Tencent Digital | Wu Bin
At the spring new product launch just this past, Apple went to the extreme and released the cheapest iPhone SE new machine and the most powerful M1 Ultra chip, which many people did not expect before the meeting. As the focus of the pre-conference rumor vortex, the new iPhone SE is not as exposed on the Internet, using a full-screen appearance, and the same as the previous generation, the iPhone SE is still using the old design scheme.
Such a product strategy also made this new iPhone become the focus of public opinion after the conference, some people think that it will successfully expand the boundary of the better performance of the iPhone to the price range of 3,000 yuan, and some people think that in the current era when large-screen mobile phones have become mainstream, the retro design of SE makes it incompatible with this era.
After a short experience of the new iPhone SE, some of the questions that appeared at the conference were answered in actual use.
Before the launch, TenTechReview announced a rendering of the new iPhone SE
Before the press conference, foreign media TenTechReview released a photo of a full-screen iPhone SE, when the phone that looked like the iPhone XR was once considered the final appearance of the new SE. But at the press conference, Apple shattered such rumors.
Yes, the new iPhone SE is just an upgraded version of the previous generation OF SE, they have the same design, the mold of the fuselage has not been adjusted in any way, which can be seen from the fact that the new SE maintains the same 138.4 x 67.3 x 7.3 mm body trim as the previous generation.
The second-generation SE phone case can be perfectly adapted to the new iPhone SE 3rd
Whether the mobile phone case can be used or not may be something that many people want to know. I tested the two phone cases of the previous generation of SE, and their main difference is whether the lens part is hollowed out through the entire module or refined to the lens and LED fill light, and the result is that both phone cases can perfectly wrap this year's new iPhone SE, which once again proves that the fuselage module of the two generations of products has indeed not changed.
The retention of Touch ID is seen as an innovative inheritance. Apple mentioned the design of Touch ID on the official website of the Chinese mainland, using slogans such as "home screen button that has been praised countless times".
This is understandable, the emergence of Touch ID has helped Apple get countless market praise, in the past few years of the epidemic around the world, Face ID because of the wearing of masks is facing a variety of sound challenges, although Apple through the algorithm adjustment to just launched iOS 15.4 to support the wearing of masks to unlock, but there are still many voices hope that Apple reconsider the use of Touch ID such a design.
This year's iPhone SE uses the starlight color and midnight color used by Apple on the iPad mini last year in the color matching, replacing the previous white and black, the difference between midnight color and black is not obvious, but the former will be lighter than the color depth, and the starlight color will be more obvious than the white difference, and the overall tone of the former is warmer. Of course, Apple still has this red color in my hand, which is also their standard action on the iPhone for all these years.
The screen is still the same IPS screen, with a pixel resolution of 1334 x 750, a contrast ratio of 1400:1 and a typical brightness of up to 625 nits.
This screen is one of the main differences between SE and iPhone 13 mini to open the product gap, SE screen still uses a 16:9 display ratio, compared to the current mainstream "class 20:9" screen horizontal field of view is much narrower, which limits the screen size of the iPhone SE, but also limits its actual use of the look and feel experience.
5G may be the main reason for the price increase of the new iPhone SE
With the appearance unchanged, the biggest change in this year's iPhone SE comes from the A15 Bionic processor and support for 5G networks.
After Apple released the phone, many people found that this year's SE increased by 200 yuan compared with the starting price of two years ago, and the increase in cost may be mostly due to the third-generation iPhone SE supporting 5G networks.
Fomalhaut Techno Solutions gives the overall BOM list price for the iPhone 12 Pro
As we all know, the cost of 5G RF chips accounts for a considerable proportion of the entire mobile phone BOM cost. When Apple released the first 5G mobile phone, the iPhone 12 Pro, after the Japanese research company Fomalhaut Techno Solutions made its overall BOM cost list, it was surprised to find that the OLED screen provided by Samsung ($70/ unit) and Apple's own A14 bionic processor ($40 / unit) were not the most expensive components. The highest COST OF BOM is Qualcomm's RF chip system, which costs up to $90 per unit.
This also explains to a certain extent why after upgrading the 5G baseband, almost all mobile phone costs have risen, and the price increase of the iPhone SE price of 200 yuan is not unrelated to the upgrade of 5G.
In the actual signal test and network speed test, in the same test location and the same carrier situation, the network speed was tested five times in a row, taking the median value, comparing the iPhone 13 Pro Max, the data is as follows:
From the consequential theory alone, the actual usage rate of the new iPhone SE and the iPhone 13 Pro on sale do not have a significant difference, including signal strength, packet loss rate and actual delay are quite close.
Like the iPhone 13 mini, the licensed version of the iPhone SE is only equipped with a single SIM card slot, and the SE on sale in the United States also supports eSIM card burning to achieve dual SIM dual standby, but this business is not currently supported in China.
