ryanymore I actually own the 3rd-gen iPhone SE, and I was thinking about doing a review for the community last month. But honestly, using it for a while kind of killed that idea because I was pretty disappointed with it. Let me explain why.
everything you said is true. It has a pretty powerful chip — basically the same one as the iPhone 13 — and I actually like how the phone looks, even though the design is REALLY outdated at this point. The main camera is also surprisingly good.
I even thought about using it as my main phone for a while, just to see how it would work as a simple everyday device, and that’s when I really started getting disappointed, especially with the battery.
Mine is at 95% battery health because it was basically never used, and honestly, a full charge would give me around 2 hours and 43 minutes of screen time, maybe 3 hours at best. And that’s while being pretty careful about how I used it.
The battery life was definitely my biggest problem with the phone, then there’s durability. I was using it without a case because I was testing it for the review, and somehow the screen got a small crack just from being in my pants pocket next to a couple of coins.
And like I said, maybe the small size isn’t a problem for some people, but personally, I really didn’t like the screen for everyday use. Gaming on this thing is honestly kind of painful because you have so little screen real estate.
And the selfie camera… It’s BAD, I’m not even exaggerating when I say I’d put it around the same level as the selfie camera on a RedMagic.
The speakers aren’t great either. I mean, it’s a really thin and tiny phone, so I guess you can’t expect amazing sound from it, but still, they’re pretty underwhelming.
And the Home button… I just couldn’t get used to it.
I used the phone for an entire week and I still felt like I was going back to 2015 every time I pressed it.
There are just a lot of little things that don’t seem like a big deal on paper, but once you actually use the phone as your main device, they start getting really annoying.
And the battery is the perfect example.
My workday starts at 6 AM and ends around 9 PM. Obviously, I wasn’t expecting this tiny phone to last all day with heavy use, but I thought that with normal use — a few calls, some music, checking TikTok or Instagram every now and then — I should at least be able to make it to around 3 PM with maybe 40% left, by 1 PM, I was already at around 12%.
I had to turn on battery save mode and basically stop using the phone, or carry a power bank with me, and again, this was a phone with 95% battery health.
at least here in Mexico, the 3rd-gen SE is around the same price as a Galaxy S21 Ultra, yeah, is older, and I think it’s stuck on Android 15 now, but come on… you’re getting a MUCH better display, way better cameras, and dramatically better battery life.
So for me, the SE is really hard to recommend as a main phone
I actually think it makes more sense as a secondary phone, or maybe as an extra camera if you’re a content creator, because the main camera is still really good.
The biggest advantages are obviously the software support and the fact that it’s really compact. But honestly, I don’t think those two things are enough to make up for everything else.
Sorry for writing a literal bible, but I wanted to lay out those points especially the battery.
