel resolution with 240/120/60/30fps frame rate, HDR, OIS, and stereo sound.

Meanwhile, the front-facing camera has an aperture of f/2.2, featuring HDR, panorama modes, and supporting face detection. You can record videos using the front camera at 1080-pixel resolution with 30fps frame rate.

Despite the unimpressive specifications, compared with other affordable smartphones that feature 32MP or 20MP cameras, the iPhone SE 2020 won’t let you down with its photo and video quality, as usual.

Nevertheless, you won’t get some advanced photography capabilities like slowfie or the night mode like in the iPhone 11 series.

Thanks to the power from the A13 Bionic chip, the new iPhone SE natural-looking picture with superb contrast and dynamic range while the colors are spot-on and noise-free. The levels of detail are very good, as usual, though the camera seems to have trouble handling some complex areas. At this price point, the iPhone SE 2020 generates excellent photos in the daylight.

At the same time, the low-light performance has been improved a lot compared with the iPhone 8. Its low-light shots present plenty of resolved detail, probably thanks to a gentler noise reduction. Most photos have balanced exposure, great color saturation, and true-life colors. While the dynamic range is not outstanding, that’s already good enough for a single rear camera.

As always, the front camera of the iPhone SE 2020 outperforms all other high-resolution front cameras on mid-range smartphones. One of the best things about iPhone cameras is that they’re aimed at taking realistic images rather than beautified ones while bringing the focus to the subject and blurring the background in the most natural manner it can.

All in all, the iPhone SE 2020’s camera won’t disappoint you at all.