Since the launch of this generation of iPhone SE, all of Apple's iPhone products on sale, in addition to the iPhone 11 that is still in Lao Ji, the remaining products all support 5G networks, and users can choose without difference in terms of network standards alone.
This is probably the best gaming experience of its kind that you can buy
As the biggest improvement of SE this year, the addition of the A15 Bionic allows SE to pull the same starting line as the iPhone 13 series in terms of basic hardware capabilities, the same 6-core CPU, 4-core graphics processor and 16-core neural network. Including 4GB of body running memory, the SE is also exactly the same as the iPhone 13 series.
The test score of Geekbench 5, the single-core multi-core score of the iPhone SE is comparable to the previous iPhone 13 series
This means that you can experience quite excellent performance and iOS ecology on a 3499 yuan mobile phone, which is definitely the biggest advantage of the iPhone SE in the competition with competitors at the same price.
iPhone SE protoshin half-hour frame rate curve
I tested the original god in high quality 60 frames under the game experience, 30 minutes of world boss four consecutive battles + large map running map operation, iPhone SE frame rate is quite stable, and finally recorded a test score of 58.9fps. And turning on the transmission in the game will make the frame rate return to 1 for a short time, if you remove these interference factors, only look at the actual frame rate curve of the game, the overall performance will be better than now.
Original God Test, Green: OPPO Find X5 Pro Tianji Edition Pink: OPPO Find X5 Pro Snapdragon Edition
If you don't know much about this data, I attach a data curve of OPPO Find X5 Pro in the original god test after turning on the performance mode + extreme stable frame, and it can be clearly seen that when the Android system is still looking for a balance between performance and energy efficiency, the iPhone has taken a lead.
At the same time, the new A15 processor brings another change is that it has better support for imaging systems. On this generation of iPhone SE, it still has only a 12-megapixel wide-angle lens, but compared to the previous generation of iPhone SE, this new iPhone has made a lot of progress in terms of camera algorithm.
The first is that this phone supports the deep integration of the lens technology, which appears on the iPhone 11, which can record nine photos at the moment of pressing the shutter, and synthesize one through the algorithm, to maximize the preservation of details and enhance the tolerance of the photo, of which the A15 computing power has become the hardware that the iPhone SE mainly relies on.
In addition to this, the iPhone SE also supports the smart HDR 4 photo shooting and photography style that appeared on the iPhone 13.
From the actual sample performance, the iPhone SE basically inherits all the performance of the iPhone 13 series in the overall sample style, such as maximizing the restoration of the color of the scene itself under normal lighting conditions, good tolerance and stable film rate brought by image stabilization.
In the night scene, because of the limitation of the sensor area, the iPhone SE does not have much light intake to control the depth of the picture when taking pictures, although the traces of algorithm intervention including ISPs and so on can be seen from the sample, but in some extremely low light scenes, there will still be a problem of picture purity. However, the unexpected surprise is that this year's iPhone SE is surprising in controlling the exposure of samples at night and the tolerance of the picture, and the shooting effect of the iPhone SE is satisfactory in many scenes with strong chiaroscuro.
In terms of battery life, Apple claims that this year's new iPhone SE performance has increased compared to the previous generation, and the video playback time has increased from the previous 13 hours to 15 hours, but I don't have the second-generation iPhone SE as a comparison, so I used the iPhone 13 mini for reference.
Simulating normal usage, from going out at 7:00 in the morning, including common operations such as WeChat, taking photos, and vibrato, as well as extreme operations that consume power like games, the iPhone SE can barely stick to until about 18:00 at night. In contrast, the iPhone 13 mini will be longer, and at 18:00 at night, there will be about 10% of the remaining power.
SE retains Apple's previous solution to the charging method of the previous generation of products, that is, the iPhone SE supports both wired and wireless (Qi) charging methods. In actual tests, because the iPhone SE didn't come with a charger, I used a standard PD protocol charger that could charge the new iPhone SE at 84% in one hour.
The mid-market completes a piece of the puzzle
As a global smart device manufacturer, Apple's products have never faced a single market, it needs to meet the needs of different markets, different users, and different consumption habits. Not only Apple, but also Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO and other manufacturers.
But what is slightly different is that Apple does not customize product segments for regional markets like other competitors, which means that in a very mature smartphone consumer market like Chinese mainland, the iPhone SE will face greater competitive pressure than products such as the iPhone 13 series.
Behind the product, Apple hopes to expand the market territory of iOS through the cheaper price of the iPhone SE. Nowadays, Apple has a relatively complete iPhone product price system from 3500 yuan to 13000 yuan in the domestic market, which makes iOS basically achieve full coverage of the high-end market, and in it, SE has become an important puzzle to undertake the mid-end market.