iPhone SE 3 top features and review - is Apple's budget phone worth it

**iPhone 13 SE: A Decent but Not Ideal Smartphone**

The iPhone 13 SE starts at $429 for 64GB of storage, which is $270 cheaper than the cheapest iPhone 13 model. However, it's also $30 more expensive than the previous-generation iPhone SE. When compared to other smartphones on the market, especially in terms of camera capabilities and features, the iPhone 13 SE may not be the top choice for everyone.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the iPhone 13 SE is its design, which has been criticized as "boring" by some reviewers. The phone's design is a mixed bag, with some people finding it to be both a plus and a minus depending on their perspective. The colors are not drastically different from the previous generation iPhone SE, but they do offer a slightly more vibrant look.

Another disappointment of the iPhone 13 SE is its lack of Night Mode, which allows for better low-light photography by taking a long exposure. When compared to a Night Mode shot taken with an iPhone SE3, it's clear that the iPhone 13 SE simply doesn't have the same capabilities in this department. This may be a major drawback for some users who rely heavily on their smartphone's camera for nighttime photography.

The front-facing camera is also a letdown, with only a 7-megapixel sensor and no Face ID support. While it's not a bad camera by any means, it's certainly not as good as the one found in the iPhone SE3, which has a higher megapixel count and supports Face ID.

Perhaps the biggest oversight of the iPhone 13 SE is its lack of MagSafe support. The MagSafe connector was introduced with the iPhone 12 series and offers a convenient way to attach accessories like battery packs or wallets to the back of the phone. However, the iPhone 13 SE does not have this feature, which may be a deal-breaker for some users.

Despite these drawbacks, the iPhone 13 SE is still a good smartphone in many ways. It has the latest generation system-on-a-chip, which makes it as fast as an iPhone 13. The phone also features a Dual Camera module with an ultra-wide camera, which takes high-quality photos and allows for better zoom capabilities.

**Photographic Style: A Unique Feature**

One of the unique features of the iPhone 13 SE is its "Photographic Style" feature. This feature allows users to apply different adjustments to their photos to give them a more customized look. The feature can be accessed by tapping on the "Photographic Style" button in the camera app or swiping up and tapping on the style button.

The Photographic Style feature uses AI to make adjustments to the photo, rather than relying on manual settings. This means that users don't need to manually adjust things like tone, color temperature, or contrast. Instead, the phone's AI takes care of it all for you.

When accessed, the Photographic Style interface allows users to select from a range of pre-set styles, including "Vibrant Warm" and "Rich." Users can also customize their own style by adjusting settings such as tone, color temperature, and saturation. The feature is available on both the rear and front cameras, allowing for more flexibility when it comes to capturing photos.

The A15 chip plays a key role in making the Photographic Style feature possible. By using this powerful processor, Apple can make advanced adjustments to the photo in real-time, resulting in more natural-looking results.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, while the iPhone 13 SE has its flaws, it's still a good smartphone that offers many features and benefits. The addition of MagSafe support would have been a major plus for some users, but unfortunately, it's not available on this model. However, with the Photographic Style feature and AI-powered camera capabilities, the iPhone 13 SE is definitely worth considering for those in the market for a new smartphone.

**Comparison to Other Smartphones**

If you're a camera enthusiast, the iPhone 11 may be a better option than the iPhone 13 SE. The iPhone 11 has a dual-camera module with an ultra-wide-angle lens and supports 4K video recording on both the front and rear cameras. It also has a higher megapixel front-facing camera with Face ID support, which is a major plus for users who rely heavily on their smartphone's camera.

The iPhone 11 is also available at a lower price point than the iPhone 13 SE, making it an attractive option for those on a budget. However, if you're not a camera enthusiast and want a physical home button, the iPhone 13 SE may be worth considering. It has many of the same features as the iPhone 11, but also offers the convenience of MagSafe support, which is missing from the iPhone 11.

