On Wednesday, Apple announced the second-generation iPhone SE, with an iPhone 8-like body, Touch ID, an A13 Bionic processor and other major hardware upgrades. It was the first update to the ‘SE’ branded iPhone after the original generation was released in 2016.
We’ve rounded up and made a comparison of the new iPhone SE, iPhone 8 – introduced in 2018 with the iPhone 8 Plus and X – and first-generation SE from 2016.
| iPhone SE (2nd-gen) | iPhone 8 (2017) | iPhone SE (2016) | |
| Processor | A13 Bionic chip 3rd Gen Neural Engine | A11 Bionic chip Neural Engine | A9 chip |
| Display | 4.7″ Retina HD TrueTone P3 Wide Colour Haptic Touch | 4.7″ Retina HD TrueTone P3 Wide Colour 3D Touch | 4″ Retina Full sRGB standard |
| Capacity | 64GB 128GB 256GB | 64GB 128GB | 32GB 128GB |
| Camera | Single 12MP wide f1.8 aperture Optical image stabilisation Portrait Mode (both) Bokeh & Depth Control Next-gen Smart HDR 7MP front camera | Single 12MP wide f1.8 aperture Optical image stabilisation Auto HDR 7MP front camera | Single 12MP wide f2.2 aperture HDR 1.2MP front camera |
| Video | HD/4K up to 60 fps Optical image stabilization QuickTake video Slo-mo 1080p at 120/240 fps Stereo recording | HD/4K up to 60 fps Optical image stabilization Slo-mo 1080p at 120/240 fps | 4K/HD at 30 fps Slo-mo 1080p at 120 fps |
| Wireless | Gigabit LTE WiFi 6 802.11ax Bluetooth 5.0 | LTE 802.11ac Wi‑Fi Bluetooth 5.0 | LTE 802.11ac Wi‑Fi Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Connections | Lightning port Dual-SIM | Lightning port Nano-SIM | Lightning port 3.5mm audio jack Nano-SIM |
| Video Playback | Dolby Vision and HDR10 | Dolby Vision and HDR10 |
One area that the 2020 iPhone SE is seemingly quite strong in is the camera area. It borrows features from the iPhone 8 and the XR, which was of the best single camera phones of 2018. Apple also uses the power and machine learning of the A13 Bionic chip to improve the photos taken with the camera, as they’ve done with the iPhone 11 series.
The iPhone SE also has support for Dolby Vision, HDR10 and other display standards. Although it’s on the iPhone 8, Apple’s replaced 3D Touch with Haptic Touch, which reduces the prices and provides the same experience with force touching the display.
9to5Mac also claims that the SE has 3GB of RAM and a 1821 mAh battery, which is surprisingly small and may not be correct (we need to wait for reviews to confirm this). It also runs iOS 13 and will support future software releases until 2025 at least.
