I knew I wasn't the only one fond of small, cheap-but-great phones! :)
Btw, this is my first post in English. I cover tech here in Brazil for +10 years and run a +9 years old independent, self-sustainable publication written in Portuguese. Now, I decided to give it a shot in another language, despite still feeling uncomfortable with my English. (I hope I haven't misspelled anything!)
If you enjoyed this brief iPhone SE review, may I ask you to subscribe to my blog's newsletter or its RSS feed? They are both on site's footer. No spam ever, unsubscribe whenever you want.
SE would have been my choice if Apple never released this model.
Mini is slightly smaller than SE and it's a crucial factor for me. And it also has more usable screen and where initially I was wary of FaceID - I don't miss the button! :]
I hope Apple continues with SE+mini merged model for the future.
Funnily, after playing with both for a couple minutes in the store, I decided on an SE exactly because of 13's screen. Because of rounded corners, the way it rendered content
sometimes became downright ugly and didn't actually grant any extra space: http://puu.sh/JdxXl/985552f316.jpg
I considered the 13 Mini, gave up due to two things: it's (really) expensive here in Brazil, and its cameras (or its main camera) isn't noticeable better than the one on SE. I couldn't justify spending the extra money for pretty much the same phone plus some niceties.
I use the 13 mini and am satisfied. The battery life is good, which is important… but I actually prefer touchID to faceID. The reason, I guess, is more consistent success and no accidental unlocking. It’s also nice to be able to unlock a phone on your desk without picking it up.
i'm not sure which one i have but i know i have hte mini form factor and i love it. My wife and oldest son have the gigantic tablet form factor and it feels like i may as well be using an ipad hah. (and they hate using my phone too)
edit: settings -> general says it's an iphone 12 mini
Also a huge fan of the iPhone SE and will keep buying them until they stop making them. Don’t take my thumb print away from me!!! I write a lot and it’s slightly faster to unlock via thumb (when it works) than face. Also it works in the dark, eg, when you think of something in the middle of the night or when your face is covered.
The only way to beat thumbprint is authentication via nfc, for example using a biometric chip in your hand, but that’s not palatable for most ;).
You spelled "misspelled" correctly, which earns a point in my book because (in a profound display of irony) a lot of native speakers misspell that one!
“Misspelt” is the usual UK/Commonwealth spelling, if that’s the spelling you’re referring to. “Misspelled” is the usual North American variant. Both are correct!
I had no idea. Your English is better than a lot of Web posts from Americans, who can't even spell "too."
While I agree that the SE is Apple's best offering for the money, the new one fails hard in one main way: ergonomics. While the original SE (which I still use) has flat sides, the current SE went back to the dumb rounded slippery edges. This is a vestige of Jony Ive stupidity: make the phone ever-thinner, then round the edges so it wants to flip sideways out of your grip at all times. Oh, and make sure the screen isn't recessed at all, so when it does flip out of your grip it is sure to break.
Notice that Apple returned to the flat sides on all of its current phones except the SE. It's almost as if they wanted make the SE less appealing.
The lack of a Home button on the new iPhones is a massive pain in the ass and a stupid regression, mainly for the lack of Touch ID but also for app-switching.
Yeah, I also prefer the flat sides (miss my old iPhone 5), but SE's rounded one isn't much a problem for me. Maybe I'm too zealous, but in seven years using this type of phone, I've never dropped one. (They dropped for another reasons, such as sliding from a uneven table thanks to the glass back. It survived without any scratch, anyway.)
I would agree - the round edges are a PITA. The glass back makes it very slippery as well.
I'm using an 8 Plus still as it has TouchID (I find FaceID far too creepy) and a large screen, which helps with my failing eyesight. It would be excellent to have something like this but with flat edges.
Your English is generally quite good. The one thing I'll note is that I've not seen native speakers use notation like "+10 years" in the context you do. Generally we'd write that as "10+ years" read as "ten-plus years" or ">10 years" read as "over ten years".
Thanks for the tip! I guess I use “+10 years” because of how we say in Portuguese (“mais de 10 anos”, as the “more than” comes first than the “10 years”).
I love my SE 2 - I've had it for ~2.5 yrs now and I'll most likely have it for another 2+. It's a very fast phone, and I like the relatively small form factor compared to most other phones these days that all seem to have colossal screens and are comically large when held up to the ear.
I'll also take TouchID any day over FaceID. The one thing that would get me to upgrade before 2+ yrs from now (other than unexpected failure of my SE 2) is a 13 Mini-like iPhone with touchID.
Your writing is excellent. The grammar is almost flawless (see below). Beyond that, I enjoyed your writing style as well -- strong opening, thoughtful variations in paragraph length and sentence structure, and generally concise and focused.
If you are interested in some small feedback to improve a little more: the final three sentences in the article were the only ones where I saw something that could be improved.
> I have already argued in the past that I prefer this iPhone model over any newer one, Face ID capable.
I'm pretty sure this is grammatically correct as-is. (English is funny like that...) Having said that, the more natural-sounding way for a native-speaker would be to lose the appositive and avoid trying to turn "Face ID" into an adjective. So it would be something like: "I have already argued in the past that I prefer this iPhone model over any newer one with Face ID."
> It is perhaps the closest to a perfect gadget I have ever used — no wonder, it is the third “same” device I buy in seven years (before, the iPhone 6S in 2015 and the iPhone 8 in 2017).
I'm pretty sure the verb tenses are technically correct, but the last bit is not how a native speaker would write it, and there's an extraneous comma. Instead of saying 'no wonder, it is the the third "same" device I buy in seven years,' a more native-speaker way of writing it would be: 'no wonder it's the third "same" device I've bought in seven years.'
(EDIT: I was thinking about this a little more because something about the sequence of words "third same device" still didn't sound quite natural. Iterating, I think it could sound even more natural like: 'no wonder I've bought the "same" device three times over the last seven years.')
> If, despite all the rumors, in five years there is a “5th generation iPhone SE” with this same look, but updated internals, it will most likely be my next phone.
This sentence is solid and native-sounding as-is. A professional editor, though, might object to the overwhelming number of commas (even though all the commas are grammatically correct!). They might suggest eliminating some of the repetitive clauses and moving things around a bit to make the sentence flow more smoothly. The end result might be something like this: 'If, despite all the rumors, there's a "5th generation iPhone SE" in five years with the same look and another round of updated internals, it will most likely be my next phone.'
I hope that's all helpful and not too nitpicky. Like I said, your writing is fantastic as it is! I'm looking forward to reading more.