Ultimately, the decision between the iPhone 13 SE and other smartphones will depend on your individual needs and preferences.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso the third generation iphone se is here but who exactly is this smartphone aimed at well as we'll discuss it could be a variety of people could be ones upgrading from an older phone like the iphone 8 or even before or maybe a previous user who's stepping back into the apple ecosystem whatever the case this is the cheapest new iphone that apple currently sells and it comes with a home button but here's the curveball you can get an iphone 11 which comes with way more camera centric bells and whistles for just 70 dollars more now i'm not telling you that you should not consider the iphone se3 because it comes with a processor that's two generations faster than the iphone 11 or the previous iphone sc but the iphone 11's camera features namely its support for face id its higher resolution front-facing camera and a much more robust dual camera rear system makes for a compelling device even though it's going on three generations old but with all that being said if you're looking for a cheap entry-level iphone then the iphone sc3 is definitely one worth considering let's look at its top features right now thanks for watching nine to five mac be sure to thumbs up click the subscribe button and then enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any upcoming videos okay so here is the iphone se let's go ahead and quickly unbox it and see what's inside this third generation iphone se now like all iphone se models this comes with the latest generation processor in an older style chassis in this case the iphone 8 chassis so here's what's inside the box you get the designed by apple in california packet you get your lightning to usbc cable and inside that packet you get a sim eject tool this does have dual ecm by the way so you don't have to use a physical sim get the regulatory information and of course your lonely little apple sticker so again here's your lightning usb cable and that's pretty much it alright so top feature number one the small size and the physical home button and that physical home button can be very appealing to those that don't want to rely on swipe gestures perhaps older ones that would find it easier to interact with the physical home button and that home button gives you touch id biometric authentication with a fingerprint instead of using your face like with face id enabled phones and that too may appeal to certain types of users the iphone se has a decidedly old-school feel about it with that physical home button the small form factor you can see it stacked up here next to the iphone 13 mini and while the mini is the smallest iphone that apple sells it has a larger screen than the iphone se3 which only has a 4.7 inch display compared to the mini's 5.4 inch display now it's not complete apples to apples because these phones sport different aspect ratios but basically what i found is that both devices are more or less just as easy to navigate when interacting with the touch screen now like all iphone sc models this iphone se third generation sports the latest system on the chip which is in the flagship models like the iphone 13 that being the a15 and that folks is one of the biggest advantages that the iphone se 3 enjoys over something like the iphone 11 for instance which sports the a13 just like the previous generation iphone se you also get an extra gigabyte of ram and a significant upgrade in performance over the a13 that was in the iphone se 2 and the iphone 11. so here's my iphone 13 which is the latest and greatest right and here is the iphone se3 you can see they're basically the same as far as geekbench scores are concerned so the cpu performance increases the gpu performance increases do yield real world benefits for instance with games i've noticed that one of my go-to games hot lava which is an apple arcade game runs smoother less frame rate hiccups and things like that just an overall better gaming experience and you'll notice that with the various games that you play i played nba 2k uh several other games and performance was just better when compared to the previous generation iphone sc i also noticed that when i was doing like exports with imovie obviously the a15 yield at faster export times than the a13 so i mean yeah obviously you're going from an a13 to an a15 you should expect performance increases and that's exactly what you get when upgrading to the se3 now perhaps the most noteworthy upgrade from the se2 to the se3 is the inclusion of 5g capability now you don't get the fastest millimeter wave that you get on the iphone 13 but that's mostly useless in real real world scenarios anyway more importantly you do get both low and mid band 5g capability with the iphone se3 you can see the se3 on the left with 5g connectivity and the lte enabled se2 on the right in the performance speaks for itself right now the iphone sc3 features improved battery life and most of that is owed to the optimizations in the a15 however there is a slightly larger battery in the iphone se3 and combined with the optimizations that yields roughly two hours of additional battery life and in my anecdotal testing over the past week battery life seemed to be within the ballpark of apple's claims now the iphone se3 gains additional camera features thanks to the a15 bionic you get smart hdr4 which is great for portraits specifically when there are multiple people and it will automatically adjust contrast lighting skin tones so that everyone looks their best and there's also deep fusion which takes advantage of that 16 core neural engine to bring out subtle details and textures and patterns and then there are photographic styles now these aren't filters but they are more like custom presets that you can enable or disable at any time you can see i have one enabled right now photographic style i can tap that button in the upper right hand corner to access the photographic style interface or i can swipe up like that and tap the button here to access it as well so you have your standard style with no effects applied swipe over you see your vibrant warm but this can be customized so you have your tone and you can set that to vibrant or you can set it to rich and then you also have your color temperature on the other side you can set that to warm or set it to cool just like this so there's warm slide over to set it to cool so i have vibrant cool in this case but like i was saying these aren't cookie cutter filters that you simply apply on top of a photo no your iphone selectively applies these adjustments so that things like skin tones or the sky don't look like totally off base they still look natural yet at the same time you get your own custom look based on the photographic style that