iPhone SE review: a blazing fast phone for small-handed or cash-strapped buyers
This Is What Using The New Small iPhone Is Actually Like — Wait, iPhone 5s? Is dat you? — Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed — Apple's newest device is, at its essence, an iPhone 5s updated with the 6s's most important features.
Context & Ripple Effects
Four days after Apple announced the 4-inch iPhone SE at $399 and Macworld flagged that the body is nearly a 5s down to its first-generation Touch ID sensor, BuzzFeed's review delivers the verdict: an iPhone 5s shell carrying the 6s's most important features.
The review lands as the opening entry in what becomes Apple's recurring budget-iPhone experiment — a line revisited by The Verge in 2020 and 2022 with the same 'new chip in an old body' formula.
First-order effects
- Buyers on tight budgets or with smaller hands get near-flagship speed, the 6s camera, and Apple Pay at a $399 starting price — no compromise on performance, only on size.
Second-order effects
- Apple monetizes its existing 5s supply chain and assembly lines rather than designing new hardware, letting it price aggressively against mid-tier Android rivals without cannibalizing 6s margins.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — and it does through the 2020 and 2022 models — the SE becomes Apple's standing answer to the low end, even as the 2020 enlargement of the SE to 4.7 inches signals the true small-phone niche was already closing.
The trend: Apple's SE line institutionalizes the recycled-chassis refresh — flagship silicon repackaged into an aging body — as its durable budget-tier strategy.