> no wonder, it is the third “same” device I buy in seven years
> no wonder it's the third "same" device I've bought in seven years
> no wonder I've bought the "same" device three times over the last seven years
I liked your critique a lot: showing progressively better sentences and explaining why each is better. As a native English speaker learning Brazilian Portuguese, I have the inverse problem of the OP. I'd like to find a book or app that does more or less what you did —— start with a moderately difficult sentence in Portuguese the way an English speaker might say it, then progressively improve it while explaining the reasoning along the way.
Maybe such a thing exists for people learning English; I can confidently say that there is an order of magnitude more resources for people going from Portuguese to English than the other way around.
Only thing I like about my 2nd iphone SE bought this year (had the 2020 version) is that it has Touch ID.
Other then it's trash with low battery life and at times becomes non-responsive like the SE 2020 did.
What is wrong with Apple .. every other smartphone has touch id system. Its been five years and Touch ID for me is the best UX. It is grab my phone without even looking at it and it's open. Compared to grab it & swipe up while looking at it which is two steps vs. one. Those two steps while driving is dangerous (chide me all you want cause you use your phone when you drive too .. either sometimes, to a little or a lot)!
I want an iPhone SE sized phone with something similar to my Ulefone Power Armor 13's battery life.
The Power Armor 13 weights nearly half a kilogram, and because of this I almost never drip it - you certainly know you've got hold of it, and the battery lasts so long I sometimes forget it needs charging till I get a 15% warning somewhere around day four to six.
It was cool to see your name when reading the post. I follow Manual do Usuário on Twitter and I liked it a lot. The podcast is great as well. Congrats on your work!
I am also very happy with my iPhone SE 2nd gen. I only migrated from Android to iOS after they launched a cheap and small model.
Your English is indistinguishable from that of the top 10% of writers or so. I had no reason to believe you are not a native speaker until you linked to your page with photo samples written in Portuguese.
> I had no reason to believe you are not a native speaker
"Now, I decided to give it a shot in another language" and "may I ask you to subscribe to my blog's newsletter or its RSS feed? They are both on site's footer." both read non-native to me; I'd expect a native to say "Now, I've decided..." and "They are both in/on the site's footer".
But I agree with everyone else that rpgbr's English is excellent, more than adequate to publish English-language journalism. It is extremely difficult to get all the details of a foreign language right every time, and in most cases it's not a standard worth reaching or worrying about.
(And if you do worry about it... practice is the best way to get there.)
I'm not sure where you live and what locale you want, but depending on the LTE bands of your region, the Hisense A9 has a fantastic eink screen. It's a Chinese OS with at parts janky english translation.
Am I cheap, poor, frugal or outdated to find it mildly funny US$400-450+tx are considered cheap phones nowadays?
Not that I mind as I'm able to find good value (in my opinion and for my needs) in second-hand markets for electronics (couldn't be more satisfied with my $100 Pixel 3a and aging T430s laptop), I just find it impressive how much price references have shifted over time as flagship phones ran from $400-500 well into the $1-1.5k range[0]. Maybe I wouldn't be so confused about it if I understood what use people have for their phones to hold so much compute. Aside from the undeniably sick cameras, it seems to me like most people have supercomputers to browse social medias as AAA-mobile-gaming doesn't seem prevalent at all here (AFAIK it is in Asia).
but... your pixel was more than $100 new. the phone you use does not normally fit into the category you describe. the only part that makes it work is the "second hand," bit.
cheap/expensive is relative, and $400 is cheap for a phone (for north american audiences).
fwiw, i find even pixel phones to be sort of slow after a couple years into software updates, mostly between multitasking/app switching. so I think that the compute actually doesn't really scale well into the future as you imply, which is a separate unfortunate fact.
> i find even pixel phones to be sort of slow after a couple years into software updates
I assume that's because they're Google's software updates. Removing all Google apps, and most phones are fast. My BlackBerry KeyOne, with its midrange chipset, is still fast five years after it was released. Hell, I wanted a smaller form factor for a few days, and threw my SIM into my Nexus 5. Changing apps, installing updates, and navigating with OSM were all just as fast as 2013, when the phone was new. I even flipped through a few Tiktok videos to try it out - and while the first video stuttered a bit, everything after that was still quick.
Google Apps, like Google Play Services, the Play Store, and especially Maps, all seem to expand over time to consume all available resources. OS updates don't slow down your phone - the software you just want to run (and are pushed heavily to keep up-to-date) simply keeps getting heavier.
I wasn't trying to compare second-hand price vs new, I just added that since I didn't want to come off as complaining when I'm not really concerned by the cost of new phones (or electronics for that matter), it was just an observation. If anything, I'm thankful for consumerism enabling me to buy from an ample supply of quality second-hand electronics.
>cheap/expensive is relative
I guess that's kind of my point if there was one. Today's cheap smartphones are at the price of flagship phones from <10 years ago. I find it noticeable how far goalposts have moved when it comes to what cheap (let alone expensive) means for smartphones. Which is just a remark and not a criticism, consumers command markets as it should be and I'm more than aware my habits are not extrapolatable.
We are arguably in a tech golden age where all this cool stuff is cheap now.
Look at video cards. Counting for inflation those things were expensive. Then they got cheap. Now they’re gonna get expensive again ( look at the proposed prices for 4000 series GeForce cards ).
I think we are eventually going to see more expensive phones simply because people won’t really need to buy new ones anymore.
Through luck or minor hacks, I have been able to keep my phone costs less than $100 a year over the last decade. The nexus and pixel lines have almost always offered a new phone around the $300 mark (black friday, trade in, some promo, etc.) and they last for about 3 years.
It took me a long, long time to get used to having an expensive device on me that is bulky, fragile, not waterproof (includes iPhones after you drop it once), requires daily charging, and not durable in general (due to battery or sabotage by update). Jewelry is more expensive but has none of these issues.
They are certainly very useful, but I don’t think the current standard is the best compromise.
FWIW dropped my iPhone 12+ several times (a recurring occurrence with some pants I use when I put the phone in the front pocket and sit on my office chair). So far, I can still wash it and even use it in the pool with the kids.
I bought iPhone 11 when it came out, never wear a case and dropped it numerous times. It still works fine, with the original screen intact(not counting some scratches).
It survived even flying from an e-scooter after I’ve hit a bump on 15 km/h and sliding couple meters on asphalt afterwards.
And after all that it still had no problem when I dived into the pool with it and shot how I’m riding on a water slide.
Maybe I’m just lucky but it feels like you are exaggerating iPhone fragility. They’ve improved a lot recently.
The price is "cheap" because it is low enough that most carriers will give it to you basically for free if you trade in your old phone and/or agree not to switch to a different carrier for 18-24 months.
That’s not free. They’re amortizing the cost of the phone into the service fees.