you've selected and again the a15 is what helps make this possible so once we take a photo you can see here a photo of taken with the photographic style if i tap the info button i can see that style has been applied just like that now let's talk about the price because this thing starts at 429 for 64 gigabytes of storage right so it's 270 dollars cheaper than the cheapest iphone 13 the iphone 13 mini but it's also thirty dollars more than the previous generation iphone se which costs just four hundred dollars now let's talk about some not so good things you get the same boring design which is both a plus and a minus depending on how you look at it and you get the same boring colors roughly right they're not the exact colors but for instance black looks very similar to midnight midnight is more of a bluish color whereas black is more of a well a grayish dark color but they look roughly the same so if you're looking for a design or you're looking for colors that are drastically different than the previous generation iphone se yeah you're not gonna find that here with the third generation one of the biggest disappointments is the lack of night mode which lets you do a long exposure for better low light photography so you can see here is a night mode shot and let's compare that with no night mode on the iphone se3 and yeah it doesn't look all that good doesn't look all that hot what do you guys think and then you get the same old crusty 7 megapixel front facing camera obviously this isn't face id enabled or anything like that but it would have been nice to have a front-facing camera upgrade for facetime calls but by far the biggest downside is the lack of magsafe support which is probably one of the greatest smartphone innovations that we've had in some time right max safe of course that magnetic connector that allows you to use all sorts of accessories like the maxi battery pack or the mac safe wallet to just simply attach it to the back of your phone magnetically it's secure it's connected but here with the iphone sc3 yeah there there's no mag safe support at all so your max a battery pack or your mac safe wallet it's just going to slide off the phone just like that so it's just disappointing not to have mac magsafe because it's honestly such a great feature now it may sound like i've been pretty hard on the iphone se3 but let me assure you that this is a good smartphone it has the latest generation system on a chip which makes it as fast as an iphone 13 however it's the camera like if you're a camera enthusiast this is a hard sell in my opinion in my opinion if you're a camera enthusiast who's on the budget and not so much worried about speed then the iphone 11 for just 70 bucks more seems like the better buy in my opinion if you're a camera enthusiast that's what i'm trying to say you get that dual camera module with an ultra wide camera in tow you get 4k video shooting on both the front and rear cameras you get a higher megapixel front facing camera with face id support you get night mode support it's a more camera centric phone than the se3 for sure but the se3 is cheaper and it's also faster it also has a home button and it's less unwieldy in the hand and by the way it has 5g connectivity which the iphone 11 in the previous generation iphone se do not if you're not a camera enthusiast and you definitely want a physical home button the iphone se3 at 429 is a pretty decent buy what do you guys think let me know down below in the comments this is jeff with nine to five macso the third generation iphone se is here but who exactly is this smartphone aimed at well as we'll discuss it could be a variety of people could be ones upgrading from an older phone like the iphone 8 or even before or maybe a previous user who's stepping back into the apple ecosystem whatever the case this is the cheapest new iphone that apple currently sells and it comes with a home button but here's the curveball you can get an iphone 11 which comes with way more camera centric bells and whistles for just 70 dollars more now i'm not telling you that you should not consider the iphone se3 because it comes with a processor that's two generations faster than the iphone 11 or the previous iphone sc but the iphone 11's camera features namely its support for face id its higher resolution front-facing camera and a much more robust dual camera rear system makes for a compelling device even though it's going on three generations old but with all that being said if you're looking for a cheap entry-level iphone then the iphone sc3 is definitely one worth considering let's look at its top features right now thanks for watching nine to five mac be sure to thumbs up click the subscribe button and then enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any upcoming videos okay so here is the iphone se let's go ahead and quickly unbox it and see what's inside this third generation iphone se now like all iphone se models this comes with the latest generation processor in an older style chassis in this case the iphone 8 chassis so here's what's inside the box you get the designed by apple in california packet you get your lightning to usbc cable and inside that packet you get a sim eject tool this does have dual ecm by the way so you don't have to use a physical sim get the regulatory information and of course your lonely little apple sticker so again here's your lightning usb cable and that's pretty much it alright so top feature number one the small size and the physical home button and that physical home button can be very appealing to those that don't want to rely on swipe gestures perhaps older ones that would find it easier to interact with the physical home button and that home button gives you touch id biometric authentication with a fingerprint instead of using your face like with face id enabled phones and that too may appeal to certain types of users the iphone se has a decidedly old-school feel about it with that physical home button the small form factor you can see it stacked up here next to the iphone 13 mini and while the mini is the smallest iphone that apple sells it has a larger screen than the iphone se3 which only has a 4.7 inch display compared to the mini's 5.4 inch display now it's not complete apples to apples because these phones sport different aspect ratios but basically what i found is that both devices are more or less just as easy to navigate when interacting with the touch screen now like all iphone sc models this iphone se third generation sports the latest system on the chip which is in the flagship models like the iphone 13 that being the a15 and that folks is one of the biggest advantages that the iphone se 3 enjoys over something like the iphone 11 for instance which sports the a13 just like the previous generation iphone se you also get an extra gigabyte of ram and a