hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and the iphone se second generation has been out for
about two years at this point apple released it in 2022 as an alternative to their more expensive
options but still giving you pretty reasonable specs that are up to date and so i wanted to help
you decide if you should still pick one up since we may have an iphone se3 in the future here not
too long from now or if maybe you should wait and or maybe you can get this very reasonable
so either way i wanted to help you decide if you should pick it up in 2022 as many of you have
asked me to do this video now currently this is the least expensive iphone that apple offers new
you of course can get used phones or refurbished phones but this comes in at 399 or goes up to 449
with the options of 64 and 128 gigabytes this is the 128 gigabyte model and that usually helps if
maybe you want to record a lot of video things like that so if we go into the storage you'll
see we have 128 gigabytes there it gets the recent updates and things like that but i wanted to talk
about durability and more in just a moment now of course we have three different options as far
as colors this is the product red version but you also have a black and white version so very
simple more reminiscent of what we had before when apple used to release phones with the iphone 4 and
steve jobs was around where we just had two color options or maybe a third later in the year with
product red so it's sort of a throwback to that as far as its durability well it holds up pretty well
similar to what we would have with previous phones the iphone 6 through the iphone 8 where we have an
aluminum frame around the outside edge that holds up well it's anodized but doesn't seem to chip
or anything like that of course you have your sim card tray and your typical buttons and it holds up
very very well this one has not been in a case and the glass has actually been quite durable also
it's not as durable as the most recent ceramic shield but it holds up well about as well as maybe
an iphone 8 would so no scratches here on the back i don't really have any scratches on the front
and of course we have touch id so touch id is something that a lot of people still appreciate
especially if you're wearing a mask today or things like that and if you want a touch id phone
this is your only option with the most recent processors in it so it works nice and fast usually
so we'll do that one more time i typically prefer touch id i just wish maybe they'd put it on the
power button however this particular model works really really well and again if you want sort of a
retro look with the latest specs this is your only option now as far as the display is concerned it
has great viewing angles it's a 4.7 inch retina hd display according to apple it has a 1334
by 750 pixel resolution at 326 pixels per inch so basically what we've had for years from the
iphone 6 iphone 7 8 and now this so pretty good resolution you can't see the pixels or anything
and like i said good viewing angles you can also watch hd content on it 4k hdr content as well
and then it goes up to 625 nits of brightness so it's nice and bright no issues there
and if we go to something like youtube i have an hdr video that i recorded about the iphone 13 pro
max let me turn it down here first we'll hit play and i don't want to transfer that to a home pod
if we go to our settings here you'll see we actually have 4k hdr now of course this display is
not a 4k display so what it will do is just down scale that but it's bright enough to watch hdr
content although it's not going to give you the 1200 nits of brightness of the latest phones
so just keep that in mind now one thing this doesn't have that may also be a consideration
for you is pwm or pulse width modulation as a way to control the display's brightness this seems
to be one of the most popular reasons people go with the lcd displays of the iphone se or
maybe an iphone 10r or iphone 11. because they're not flickering the display to control brightness
they're usually a lot easier on the eyes so with an oled display such as that in the iphone 13 pro
max it will flicker the display faster and slower to control brightness you can't see this but you
can see it under slow motion video at 120 frames or 240 frames per second so you can see that and
it can cause you to feel nauseated or just sort of dizzy or just not well so some people that affects
about one in 10 myself included it's not so much on the latest phones but definitely on the iphone
10s 10s max iphone 10 it was a problem this is much better on the eyes as far as the speakers
we have one at the top and one at the bottom basically what they've done for a very long time
and they sound pretty good they're nice and loud and i wanted to show you what they sound like now
or let you hear them and show you how loud they are using my apple watch using the noise option so
if you go into noise you can measure the ambient noise around you and how many decibels it is so
give me just a second we'll tilt the microphone toward it and you can hear what it sounds like
so
now the speakers are pretty good they get a little bit muffled at the highest volume and
they're not as loud as the latest phones that go up to over 80 decibels but they're plenty loud and
if you just bring the volume down a little bit it clears the sound right up so pretty good speakers
what you would expect in this size device now the battery life is probably its biggest downfall
it has the same battery capacity as the iphone 8 at 1 821 milliamp hours that gives it about
four hours of screen on time depending on how you're using your phone if you're just using it
on 3g as far as talking you'll get about 10 hours or up to maybe 13 hours just using safari but if
you're doing anything else intensive whether that be playing games or anything else you're going
to use that up more quickly and maybe get about eight to nine hours of viewing video and things