Even budget carriers do this. Google Fi charges $450 for the 6a or $240 if you agree to two years. Their cheapest lines are $15/mo, which is $360 over two years, so you can see how they can offer the $210 discount.
> Am I cheap, poor, frugal or outdated to find it mildly funny US$400-450+tx are considered cheap phones nowadays?
I can’t speak to whether you’re any of those, but I can say this. Anyone spending significantly more than that (I’m included in this category) is either:
- Buying it for the quality of its camera (me again, not that I’m an especially avid photographer; I almost exclusively take pics of my pup)
- Some mix of spending too much or not realizing they’re in one or more categories below (some large majority, I’d wager)
- Doing a cost benefit analysis that favors spending more upfront for a longer-term investment (me again again, although my phone ownership lifecycle has shortened significantly; it’s still beneficial because my hand-me-downs benefit loved ones)
- Married to the software (me once again, much moreso on mobile than on general purpose computers these days)
- Enthralled by compute power or some other hardware particularity (o_0 I’m probably just getting old but I mostly don’t get this… okay I’m amused that my phone is more powerful in many ways than its current high-end laptop companion)
None of your reasons cover the hordes of people buying the pro models when there’s absolutely no reason to. Especially in India. I live in an upper middle class apartment complex and half the folks living here have a 13 Pro. It costs 60% more if not higher here than in the US as well. You have to be in the 99.5th percentile of salary earners to cover the price of the phone in a single months salary.
It’s all about image and prestige and that’s one of the biggest reasons nowadays if you ask me.
I have a rule that I spend the most money on things I use the most.
Mattresses, phones, computers, desks, chairs, etc. Is a thousand dollars for a phone a lot? Well, depends on how you look at it. I use it for more than an hour a day, every day, so a 1000 dollars over two years for a device like that doesn't seem insane to me. Comes out to about a $1.40 a day.
I think you're missing a big one that applies to most people I know:
- Locked into two year contracts where a phone upgrade is "free" every two years, but they are spending $100+ per month for that "free" phone
As a Canadian, I have a $50 plan with 12 gb of data (pretty good deal for here). If I wanted to get a new iPhone 13, I'd have to spend $300 up front (would be offset if i had an old device to trade in), plus an additional $33/month for two years, plus choose a plan that was at least $60 base. So I'd get a "free" phone every two years (as long as I had an old device to trade in every two years, and paid twice as much per month).
I won't do these things, so I have just replaced my $300 all-in phone from 4 years ago with a $400 all-in phone.
So, are phones actually more powerful than computers? I know obviously there's a scale, but my understanding is that x86 stuff is an entirely different league than anything built for mobile. I wasn't really acutely aware of this until I started building some small form factor entertainment systems. After doing some research and testing I was getting far better performance out of old model x86 Chromeboxes than even the latest mobile hardware.
I mean it's all relative, but yeah, $429 starting price for a phone coming from a company that is known to support their products for a minimum of 5 years is really not bad. Especially since these phones hold their value far better than any other brand on the market. I bought an iphone SE (2nd gen) in 2020 for $450 and sold it for $230 in 2022, so it worked out to about $110/year. It was a fantastic phone, but I upgraded to a 13 mini because my work offered to pay for the phone. I used to have a Moto E, which I think most people would consider a "cheap" phone and a) it wasn't a great phone b) i had no desire to keep it more than 2 years and c) by the time i was done using it, it's secondary market value was low enough that i didn't bother selling it.
But do you want to be spending so much time on your phone?
To me, buying an expensive phone is somewhat like buying an expensive tobacco pipe. It will just encourage you to use it more. When in fact, most of the 'use' is worse than useless.
$180 is about how much a phone should cost, and even that is too much what with forced (completely unjustified) obsolescence. $450 for a 'budget' phone is madness. $1000+ for a flagship is insanity. Unless you have a specific, legitimate need for it - most people don't.
Exactly. Contrary to popular belief no one became poor by buying Starbucks or iPhones. For most folks their biggest financial blunders are likely always about real estate, marital, or career related not your petty cash spending habits.
You are not. And the camera in the pixel 6a is the same as it ever was and they made it worse by replacing the rock solid back fingerprint reader with a junk "under the glass tesla AI is coming next year" reader.
The real draw is the camera. The ease of taking videos, especially of your kids, is worth the price tag for many. And the camera is a differentiating factor between the lower and higher tier models. Is the state-of-the-art camera needed? Debatable, but once family and memories are involved all economic rationality goes out the window.
Even the Nokia candy bar phones MSRPed at $USD 599 or greater. (Remember the Communicator? I think that thing clocked in at $USD 999!)
The current iteration of expensive phones have an incredible price to value ratio. High quality displays, professional grade camera lenses assisted with top-tier computational photography, extremely fast SoCs. The SEs are all of that with slightly lower quality bins...for $400.
My suggestion is to buy them used. So far I've purchased ~4 Apple devices for family members on Swappa, each time I got a pretty good discount over the new device. So while an SE is $429 new, you can find one in mint condition on Swappa with 95% battery health (the most important detail when buying a used iOS device IMO) for $220, and if you're tight on cash and want to really go cheap, buy one that's been scuffed up for around $130.
I don’t know about everyone else, but as a professional in the film/video world having a new-ish (I upgrade every 3 years or so) iPhone actually helps me do my job.
I'm in the same camp as you. Running an T420 instead. ;)
My phone is a top-low end phone or a low-mid end Oppo A 53?
Or something like that. It does everything I need with loads of head room. Will just run it until death.
Flagships are now so much better than when they costed $400. But don’t worry because there currently are phones that cost $200 and are better than what you got for $400 years ago, so you’re covered too.
I bought a Mini with great excitement, thinking that it would take me back to the glory of the "my phone fits my my pocket and I can type with one hand" days.
I kept it for 3 months, and then traded it in for a Pro. It turns out that the world has moved on. Web pages are getting harder to read on small screens. I had to squint a lot. The phone's short height means that it often doesn't charge "vertically" in Qi chargers. It doesn't fit in my car's integrated phone holder, it just rattles around.
And I really missed the zoom lens.
So I'm OK with the Pro, and I will get used to slightly larger phones.
I have the 13 mini and love it - I’m sad it’ll be the last one for a long time. The 12 was great too, but the battery life hit was noticeable- the 13 fixed that.
I would prefer the telephoto lens to the the warped wide angle (which I find useless). I also miss out on the high refresh rate display (for the 12 year none of the phones had it).
The mini is probably my favorite iPhone design of all time. It’s basically a 5 (my previous favorite) with a full screen display.
It’s a shame we’ll lose a small phone that doesn’t compromise on features this year - I don’t want an SE.
Was on the fence last year between a 12 mini and the latest SE (which this article is about, I think).