significant upgrade in performance over the a13 that was in the iphone se 2 and the iphone 11. so here's my iphone 13 which is the latest and greatest right and here is the iphone se3 you can see they're basically the same as far as geekbench scores are concerned so the cpu performance increases the gpu performance increases do yield real world benefits for instance with games i've noticed that one of my go-to games hot lava which is an apple arcade game runs smoother less frame rate hiccups and things like that just an overall better gaming experience and you'll notice that with the various games that you play i played nba 2k uh several other games and performance was just better when compared to the previous generation iphone sc i also noticed that when i was doing like exports with imovie obviously the a15 yield at faster export times than the a13 so i mean yeah obviously you're going from an a13 to an a15 you should expect performance increases and that's exactly what you get when upgrading to the se3 now perhaps the most noteworthy upgrade from the se2 to the se3 is the inclusion of 5g capability now you don't get the fastest millimeter wave that you get on the iphone 13 but that's mostly useless in real real world scenarios anyway more importantly you do get both low and mid band 5g capability with the iphone se3 you can see the se3 on the left with 5g connectivity and the lte enabled se2 on the right in the performance speaks for itself right now the iphone sc3 features improved battery life and most of that is owed to the optimizations in the a15 however there is a slightly larger battery in the iphone se3 and combined with the optimizations that yields roughly two hours of additional battery life and in my anecdotal testing over the past week battery life seemed to be within the ballpark of apple's claims now the iphone se3 gains additional camera features thanks to the a15 bionic you get smart hdr4 which is great for portraits specifically when there are multiple people and it will automatically adjust contrast lighting skin tones so that everyone looks their best and there's also deep fusion which takes advantage of that 16 core neural engine to bring out subtle details and textures and patterns and then there are photographic styles now these aren't filters but they are more like custom presets that you can enable or disable at any time you can see i have one enabled right now photographic style i can tap that button in the upper right hand corner to access the photographic style interface or i can swipe up like that and tap the button here to access it as well so you have your standard style with no effects applied swipe over you see your vibrant warm but this can be customized so you have your tone and you can set that to vibrant or you can set it to rich and then you also have your color temperature on the other side you can set that to warm or set it to cool just like this so there's warm slide over to set it to cool so i have vibrant cool in this case but like i was saying these aren't cookie cutter filters that you simply apply on top of a photo no your iphone selectively applies these adjustments so that things like skin tones or the sky don't look like totally off base they still look natural yet at the same time you get your own custom look based on the photographic style that you've selected and again the a15 is what helps make this possible so once we take a photo you can see here a photo of taken with the photographic style if i tap the info button i can see that style has been applied just like that now let's talk about the price because this thing starts at 429 for 64 gigabytes of storage right so it's 270 dollars cheaper than the cheapest iphone 13 the iphone 13 mini but it's also thirty dollars more than the previous generation iphone se which costs just four hundred dollars now let's talk about some not so good things you get the same boring design which is both a plus and a minus depending on how you look at it and you get the same boring colors roughly right they're not the exact colors but for instance black looks very similar to midnight midnight is more of a bluish color whereas black is more of a well a grayish dark color but they look roughly the same so if you're looking for a design or you're looking for colors that are drastically different than the previous generation iphone se yeah you're not gonna find that here with the third generation one of the biggest disappointments is the lack of night mode which lets you do a long exposure for better low light photography so you can see here is a night mode shot and let's compare that with no night mode on the iphone se3 and yeah it doesn't look all that good doesn't look all that hot what do you guys think and then you get the same old crusty 7 megapixel front facing camera obviously this isn't face id enabled or anything like that but it would have been nice to have a front-facing camera upgrade for facetime calls but by far the biggest downside is the lack of magsafe support which is probably one of the greatest smartphone innovations that we've had in some time right max safe of course that magnetic connector that allows you to use all sorts of accessories like the maxi battery pack or the mac safe wallet to just simply attach it to the back of your phone magnetically it's secure it's connected but here with the iphone sc3 yeah there there's no mag safe support at all so your max a battery pack or your mac safe wallet it's just going to slide off the phone just like that so it's just disappointing not to have mac magsafe because it's honestly such a great feature now it may sound like i've been pretty hard on the iphone se3 but let me assure you that this is a good smartphone it has the latest generation system on a chip which makes it as fast as an iphone 13 however it's the camera like if you're a camera enthusiast this is a hard sell in my opinion in my opinion if you're a camera enthusiast who's on the budget and not so much worried about speed then the iphone 11 for just 70 bucks more seems like the better buy in my opinion if you're a camera enthusiast that's what i'm trying to say you get that dual camera module with an ultra wide camera in tow you get 4k video shooting on both the front and rear cameras you get a higher megapixel front facing camera with face id support you get night mode support it's a more camera centric phone than the se3 for sure but the se3 is cheaper and it's also faster it also has a home button and it's less unwieldy in the hand and by the way it has 5g connectivity which the iphone 11 in the previous generation iphone se do not if you're not a camera enthusiast and you definitely want a physical home button the iphone se3 at 429 is a pretty decent buy what do you guys think let me know down below in the comments this is jeff with nine to five mac\n"