The new iPhone SE is slated to hit the store shelves on Thursday. Apple started accepting preorders for its latest device last March 24.
The iPhone SE has already been attracting a lot of media attention, which started from the meaning of SE in its name down to how it resembles the iPhone 5S.
According to Apple's Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Marketing, the SE actually stands for "Special Edition." It is special because the iPhone SE comes at a time when the current trend is dominated by bigger smartphones. What's even more peculiar is that the 4-inch handset comes equipped with high-end specs.
This "special" factor in the iPhone SE is attributed to the handset's different approach, as described by TechRadar.
"What's particularly special about the iPhone SE is its newness," says TechRadar. "Rather than Apple introducing a new hero device and pushing an older phone down-range, the iPhone SE is a purpose-build device. It's small, relatively speaking, but it's also mighty."
While it may have a smaller body compared to its older siblings, the iPhone SE has a powerful camera capable of capturing quality photos that can be on par with the ones that were snapped with the iPhone 6s.
"[C]olors look pretty true to life, and there's enough detail captured in them to allow for some cropping and editing. Low-light photos taken without a flash had a fair amount of image noise," notes The Verge. "For phones under $400, it beats everything else out there that I've tried, usually by a wide margin. It also captures 4K video, as well as Live Photos, which is Apple's name for GIF-like moving images."
Apple also touts the iPhone SE to have a better battery life than the iPhone 6S. CNET even mentioned in particular how the smaller iPhone SE has a better Web-browsing time of 12 to 13 hours, as compared to the 6S' 10 to 11 hours.
Video playback is also better in the iPhone SE, which is said to reach up to 13 vs. 11 hours of playback capacity found in the 6S.
"We're still running battery drain tests, but in my everyday use it worked as well as I'd hoped for a small phone, and lasted an average day really well," writes Scott Stein of CNET.
All in all, the iPhone SE is an impressive handset that has all the uniqueness expected from an upcoming device, along with the lingering features that Apple users have always loved in iconic iPhone models.