I somewhat regret the 12 mini, not because of the size (or even battery - it's fine for my daily use), but the face ID. As others have said, it's just too interruptive. (well, they didn't say that word exactly, but it's what I think).
Rumors I'd read last year would be that a 13 or 14 would have a 'button' underneath the glass screen, so we'd effectively have a 'home' button without the need for a physical button. Not in the 13, and I've not heard about it in the 14 (yet?) but would welcome that. The touch-id flow I had grown used to was so ... useful and fluid. Part of the reason I don't think I recognized it as much was 2020/2021 - so much of my regular life was thrown out of whack (travel/meetings/etc) that the impact of moving to face ID wasn't all that noticeable. As we're 'returning to normal' more and more, and I'm 'out' more, the day to day impact is more noticeable.
if apple would have moved to usb-c, I would have jumped ship to the iphone 13 mini when I needed a phone. Sad that they won't be making them for a while.
13 Mini lover here. I find the small screen an advantage, because it makes me less likely to look at web pages on it. I'm actively trying to use my phone less, while not pretending that living modern life without a phone is essentially impossible.
When I do succumb to my own weakness and look at something on the tiny screen, I often think, meh, this isn't great, just do something else!
Fully agree with you. I need the practicality of a smartphone but want to reduce screen time. The 13 mini forces me to use my laptop if I want to read or perform a task.
I have luckily had the opposite experience. I've always had the biggest phone I could get (Pro Max and all the rest) but decided to try the 13 Mini after hearing so many good things. Given how fussy I usually am, it's been amazing. The pros outweigh any cons for me, but it seems the Mini is going the way of the dodo in future anyway and the SE really is a step too far down for me.
Just hold on to your current phone. I upgraded to the 13 mini from the 7 Plus expecting it to be faster. It isn’t. I’m still glad I upgraded because the mini is smaller than the 7 Plus while giving up only a little bit of screen size, and I can use it without a case because it’s not shaped like a bar of soap.
But this showed me that phone performance is no longer a reason to upgrade, so I’ll probably hold on to this one even longer than I kept the 7 Plus.
The 0.5x is far more useful than the 2x. Most of the things one would do with the 2x can be had by just walking a bit closer to the subject. Or by just shooting at 1x and cropping, since there's resolution to spare.
But the 0.5x very frequently enables indoor shots that are impossible to get otherwise. Because you can't back up for a wider view if you're next to a wall.
Another 13 Mini user here and I love it. Upgraded from a 6s and I was shocked to see the size inflation. First thing I want from my phone is for it to comfortably fit into my pocket. Also single hand usage. The actual screen estate is pretty close to the 6s so I don't feel like I've lost anything.
I love how pocketable my 13 mini is. When I first got it, I would be walking around and not remember if it was in my pocket or not — it's that light/small. My prior phone was an 11 Pro, which had a nice heft to it but was sometimes difficult to push into my pants pocket (especially when sitting). The 13 mini slides in easily, no matter the angle.
I do wonder if the battery will hold up over time, especially as I start going to conferences and other all-day events. It was a non-issue during the first year, when I was almost always at home.
It's a lazy, bad name but it is objectively a great product. It is extremely successful.
Dismissing it because it doesn't work for you is as absurd as dismissing shoes too big for you or pants made from a material you don't like. Other people do, the world is not about you.
Ironic how you point out the subjectivity of what a likable phone is while also saying how the Pro Max is objectively great, lol. By the end of the day the person that you’re replying to is just expressing an opinion, which is allowed.
I know this is all anecdotal, but my 13 mini lasts consistently longer than my 8 ever did and I’m super happy with the battery. I’ve never had it not make it through a day, even when GPS and brightness is cranked with the Disney World app (which is why I had to carry a battery with my 8 when I went there). Makes me wonder how long the Xr battery would last with my workload.
I’ve got a 12 mini and I’m quite happy with it. I admit that I don’t charge it wirelessly because I have a snap ring on the back. I’m disappointed that the form factor is dead going forward.
As above and 6GB memory not 4GB. The processor is fast enough that it will be good for 5+ years with a battery replacement midway, but the 4GB ram might end up hurting before that.
> It is a crazy strategy of Apple to put the “brains” of its most expensive phone, the iPhone 13 Pro Max (+USD 1.099), in its entry model, low cost (USD 429). No other company does this.
The $449 Pixel 6a, which was released today, has the same Tensor chip as the $899 Pixel 6 Pro. This is advertised prominently on the product page:
Though if the iPhone SE 2016 and the Pixel 3a are anything to go by, the new iPhone SE will probably have software support for 2x or longer than the Pixel 6a.
Even on the latest model Pixel phones Google still refuses to commit to more than 3 years of Android updates... They have at least lengthened the security update timeline to a whole 5 years.
I bought an iphone around the launch of the Pixel 4, which is now nearing it's end of support. Meanwhile Apple has provided the latest updates to devices that launched 7 years ago.
I don't think it's crazy though; I think it reflects that in software / OS development you save a lot of dev & qa time by minimising your hardware fragmentation.
Also that if you have special sauce (eg a tensor chip), you want to give it to all users if you can, or developers won't bother optimising for it.
yeah, but they screwed up everything else about the 6a. it's clear it was just a dump on the bang per value sector. I would have jumped to a 6a if they designed it for the sector but they clearly did not.
That also makes them wrong, which is still true regardless about how you feel about the companies. Besides, it's a ridiculous statement anyways: for example, Nothing's first phone is coming out soon, which means their most expensive and cheapest phones will be running the same chip. Failing that, there's dozens of Android companies that made lines of handsets using the exact same SOC (like ZTE) because it's cheap to develop. Regardless of the companies involved, saying they're the "only one that does this" is like saying your local diner is the only one making you a real cheesesteak.
Samsung XCover 5 seems the best bet atm, to the point I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it earlier; smaller than just about any other android phone I've encountered in years (almost iPhone Mini sized), has a removeable battery and theoretically should have zero need for a case. The double combo of Samsung promising longer support cycles and it technically being an enterprise model mean it should be supported longer than most Android phones would be too.
New they're a bit pricey for the specs but you can find them like new used on ebay for half RRP.
Love the size and weight of my Pixel 4a. I broke the screen on mine a few weeks back, and paid over half the original price of the phone to have it repaired.
I'm on the Pixel 3, which at 5.5" is right at the upper limit of what I consider acceptable. Looks like the ZenFone 8 is 5.9", and is being described as "compact".
Pixel 5 + GrapheneOS makes me feel the same way about my device as the author.
It's small enough to pocket in a pair of lightweight shorts. It's bland to look at, no branding, symmetrical bezels all around, but stuffed with all the features and functionality I want.
