Apple iPhone SE (2020) review: Are the features good enough to upgrade?

Apple launched the original iPhone SE in 2016, and it immediately gained a huge fan following. Now, after four years, Apple has launched its successor with the iPhone SE (2020). The big thing about this successor is that Apple kept in mind all the things that made the original so popular while making it relevant for 2020.

The first and foremost thing that impresses about the new iPhone SE is its form factor. This is one of the most compact devices to come from Apple in recent years. Yes, it is identical to the iPhone 8 in look and design, but we don't feel that it's a big issue as it still looks and feels premium.

It is available in white, black and red colour, out of which the red stands out and looks the best out of the three, in our opinion. It is water-resistant up to 1 meter, but keep in mind that water damage is not covered under the standard Apple warranty. We do feel that Apple should have at least worked to make the bezels a bit smaller on the new phone to make it stand out and look a bit more next-gen.

While most brands move towards bigger size screen on their smartphones making them unwieldy (including Apple), the iPhone SE 2020, with a 4.7-inch display, feels great and easy to operate with one hand. The screen has an LCD panel that feels outdated if you consider that competing phones in the same price bracket offer AMOLED panels. That being said, the LCD screen in itself is very impressive with excellent viewing angles and is easy to read even under direct sunlight. The issue with the display is its fat bezels from 2016 which could be a turn-off for some users. It's a Retina HD display, which means that Apple crammed enough pixels in its small size to ensure that users get the best experience without worrying about poor resolution in doing any activity, including gaming.

Coming to performance, the iPhone SE 2020 is powered by Apple's latest A13 Bionic processor – the same one that powers the iPhone 11 Pro. Apple upgraded the internals of the SE 2020 to make sure that it does not falter in delivering the same seamless experience as its flagship smartphone. So even though the SE has 3GB RAM (iPhone 11 Pro has 4GB RAM), it still manages to deliver butter smooth performance with zero hiccups. We managed to play PUBG at Extreme settings without any visible frame drop, and that says a lot about the iPhone SE's performance capability in itself.

Battery life is the Achilles heel for the iPhone SE 2020. While Apple has optimized the battery on iPhones over the past few years via software optimizations, the battery size plays a significant role in performance. And the iPhone SE 2020 compact size has resulted in a smaller 1821mAh battery, which runs out between 9 – 5 and requires a charger. Compared to the competing smartphones that offer a much larger battery that easily last over a day, the iPhone SE's battery life feels lacking, especially for users who have to be on the move regularly.

The area where the iPhone SE 2020 surprised us is with its camera. On paper, it's a 12MP with f1.8 aperture, OIS (optical image stabilisation), Auto HDR, portrait mode, Smart HDR and True tone flash – similar to the iPhone 8 and iPhone XR. However, it turned out to be a much more capable performer. Photos clicked look great straight out of the camera with no editing. It can correctly differentiate between faces and background, resulting in great portrait shots. The camera is capable of delivering great photos with good depth and crisp details.

The next generation smart HDR ensures that your photos pop-out with colour and look pleasing without appearing oversaturated. It can record 4k video, and we can say that in this price segment, there is no other smartphone capable of delivering videos of the same quality as the iPhone SE. Even the front 7MP Facetime camera proved to be a fantastic selfie shooter. It comes with portrait mode, portrait lighting effects and also boasts of video stabilisation for videos. Overall, the iPhone SE 2020 easily gets our vote for being one of the best camera phones in its price bracket.

Besides these main features, there are a bunch of other tiny details that made the iPhone SE 2020 stand its ground. First amongst those is the TouchID. Sure, Apple's FaceID is the next generation and more secure, but we find the TouchID to be equally competent in day to day usage. With face masks mandatory during the ongoing Pandemic, TouchID is a much better option over FaceID for unlocking the phone. The phone is amongst the few to offer support for WiFi 6 – the next generation of WiFi connectivity. You also get 18W fast charging support, although the fast charger has to be purchased separately.

On top of all, this runs iOS 13, which provides a seamless experience and is loaded with features. Going by the Apple iPhone's software update compatibility trend, the iPhone SE will be getting at least three of the next iOS updates. This is one of the big differentiating factors from Android that makes investing in the iPhone a smarter decision.

Should you buy the iPhone SE 2020? For its asking price and its features/performance, the iPhone SE is a much better option compared to the majority of the Android smartphones available in the sub-Rs 40,000 price segment. Especially if you are looking for a compact device, there are almost no options other than the iPhone SE 2020 and the Google Pixel 3 that we would recommend.

However, if you are on an iPhone X or above, then the feature jump is not substantial enough to consider the iPhone SE 2020. In this case, it's better to go for the iPhone 11 Pro or wait a few months for the next iPhone to be unveiled.