
Apple iPhone SE 2020 Camera review - luu
https://www.dxomark.com/apple-iphone-se-2020-camera-review/
======
satysin
Am I alone in preferring the iPhone SE 2020 camera over the iPhone 11 camera
in their examples? Not always but way more than I expected anyway.

It sounds a little hyperbolic but for $399 the iPhone SE 2020 seems to be
shockingly good value.

~~~
m0xte
If you buy it with AppleCare ($79) and sell it after 2 years when that expires
the total cost of ownership and the associated risk of owning it is
unbeatable. Works out at around $12 a month.

~~~
lotsofpulp
$80 insurance with $30 and $100 deductibles for a $400 product seems to be a
terrible deal unless you are very prone to breaking your phone or you
absolutely can’t afford to spend $400 for a new one.

[https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone/](https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone/)

~~~
adanto6840
At first thought I totally agree, and feel quite similar about many insurance
offerings -- especially on relatively low-value items. That said, and heavily
based on my wife's track record & the fact that two years is roughly the
average life expectancy for her iPhones (commonly broken glass and poor
battery performance at/before 'EoL'), I actually think it's not such a bad
sell -- but she's a much "heavier" phone user than I am.

I'll probably pick it up for her next iPhone, which likely will be a higher-
priced one, but even at the lower end the variance reduction isn't the worst
thing for a luxury item that is relatively prone to breakage.

~~~
pfranz
I think AppleCare+ is one of the rare insurances that can sometimes be a good
value, but after looking over the numbers for phones I scratch my head.

Looking at a broken screen: $80 upfront and $30 per incident -> $110 [1] $129
out of warranty [2]

Out of warranty battery replacement is $49. In warranty is $0 (but in this
scenario you paid $80 upfront) and depending on your use-case it may not
qualify.

It also sucks to tie yourself to Apple for repairs. For me they've required a
scheduled, in person appointment before accepting a repair. Both parts and
appointments have often been pushed out weeks. Since iPhones are so common,
almost any mall has a spot that will repair screens/batteries on the spot
within a few hours. I wouldn't recommend it to the average person, but iFixit
has walked me through doing many by myself.

The math does change if you get multiple broken screens, but they cap
incidents at 2.

[1]
[https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone/](https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone/)
[2] [https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/screen-
repla...](https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/screen-replacement)

------
throw_this_one
I have the SE 2020. It's awesome. Battery life and screen brightness outdoors
is the only weakness. Perfectly smooth, processor is amazing.

I also don't like the swipe gestures. Plus having a $1k+ phone on me while
biking would make me kinda nervous.

~~~
DavideNL
I agree... and what annoys me also is i can't quickly "tap and hold" on
notifications on the lockscreen, for example to complete reminders. There
seems to be no (hardware related) reason why this would not be possible. (on
the X and 11 this is done with 3D-touch.)

~~~
wlesieutre
iPhone 11 doesn't have the 3D touch hardware, and iOS 13 retroactively killed
it on older devices.

But good news on the lock screen notifications, long press for actions is back
in the iOS 14 beta:

[https://streamable.com/ebkhe4](https://streamable.com/ebkhe4) (recorded on a
6s)

------
fierarul
So... this would be a good iPhone 6S upgrade?

~~~
switz
If it had a headphone jack...

~~~
earthboundkid
Removing the headphone jack was a pure marketing move to get the bad press out
of the way with iPhone 7, so iPhone X wouldn’t have to deal with it. Keeping
the jack off of the 8 and SE is just spite. It’s the only flaw in the SE.

~~~
steve_adams_86
Ugh, agreed. I miss having a jack all the time. I’m so reluctant to buy an
adapter for good headphones so I’m still using the ones it shipped with.
They’re not great.

------
jeffbee
Would be a lot more useful in practice if they did all of the benchmarks after
touching the lens. Flare when you point it at the sun? No kidding.

------
oldstrangers
So it competes favorably with the Google Pixel 3, released in 2018.

~~~
scarface74
Well let’s see in four years which one is still likely to be getting operating
system and security updates.

The original iPhone SE released in 2016 will be supported at least through
September 2021.

~~~
myopenid2
Realistically nobody still uses the original iPhone SE now.

You can run Windows 10 on a Centrino laptop from 2010 but you're not gonna
have a good time.

~~~
reaperducer
_Realistically nobody still uses the original iPhone SE now._

Why not? My old boss was rocking an iPhone 6 as recently as January, and that
came out two years earlier — in 2014.

While it's not my daily driver, I have a launch day iPhone 5 that I use at
least once a week. It's from 2012.

 _You can run Windows 10 on a Centrino laptop from 2010 but you 're not gonna
have a good time._

The iPhone SE was launched in 2016, not 2010.

~~~
wincy
I’m still using my iPhone 6 Plus, replaced the battery earlier this year and
the only annoying thing is I can’t copy any paste from one website to another,
instead I need to copy to notes because the pages will reload (due to 1GB of
RAM I’m guessing)

------
speedgoose
It's a shame Huawei isn't allowed to have Google services on Android anymore.
Their flagships smartphones have the best cameras in test, by far.

But an Android phone without Google is not very attractive in the western
world.

~~~
sahoo
You can always install gappa bundle

~~~
gruez
AFAIK that requires unlocked bootloader (for recovery access), which might not
be available.

------
chvid
Amazing testing work; interesting to read about the company behind it:

[https://corp.dxomark.com](https://corp.dxomark.com)

------
antoniuschan99
iPhone SE has one camera, no night sight, latest A series chip, Fingerprint
ID.

11 has a wide angle camera, night sight, larger screen, latest A series chip ,
Face ID.

------
kyskyskys
iPhone SE (1st generation) is still supported. iPhone SE 2020 is branded to
manipulate consumers.

------
reaperducer
Off topic irony:

A web site focused on visual quality uses #777777/#FFFFFF for its main
content, rendering a FAIL for text readability on WebAIM.

[https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/](https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/)

~~~
frou_dh
It's now officially against the rules to post these. See third from bottom:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
reaperducer
Ah, good to know. Is that a recent addition to the rules, or did I forget that
since I joined?

~~~
AnonC
This seems like a more recent addition, though I don’t agree with it. I
personally value such comments and avoid the sites in question. And the more
the people who write about it and avoid those, the better.

I wouldn’t have known about this new guideline if I hadn’t seen your comment
above.

 _> Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and
similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the
author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful._

~~~
pfranz
I understand the motivation (it doesn't encourage discussion about the topic
at hand), but like to see these criticisms both as a warning before visiting
the site and to know more about what things really bug other users and sites
that may help quantify them.

------
reaperducer
_While the budget-friendly Apple device offers comparable quality in many
respects to the more expensive iPhone 11, its single camera setup falls short
for zoom and bokeh shots compared to our top performers._

So, a $399-$549 phone doesn't perform as well as a $999-$1,449 phone.
Shocking.