There are individual customers that will pay for all kind of crazy features. But the vast majority of the customers buy bigger phones. There's a rumor the iPhone Mini sells so badly Apple will not release any new versions.
I am using Sony Xperia 5 II and I am quite happy with it. It is not that small but it's acceptable for me: 68 x 158 millimeters (2.68 x 6.22 in). And it also features a headphone jack! :P
FaceID works great but I miss TouchID for one unique reason : with Touch ID, the Apple Pay UX is pure genius : just take your phone in your pocket with the thumb on the button. Place it on top of the payment terminal. You are done.
With Touch ID you have to prepare the phone by unlocking it before making the payment. Which means that you have to stare at your phone while you are interacting with the merchant. It’s odd and unnatural.
Well, it’s not that bad neither really important but the initial UX was wonderful in its objectification of the phone as a convenient payment method.
(And don’t talk me about Apple Watch, payment experience is terribly unnatural as it means making weird moves with your wrist).
FaceID, sucks. It pulls attention away from whatever I am doing and forces me to fully stop. I hate it so much that I am seriously considering using a pixel 3 as a soft token/rsa fob.
I have dozens of mfa codes 5 apps, requiring me to stop, look at my phone wait for it find my ugly face so I can click ‘yes it me’, in Okta, MS Authenticator, Duo, Google Authenticator, Symantec VIP, is ridiculous.
I’m suspecting FaceID on my phone is also unlocking itself after I’ve locked it on its way back to my pocket.
I’ll take it out, pay. Lock it and pocket it. Then later hear it’s started playing music or find half typed gibberish messages or random phone numbers because it’s been activating in my pocket.
Never happened on any iPhones I’ve owned till I got the 11 with FaceID
FaceID is also still terrible if you need/want to wear masks, even with the updates it still doesn't recognize your face half the time. Likewise, the FaceID with mask recognition may work to unlock your phone but then NOT work to open the APP whose notification you clicked on in the first place.
I just double-click the right-hand side button in my pocket, then double-check this is the correct card - thus unlocking the phone by me looking at it. Do it everyday without issues
The best 'cheap' phone that was ever released in the US was the $499 Google Nexus 6P by Huawei in 2015. It was an octa-core phone that made Apple's dual core iPhone 6s (also released in 2015) look like an overpriced joke. The 6P's aluminum body was lighter and thinner than the iPhone 6s, its camera took much better pictures _by far_ especially in low light conditions (restaurants, evening travel, etc), the iPhone's old backlit IPS LCD screen had _nothing_ on 6P's gorgeous AMOLED. It took Apple 2 years to catch up to the 6P, with their iPhone X, and even then it didn't beat the 6P in every category. It was a beast of a phone. Mine finally died last year after 2 years of heavy use and 4 years of being a backup phone.
> It was an octa-core phone that made Apple's dual core iPhone 6s (also released in 2015) look like an overpriced joke
The iPhone 6s gets a single-core Geekbench of 528 while the Nexus 6P gets 208. The Nexus 6P's multi-core score was 520 - less then the iPhone 6s' single-core score. The iPhone 6s' multi-core score was 970 - 87% higher than the Nexus 6P.
Yep, it had 8 cores. Good for it. It was still a lot slower.
AnandTech also found it a lot slower. Mozilla's Kraken web browser benchmark took 2.4x longer on the Nexus 6P. The iPhone scored around 1.9x higher on Google's Octane benchmark.
It's really hard to argue with Apple's superior processor performance. I guess if you're looking for more cores with inferior performance, the Nexus 6P fits the bill. MORE CORES!
I had expected 8 slower cores to outperform the 2 slightly faster cores in multi-core benchmarks, so the results are somewhat surprising, but I guess Apple's wide pipeline design keeps on giving. Thanks for the benchmark data.
For what it's worth, the statement you quoted did not initially contain the number of cores. 6P felt super snappy (at least on Android 6, not so much on Oreo) and I added the cores for dramatic effect, but that backfired. I'll leave it as-is so others can notice and learn from my mistake once they read your reply.
Man it's been a while since I read someone comparing raw specs. Android phones always looked better on paper but sucked compared to the iPhone experience in every way. I don't even say this as an Apple user because I tried so many times to switch to Android when I looked at the specs myself.
Even before the iPhone I looked at the brand new 2G, no GPS, 240p screen, 1Mpx camera iPhone and laughed from my "old" 3G/VGA/GPS/2Mpx Windows Phone. Until I tried the iPhone and there was no going back.
My wife and I loved ours, but both bootloop suicided at the 13 and 15 month mark. _Both_. Out of warranty by 1 and 2 months. That was my official departure from Android (which I otherwise loved). I've never had a problem with the 6 iPhones I have owned (3 before, 3 after) -- but ironically my Wife's second iPhone after _also_ suicided. She somehow negotiated a free replacement 6 months out of warranty, so iPhone still came out ahead. I had a pretty good experience with the Nexus 5 (my favorite for its time) and the Pixel 2 (not my favorite form factor, otherwise great).
Both make great phones but having a popular phone has a really killer feature where it works out a lot of bugs. Not perfect, but I think if iPhones had the same level of issue as the Nexus 6 there'd be an extended warranty or something comparable.
I agree with your comment. The camera was really impressive and it was first nexus phone where the camera outperformed an iPhone. But I think the video quality wasn’t that great when compared to iPhone. Mine started shutting down prematurely in Canadian winter after more than a year of use. But Google replaced mine for free even after the 1yr warranty expired. Ended up with Pixel 2 which had even better camera than Nexus 6P. The first iPhone to outperform Pixel 2 for low light was the iPhone 11. But during those times the video quality really sucked on both Nexus and Pixel, which it still does to the day.
I don't agree with you, since a friend and had the iPhone 6s Plus and 7 Plus (Me) and a friend if mine the Huawei P9 Plus and the 6P, 6P was nowhere. The best shot was taken in black white with the Huawei P9 Plus and it literally beat my iPhones and I still use that picture for several things.
I'm a bit confused. If you're trying to say that Huawei's P9 (released in 2016) took better pictures than Huawei's 6P (released in 2015) and than the iPhones, then I don't think there's anything to disagree over. They both took better pictures than the iPhones, seeing as they're both Huawei phones released shortly one after the other.
Now that I think about it, you might be saying that P9 was more wide-spread in the US than the 6P, which would also be confusing, because I don't think the P9 was officially sold in the US.
I had a 6p it was great but cheap construction. First battery wore out after 9 months, second one wasn't much longer, especially in the cold. Lots of other people had hardware problems, it was rare to see them after a few years.
