First look: Apple iPhone SE

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The iPhone SE brings back the beloved iPhone 5/5S design, 4-inch display as well as a compact and well-balanced form factor that fits in a shirt pocket or easily in your jeans. Out of the box, the iPhone SE feels like a nostalgic throwback to the days before phablets but once you fire it up and realize that its a completely different beast on the inside.

The iPhone SE is identical to the iPhone 5 line, it will fit all the cases and accessories for those devices. There are a number of notable upgrades that make the iPhone SE a compelling 4-inch device. The Apple A9 processor found in the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus is here, coupled with 2GB of RAM as well as either 16GB or 64GB of onboard storage.

You either like smaller phones or you don't but at least with the iPhone SE, you don't have to sacrifice performance for size. I've tested the iPhone SE alongside the iPhone 5c which is essentially an iPhone 5 in plastic clothing. I found the speed difference to be quite dramatic, specially when launching apps, loading complex mobile webpages, as well as multitasking.

Other updates worth mentioning are the always-on Siri voice control, which is triggered by the "Hey, Siri" phrase. iPhone 5E's updated internals also enable Apple Pay on this smaller form factor, this means you can set up your favourite payment options and use the Touch ID and NFC to enable payments if your'e an American Express card user in Canada.

Also new are faster Wi-Fi and LTE which the iPhone SE supports 802.11ac for Wi-Fi and features 19 LTE bands with a maximum speed of up to 150 Mbps. It also has updated Bluetooth 4.2, which is the latest standard.

The iPhone SE also inherits the iPhone 6S' 12-megapixel rear camera with a ƒ/2.4 aperture. This brings one of the most advanced and popular cameras in the world and its accompanying software into a smaller device. On tap are features like 4K video capture, 240 frame per second slo-motion video and the Retina Flash feature that uses the display as a lightbox for taking selfies.

You can take Live Photos and you can even play them back with a long press but the general 3D Touch feature found on the iPhone 6S is not available. This is because the iPhone SE uses the same front display panel and FaceTime camera found on the iPhone 5s.

Managing to catch moving objects and cats easily proves the iPhone SE's camera is still the best in the business for general photography

The photo and video quality coming from the iPhone SE seems comparable to the iPhone 6S line and while I plan on doing more intensive tests, I'm quite impressed to have Apple's best camera available on a more compact phone minus the camera bump.

The iPhone SE is a great addition to the iPhone line and should satisfy anyone coming from a smaller, older device who missed the compact form factor and specific shape.