Update: Article updated to reflect price of £419 in UK.
Apple today unveiled the second-generation iPhone SE, a budget friendly new iPhone featuring a 4.7-inch Retina HD display, paired with Touch ID.
The new iPhone SE arrives with a lower price. At £419 ($399), it costs about 40 percent less than the regular £699 iPhone. The device has the design of an older generation of iPhones, with the same computing power as newer ones. That means the SE looks like an iPhone from 2014, with a smaller screen and a home button instead of a face scanner, but is as fast as the fancier iPhone 11 from 2019.
Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, Apple live-streamed a product executive showing a slide show of images of the new iPhone to make its announcement.
“The first iPhone SE was a hit with many customers who loved its unique combination of small size, high-end performance and affordable price; the new second-generation iPhone SE builds on that great idea and improves on it in every way — including our best-ever single-camera system for great photos and videos — while still being very affordable,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
“iPhone SE features the industry-leading performance of A13 Bionic that enables great battery life, takes stunning Portrait mode and Smart HDR photos, shoots amazing videos with stereo audio, is great for games and super fast web surfing, and is built with the same industry-leading security features our customers expect. We can’t wait to get iPhone SE into customers’ hands.”
iPhone SE features an aerospace-grade aluminum and durable glass design with an all-black front. The rear glass finish includes a centered Apple logo and is made using a seven-layer color process for precise hue and opacity, delivering rich depth of color with a color-matched aluminum band.
It is water- and dust-resistant with an IP67 rating for water resistance up to 1 meter for 30 minutes.
The 4.7-inch Retina HD display with True Tone adjusts the white balance to match the ambient light for a more natural, paper-like viewing experience, while the vibrant wide color gamut Retina HD display offers incredible color accuracy, and supports Dolby Vision and HDR10 playback.
iPhone SE uses Haptic Touch for Quick Actions — such as animating Live Photos, previewing messages, rearranging apps and more — as well as contextual menus.
iPhone SE also features the familiar Home button designed with sapphire crystal to be durable and to protect the sensor, and a steel ring to detect a user’s fingerprint for Touch ID.
iPhone SE is wireless-charging capable with Qi-certified chargers and also supports fast-charging, and Apple says it will provide a 50 percent charge in just 30 minutes.
iPhone SE includes Wi-Fi 6 and Gigabit-class LTE, while Dual SIM with eSIM provides the flexibility for users to have two separate phone numbers on a single device while traveling abroad or for use as a business line.
iPhone SE features a 12-megapixel f/1.8 aperture Wide camera, and uses the image signal processor and Neural Engine of A13 Bionic to unlock even more benefits of computational photography, including Portrait mode, all six Portrait Lighting effects and Depth Control.
Using machine learning and monocular depth estimation, iPhone SE also takes stunning Portraits with the front camera. Next-generation Smart HDR comes to iPhone SE, intelligently re-lighting recognized subjects in a frame for more natural-looking images with stunning highlight and shadow details.
Videos are even more immersive with stereo audio recording and cinematic video stabilization on the front and rear cameras. The rear camera supports high-quality video capture at 4K up to 60fps, and extended dynamic range comes to iPhone SE for more highlight details up to 30fps.
Customers can also take advantage of QuickTake video on the front and rear cameras, allowing video recording without switching out of Photo mode.
iPhone SE will be available in 64GB for £419, 128GB for £469 and 256GB (£569) in black, white and (PRODUCT)RED — and will be available for pre-order beginning Friday, April 17 with availability from April 24.