I upgraded to the 13 Pro Max from the 8 Plus and I’m still annoyed several times a day by interactions that are strictly worse without the touch sensor. Today it was because you used to be able to unlock just by holding your phone with your thumb on the sensor. But now you have to raise it to your face, hope it works after a couple of goes with your sunglasses on, and then even when it does you have to swipe up to see what you were last looking at. It made checking a map on a webpage repeatedly feel like torture. It’s a tax on every single interaction with my phone and while I love the storage and the screen I have thought about ditching it.
You're right, unlocking the phone every single time you want to interact with it is exceedingly tedious.
Which is why I remove the FaceID/passcode completely. The overall improvement to my QoL is well worth the increased risk. And all my truly sensitive apps are passcode protected, anyway.
There is also the middle ground of a lock timeout - if you use your phone more than, say, once an hour, it'll never lock, but if you drop it on the ground and it sits there for an hour it'll be locked if someone finds it.
I also miss the fingerprint sensor. It’s fast and effective. I wish they would add it to the power button or if they can improve the tech, under the screen.
Driving in the car with a Face ID phone is a nightmare. You hand it to the passenger to look at, it’s locked, you have to try to look at it while your driving, then if you get unlucky and it locks you have to enter your passcode while you’re driving (I have an alphanumeric passcode and it’s very hard to enter if I’m not looking at the phone). Touch ID, I could just plop my thumb on the home button without looking.
I have a magic keyboard with TouchID and it's made me really nostalgic for phones with TouchID. Never need to tilt my head or raise my hand to log into anything anymore.
Readit News
Btw, this is my first post in English. I cover tech here in Brazil for +10 years and run a +9 years old independent, self-sustainable publication written in Portuguese. Now, I decided to give it a shot in another language, despite still feeling uncomfortable with my English. (I hope I haven't misspelled anything!)
If you enjoyed this brief iPhone SE review, may I ask you to subscribe to my blog's newsletter or its RSS feed? They are both on site's footer. No spam ever, unsubscribe whenever you want.
Thanks!
SE would have been my choice if Apple never released this model.
Mini is slightly smaller than SE and it's a crucial factor for me. And it also has more usable screen and where initially I was wary of FaceID - I don't miss the button! :]
I hope Apple continues with SE+mini merged model for the future.
Funnily, after playing with both for a couple minutes in the store, I decided on an SE exactly because of 13's screen. Because of rounded corners, the way it rendered content sometimes became downright ugly and didn't actually grant any extra space: http://puu.sh/JdxXl/985552f316.jpg
edit: settings -> general says it's an iphone 12 mini
I just hope the 13 has better battery life than the 12. My 12 mini drains half the battery on idle within 24 hours if mobile data is enabled.
The only way to beat thumbprint is authentication via nfc, for example using a biometric chip in your hand, but that’s not palatable for most ;).
Posted on a SE gen 2
While I agree that the SE is Apple's best offering for the money, the new one fails hard in one main way: ergonomics. While the original SE (which I still use) has flat sides, the current SE went back to the dumb rounded slippery edges. This is a vestige of Jony Ive stupidity: make the phone ever-thinner, then round the edges so it wants to flip sideways out of your grip at all times. Oh, and make sure the screen isn't recessed at all, so when it does flip out of your grip it is sure to break.
Notice that Apple returned to the flat sides on all of its current phones except the SE. It's almost as if they wanted make the SE less appealing.
The lack of a Home button on the new iPhones is a massive pain in the ass and a stupid regression, mainly for the lack of Touch ID but also for app-switching.
Yeah, I also prefer the flat sides (miss my old iPhone 5), but SE's rounded one isn't much a problem for me. Maybe I'm too zealous, but in seven years using this type of phone, I've never dropped one. (They dropped for another reasons, such as sliding from a uneven table thanks to the glass back. It survived without any scratch, anyway.)
I'll also take TouchID any day over FaceID. The one thing that would get me to upgrade before 2+ yrs from now (other than unexpected failure of my SE 2) is a 13 Mini-like iPhone with touchID.
If you are interested in some small feedback to improve a little more: the final three sentences in the article were the only ones where I saw something that could be improved.
> I have already argued in the past that I prefer this iPhone model over any newer one, Face ID capable.
I'm pretty sure this is grammatically correct as-is. (English is funny like that...) Having said that, the more natural-sounding way for a native-speaker would be to lose the appositive and avoid trying to turn "Face ID" into an adjective. So it would be something like: "I have already argued in the past that I prefer this iPhone model over any newer one with Face ID."
> It is perhaps the closest to a perfect gadget I have ever used — no wonder, it is the third “same” device I buy in seven years (before, the iPhone 6S in 2015 and the iPhone 8 in 2017).
I'm pretty sure the verb tenses are technically correct, but the last bit is not how a native speaker would write it, and there's an extraneous comma. Instead of saying 'no wonder, it is the the third "same" device I buy in seven years,' a more native-speaker way of writing it would be: 'no wonder it's the third "same" device I've bought in seven years.'
(EDIT: I was thinking about this a little more because something about the sequence of words "third same device" still didn't sound quite natural. Iterating, I think it could sound even more natural like: 'no wonder I've bought the "same" device three times over the last seven years.')
> If, despite all the rumors, in five years there is a “5th generation iPhone SE” with this same look, but updated internals, it will most likely be my next phone.
This sentence is solid and native-sounding as-is. A professional editor, though, might object to the overwhelming number of commas (even though all the commas are grammatically correct!). They might suggest eliminating some of the repetitive clauses and moving things around a bit to make the sentence flow more smoothly. The end result might be something like this: 'If, despite all the rumors, there's a "5th generation iPhone SE" in five years with the same look and another round of updated internals, it will most likely be my next phone.'
I hope that's all helpful and not too nitpicky. Like I said, your writing is fantastic as it is! I'm looking forward to reading more.
> I cover tech here in Brazil for +10 years and run a +9 years old independent,
It should be past tense "I've covered", and in English we do everything backwards so 10+ and 9+ are more natural. So I'd change that to:
I've covered tech here in Brazil for 10+ years and run a 9+ years old independent,
> no wonder it's the third "same" device I've bought in seven years
> no wonder I've bought the "same" device three times over the last seven years
I liked your critique a lot: showing progressively better sentences and explaining why each is better. As a native English speaker learning Brazilian Portuguese, I have the inverse problem of the OP. I'd like to find a book or app that does more or less what you did —— start with a moderately difficult sentence in Portuguese the way an English speaker might say it, then progressively improve it while explaining the reasoning along the way.
Maybe such a thing exists for people learning English; I can confidently say that there is an order of magnitude more resources for people going from Portuguese to English than the other way around.
Other then it's trash with low battery life and at times becomes non-responsive like the SE 2020 did.
