Hello and welcome back to Talking Tech with Nolan! Today we will be talking about a “new” Apple product. (You’ll see why I put new in quotes later on.) With that said, lets get into it!

Recently, Apple released an update to its iPhone SE, and most people without too much background knowledge in the tech community might be scratching their head at this release. After all, the phone looks exactly like the iPhone 8. You know the phone released 5 years ago in 2017?

Credit: Apple

Benefits:

Apple’s iPhone SE is its budget device. Despite its looks, it has many things going for it. First off, it is the cheapest iPhone you can get at only $429. That is almost $300 dollars cheaper than the iPhone 13 mini and just about half the price of the latest iPhone 13 which start at $699 and $799 respectfully. For college students on a budget, this is the cheapest way to get a new iPhone these days.

On top of its price, this phone also has headroom for days! Although this phone has the chassis of the dated iPhone 8, it has the A15 bionic chip inside. That is the same chip that Apple puts in its latest iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro models. This chip is flat out the fastest and most efficient processor on the market right now, according to MKBHD’s review of this device.

Now this phone is not going to feel like the fastest phone, but the key behind getting the latest chip in this device is that this phone will maintain its speed and Apple will support this phone with the latest software for years to come. We are talking at least 5 years.

Credit: Mashable

Who’s it for?

This phone is perfect for people who do not care about the latest technology in phones, but rather need an iPhone to just be a phone for them and last a very long time. On top of that, this is one of the best overall phones in the $400 smartphone market. Of all the other devices in this class, including the Google Pixel 5A and the Samsung Galaxy A52, this phone simply performs the best across the board, while giving users the smoothest operating system experience in any phone in IOS.

iPhone 13 mini vs. iPhone SE

Credit: Gear Patrol

Drawbacks:

Despite a few benefits, this phone is far from perfect. After all, it’s basically a 5-year-old phone with a new chip. It has a home button and a fingerprint reader as opposed to FaceID on the new phones. Now some people love the fingerprint reader over face identification, and some people are home button fanatics, but I personally like having more screen to my phone. After all, this phone has the massive top and bottom bezels of the original iPhones. This causes the phone to only have a 4.7” display. This is smaller than the screen size of the iPhone 13 mini (5.4”), ironic given the names, right? On top of that, it still has the same battery size as the iPhone 8, limiting its battery life to about a day compared to some competition that has 2 day battery life.

Now given what I have told you, can you see why I say this is a “new” product. Apple just slapped a new processor in a 5-year-old design and called it good. There are certainly pros and cons to this device, but I know for sure that if you are in the market for a new phone and are on a strict budget, this is the way to go for sure!

Thanks for reading! Come back next time for another installment of Talking Tech with Nolan!