iPhone SE

A simply brilliant palm-friendly phone

There's a part of me that doesn't understand why Apple gets the amount of interest it does with something like the iPhone SE. It's a phone that's in an identical chassis to the one released three years ago, and beyond a new color it's impossible to know which model is which. It's the iPhone 'Special Edition'.

Then I look around the train carriage on the way to work and count the amount of iPhone 5S and 5 devices that are being prodded quietly all around. The number is staggering, and it easily dwarfs the amount of iPhone 6 or 6S handsets on show.

Has Apple been smart here? Looked at the way people are using phones and realised there's a massive market for a certain form factor - one that's not only not being serviced in the iWorld, but in the smartphone arena in general?

The iPhone SE is a phone that many might not have expected - in truth, we thought the iPhone 5C would get a reboot, with the plastic chassis coming in a more rounded, 6S-a-like shape and allowing Apple to offer a lower-cost phone that could be pushed to other territories where flagship phones don't sell as well.

But instead we got a hark back to a long-forgotten era in smartphones, like Apple slit time in two and pulled a phone back through, and charged US$399 (£359, AU$679) for the 16GB model, and US$499 (£439 / $AU829) for the 64GB option for the privilege.

The question of price is more important here than ever before. By launching a 4-inch phone, no matter how fancy the internals are, consumers will expect it to be a little cheaper - and thankfully that's what Apple has done.,

That means Focus Pixels to offer clearer and faster autofocus, the improved two-tone flash and Live Photos, where a small amount of video is captured with every photo taken. 4K video recording and ultra-slo-mo movie modes really help sweeten the deal too.

The power of the iPhone SE is something to behold too - it's as powerful as the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus thanks to having the new A9 chip, the M9 co-processor and 2GB of RAM.

Compare that to the A7 chip with a measly 1GB of RAM from the iPhone 5S and side by side they're absolutely night and day in terms of speed and battery life management.

The M9 co-processor is an important element too, telling the phone when it should be heading into a dormant mode thanks to being sat quietly on a desk or in a pocket, which prevents the battery-hungry pings that lead to the red line of doom and needing you to reach for the charger at 6PM.

Battery life is impressive on the phone, especially when you consider there are only a few mAh added in here, from 1560mAh to 1624mAh, and with no increase to the size of the chassis at all, this is a really impressive feat and addresses one of the key concerns I had with the iPhone 5S.