What is wrong with Apple .. every other smartphone has touch id system. Its been five years and Touch ID for me is the best UX. It is grab my phone without even looking at it and it's open. Compared to grab it & swipe up while looking at it which is two steps vs. one. Those two steps while driving is dangerous (chide me all you want cause you use your phone when you drive too .. either sometimes, to a little or a lot)!
The Power Armor 13 weights nearly half a kilogram, and because of this I almost never drip it - you certainly know you've got hold of it, and the battery lasts so long I sometimes forget it needs charging till I get a 15% warning somewhere around day four to six.
I am also very happy with my iPhone SE 2nd gen. I only migrated from Android to iOS after they launched a cheap and small model.
"Now, I decided to give it a shot in another language" and "may I ask you to subscribe to my blog's newsletter or its RSS feed? They are both on site's footer." both read non-native to me; I'd expect a native to say "Now, I've decided..." and "They are both in/on the site's footer".
But I agree with everyone else that rpgbr's English is excellent, more than adequate to publish English-language journalism. It is extremely difficult to get all the details of a foreign language right every time, and in most cases it's not a standard worth reaching or worrying about.
(And if you do worry about it... practice is the best way to get there.)
it's even smaller than the newer ones!
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Not that I mind as I'm able to find good value (in my opinion and for my needs) in second-hand markets for electronics (couldn't be more satisfied with my $100 Pixel 3a and aging T430s laptop), I just find it impressive how much price references have shifted over time as flagship phones ran from $400-500 well into the $1-1.5k range[0]. Maybe I wouldn't be so confused about it if I understood what use people have for their phones to hold so much compute. Aside from the undeniably sick cameras, it seems to me like most people have supercomputers to browse social medias as AAA-mobile-gaming doesn't seem prevalent at all here (AFAIK it is in Asia).
Millennial yelling at clouds, signing off.
0: https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/21/09/iphone-13-steve-...
cheap/expensive is relative, and $400 is cheap for a phone (for north american audiences).
fwiw, i find even pixel phones to be sort of slow after a couple years into software updates, mostly between multitasking/app switching. so I think that the compute actually doesn't really scale well into the future as you imply, which is a separate unfortunate fact.
I assume that's because they're Google's software updates. Removing all Google apps, and most phones are fast. My BlackBerry KeyOne, with its midrange chipset, is still fast five years after it was released. Hell, I wanted a smaller form factor for a few days, and threw my SIM into my Nexus 5. Changing apps, installing updates, and navigating with OSM were all just as fast as 2013, when the phone was new. I even flipped through a few Tiktok videos to try it out - and while the first video stuttered a bit, everything after that was still quick.
Google Apps, like Google Play Services, the Play Store, and especially Maps, all seem to expand over time to consume all available resources. OS updates don't slow down your phone - the software you just want to run (and are pushed heavily to keep up-to-date) simply keeps getting heavier.
>cheap/expensive is relative
I guess that's kind of my point if there was one. Today's cheap smartphones are at the price of flagship phones from <10 years ago. I find it noticeable how far goalposts have moved when it comes to what cheap (let alone expensive) means for smartphones. Which is just a remark and not a criticism, consumers command markets as it should be and I'm more than aware my habits are not extrapolatable.
Look at video cards. Counting for inflation those things were expensive. Then they got cheap. Now they’re gonna get expensive again ( look at the proposed prices for 4000 series GeForce cards ).
I think we are eventually going to see more expensive phones simply because people won’t really need to buy new ones anymore.
They are certainly very useful, but I don’t think the current standard is the best compromise.
Of course, YMMV.
It survived even flying from an e-scooter after I’ve hit a bump on 15 km/h and sliding couple meters on asphalt afterwards.
And after all that it still had no problem when I dived into the pool with it and shot how I’m riding on a water slide.
Maybe I’m just lucky but it feels like you are exaggerating iPhone fragility. They’ve improved a lot recently.
Even budget carriers do this. Google Fi charges $450 for the 6a or $240 if you agree to two years. Their cheapest lines are $15/mo, which is $360 over two years, so you can see how they can offer the $210 discount.
I can’t speak to whether you’re any of those, but I can say this. Anyone spending significantly more than that (I’m included in this category) is either:
- Buying it for the quality of its camera (me again, not that I’m an especially avid photographer; I almost exclusively take pics of my pup)
- Some mix of spending too much or not realizing they’re in one or more categories below (some large majority, I’d wager)
- Doing a cost benefit analysis that favors spending more upfront for a longer-term investment (me again again, although my phone ownership lifecycle has shortened significantly; it’s still beneficial because my hand-me-downs benefit loved ones)
- Married to the software (me once again, much moreso on mobile than on general purpose computers these days)
- Enthralled by compute power or some other hardware particularity (o_0 I’m probably just getting old but I mostly don’t get this… okay I’m amused that my phone is more powerful in many ways than its current high-end laptop companion)
It’s all about image and prestige and that’s one of the biggest reasons nowadays if you ask me.
Mattresses, phones, computers, desks, chairs, etc. Is a thousand dollars for a phone a lot? Well, depends on how you look at it. I use it for more than an hour a day, every day, so a 1000 dollars over two years for a device like that doesn't seem insane to me. Comes out to about a $1.40 a day.
- Locked into two year contracts where a phone upgrade is "free" every two years, but they are spending $100+ per month for that "free" phone
As a Canadian, I have a $50 plan with 12 gb of data (pretty good deal for here). If I wanted to get a new iPhone 13, I'd have to spend $300 up front (would be offset if i had an old device to trade in), plus an additional $33/month for two years, plus choose a plan that was at least $60 base. So I'd get a "free" phone every two years (as long as I had an old device to trade in every two years, and paid twice as much per month).
I won't do these things, so I have just replaced my $300 all-in phone from 4 years ago with a $400 all-in phone.
So spending a few extra cent per hour of usage to get a nicer one is very easy to justify.
To me, buying an expensive phone is somewhat like buying an expensive tobacco pipe. It will just encourage you to use it more. When in fact, most of the 'use' is worse than useless.
$180 is about how much a phone should cost, and even that is too much what with forced (completely unjustified) obsolescence. $450 for a 'budget' phone is madness. $1000+ for a flagship is insanity. Unless you have a specific, legitimate need for it - most people don't.
Even the Nokia candy bar phones MSRPed at $USD 599 or greater. (Remember the Communicator? I think that thing clocked in at $USD 999!)
The current iteration of expensive phones have an incredible price to value ratio. High quality displays, professional grade camera lenses assisted with top-tier computational photography, extremely fast SoCs. The SEs are all of that with slightly lower quality bins...for $400.
Are you not entertained?
My phone is a top-low end phone or a low-mid end Oppo A 53? Or something like that. It does everything I need with loads of head room. Will just run it until death.
Personally, I won't spend more than 200 eur for a new phone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
I kept it for 3 months, and then traded it in for a Pro. It turns out that the world has moved on. Web pages are getting harder to read on small screens. I had to squint a lot. The phone's short height means that it often doesn't charge "vertically" in Qi chargers. It doesn't fit in my car's integrated phone holder, it just rattles around.
And I really missed the zoom lens.
So I'm OK with the Pro, and I will get used to slightly larger phones.
(The "Max" is still stupid.)
I would prefer the telephoto lens to the the warped wide angle (which I find useless). I also miss out on the high refresh rate display (for the 12 year none of the phones had it).
The mini is probably my favorite iPhone design of all time. It’s basically a 5 (my previous favorite) with a full screen display.
It’s a shame we’ll lose a small phone that doesn’t compromise on features this year - I don’t want an SE.
I somewhat regret the 12 mini, not because of the size (or even battery - it's fine for my daily use), but the face ID. As others have said, it's just too interruptive. (well, they didn't say that word exactly, but it's what I think).
Rumors I'd read last year would be that a 13 or 14 would have a 'button' underneath the glass screen, so we'd effectively have a 'home' button without the need for a physical button. Not in the 13, and I've not heard about it in the 14 (yet?) but would welcome that. The touch-id flow I had grown used to was so ... useful and fluid. Part of the reason I don't think I recognized it as much was 2020/2021 - so much of my regular life was thrown out of whack (travel/meetings/etc) that the impact of moving to face ID wasn't all that noticeable. As we're 'returning to normal' more and more, and I'm 'out' more, the day to day impact is more noticeable.
When I do succumb to my own weakness and look at something on the tiny screen, I often think, meh, this isn't great, just do something else!
But this showed me that phone performance is no longer a reason to upgrade, so I’ll probably hold on to this one even longer than I kept the 7 Plus.
Down? What does the mini have that the SE doesn’t?
The only thing missing is the zoom. Wish they replaced the useless 0.5x lens with the 2x. Everything else about this phone is perfect
But the 0.5x very frequently enables indoor shots that are impossible to get otherwise. Because you can't back up for a wider view if you're next to a wall.
Apple chose well.
I do wonder if the battery will hold up over time, especially as I start going to conferences and other all-day events. It was a non-issue during the first year, when I was almost always at home.
It's a lazy, bad name but it is objectively a great product. It is extremely successful.
Dismissing it because it doesn't work for you is as absurd as dismissing shoes too big for you or pants made from a material you don't like. Other people do, the world is not about you.
The Max is only stupid if you're in the "phone is a phone" group.
For the "my phone is my main computing device" people it's a really good device.
I'm trying to workout which one to get, way too many options in 2022.
I do a lot of outdoor stuff, not sure if I want the weight of the pro, is it worth it?
The zoom lens. Worth the price alone.
The $449 Pixel 6a, which was released today, has the same Tensor chip as the $899 Pixel 6 Pro. This is advertised prominently on the product page:
https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_6a
I bought an iphone around the launch of the Pixel 4, which is now nearing it's end of support. Meanwhile Apple has provided the latest updates to devices that launched 7 years ago.
https://calyxos.org/install/
Also that if you have special sauce (eg a tensor chip), you want to give it to all users if you can, or developers won't bother optimising for it.
The battery life on that one is atrocious compared to the apple one.
Past discussions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31411191
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30405011
New they're a bit pricey for the specs but you can find them like new used on ebay for half RRP.
https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en#zippy=...
Same with the Zenfone 9.
There’s the Balmuda phone on the Android side as well. The market simply does not support small screen devices.
It's small enough to pocket in a pair of lightweight shorts. It's bland to look at, no branding, symmetrical bezels all around, but stuffed with all the features and functionality I want.
With Touch ID you have to prepare the phone by unlocking it before making the payment. Which means that you have to stare at your phone while you are interacting with the merchant. It’s odd and unnatural.
Well, it’s not that bad neither really important but the initial UX was wonderful in its objectification of the phone as a convenient payment method.
(And don’t talk me about Apple Watch, payment experience is terribly unnatural as it means making weird moves with your wrist).
I have dozens of mfa codes 5 apps, requiring me to stop, look at my phone wait for it find my ugly face so I can click ‘yes it me’, in Okta, MS Authenticator, Duo, Google Authenticator, Symantec VIP, is ridiculous.
I want my freaking 6s with a phone jack. /endrant
I’ll take it out, pay. Lock it and pocket it. Then later hear it’s started playing music or find half typed gibberish messages or random phone numbers because it’s been activating in my pocket.
Never happened on any iPhones I’ve owned till I got the 11 with FaceID
See for yourself: https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=7588&idPhone2...
The iPhone 6s gets a single-core Geekbench of 528 while the Nexus 6P gets 208. The Nexus 6P's multi-core score was 520 - less then the iPhone 6s' single-core score. The iPhone 6s' multi-core score was 970 - 87% higher than the Nexus 6P.
Yep, it had 8 cores. Good for it. It was still a lot slower.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9820/the-google-nexus-6p-revi...
AnandTech also found it a lot slower. Mozilla's Kraken web browser benchmark took 2.4x longer on the Nexus 6P. The iPhone scored around 1.9x higher on Google's Octane benchmark.
It's really hard to argue with Apple's superior processor performance. I guess if you're looking for more cores with inferior performance, the Nexus 6P fits the bill. MORE CORES!
For what it's worth, the statement you quoted did not initially contain the number of cores. 6P felt super snappy (at least on Android 6, not so much on Oreo) and I added the cores for dramatic effect, but that backfired. I'll leave it as-is so others can notice and learn from my mistake once they read your reply.
Even before the iPhone I looked at the brand new 2G, no GPS, 240p screen, 1Mpx camera iPhone and laughed from my "old" 3G/VGA/GPS/2Mpx Windows Phone. Until I tried the iPhone and there was no going back.
On second thought, are you sure you're not still holding your iPhone wrong?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/25/iphone.problems.re...
Both make great phones but having a popular phone has a really killer feature where it works out a lot of bugs. Not perfect, but I think if iPhones had the same level of issue as the Nexus 6 there'd be an extended warranty or something comparable.
Got a double payout from the eventual class action suit.
Now that I think about it, you might be saying that P9 was more wide-spread in the US than the 6P, which would also be confusing, because I don't think the P9 was officially sold in the US.
Which is why I remove the FaceID/passcode completely. The overall improvement to my QoL is well worth the increased risk. And all my truly sensitive apps are passcode protected, anyway.
Let guests (or myself) use Google Maps, Calculator, etc without a lock screen.