like that it just depends on how you're using it but between four to five hours of screen on time
and if you're not a heavy user it will last you through the day if you are you'll probably have
to charge it a couple times or at least once to get you through the day now it does have wireless
charging but it also has fast charging if you're using a 20 watt adapter so you can get 50 percent
in about 30 minutes according to apple and that holds to be true when you're actually trying it
in real life so it does charge pretty quickly if you're needing to bump that battery back up like
i said before it has more recent specs internally it has an a13 bionic with three gigabytes of ram
you can see how much ram it has going into geekbench and it's a pretty fast phone because
it's not pushing a lot of pixels it's just super fast of course it doesn't have pro motion but it
will load games fast and ram management's quite good going back and forth testing youtube and
things it's staying open in the background if you want to load a game a more recent game i typically
use minecraft a lot as an example we'll just let it load here in real time so i can show you it's
plenty fast so it's the first time i've opened this since rebooting we'll just go to create and
see how long it takes so typically you're going to be able to play games on this without any problem
whatsoever whether that be minecraft or call of duty or among us or maybe when fortnite comes back
onto the iphone things like that we'll give it just a moment here for it to load and you'll see
we're in if i was to try this on an older phone such as an iphone 6 it would be much slower or
iphone 6s so it loads nice and fast no real issues there frame rates are smooth 60 frames per second
as you would expect so no problems with that the cameras in the second generation iphone se
are very similar to that of the iphone 10r we have a 7 megapixel forward-facing camera that
does up to 1080p 30 video so if we go into the video you can see it here i'll hit record and
now i'm recording with the iphone se and you can hear the microphone directly from it so instead
of using my studio microphone you're hearing the microphone from the se and seeing the video from
it which is good enough for things like facetime or maybe a zoom call or other conference calls
but i really wouldn't use it to maybe record a vlog or anything like that however the rear-facing
camera is quite good the rear facing camera is a 12 megapixel camera that can record 4k 60 has
optical image stabilization and an f 1.8 aperture however it does not have hdr but i recorded
an entire video using this when i reviewed the iphone sc second generation when it first came out
i used an se to record that video so if you want to see that i'll leave the link in the
description and you can click the little link in the upper right here so that video shows what this
is capable of however it takes pretty nice photos as well but you don't get the telephoto zoom lens
so you don't have optical zoom you do have digital zoom up to 5x and you don't have ultra wide
so you're missing out on those features but the camera is pretty good as well as you can see some
of the photos here i've used these in a comparison before but now full screen you may be able to see
it a little bit better and it gives you an idea of what it's capable of so it's a pretty decent
camera overall now as far as reception reception is pretty good you don't have 5g and that's what's
speculated to be the major feature in the third generation so this does not have 5g it has 4g and
3g capability lte but no 5g it also has wi-fi but again you're not going to get the latest
specs but it's fine it's a very practical phone as far as that goes so good reception it's decent
overall and typically the aluminum-bodied phones for some reason i find have better reception
than the steel-bodied phones of say the pro models so for whatever reason that's just my experience
but that seems to be the case for me so if you don't care about 5g well this should work for
you as far as ip rating it's an ip67 so it does have some water and dust resistance one meter of
water for up to 30 minutes again as i've mentioned before in other videos if you're going to submerge
this in water i would put it in a waterproof case as apple will not really pay for that damage
you'll have to use apple care or if you don't have apple care you'll need to buy the phone again
so typically put it in a fully waterproof case if you're going to submerge it regularly but splashes
of water and things should be fine and that leads me to should you buy an iphone se 2nd generation
and i would say this is a consideration for maybe two or three reasons one being you want touch id
and you want the latest processor and the other being that it's lcd so lcd not bothering your
eyes not having pwm may be the best option and of course there's the price availability as well you
probably can get this very inexpensively whether that be refurbished from someone else used or just
through your carrier now if you want to wait for the more recent one iphone se3 if you care about
5g and whatever else new chip they put inside it things like that any enhancements to the camera
then you may want to wait for the new 5g version of the iphone se that's said to be launching
within a month or so or within march or april it may be a new apple event so that's a consideration
however there's one other consideration that i would consider and that's the iphone 8 plus
if you want a larger phone with touch id the optical zoom as well as a camera that's quite good
the iphone 8 plus is still a good option if you want that as well as better battery life
so you probably can get these for around a similar price maybe you can even get the
8 plus for less money or even an iphone 8. so it just depends what matters most to you
but the iphone 8 plus is actually one of my favorite phones ever made and i really miss
touch id from it so if you want that larger screen you even have a higher pixel density here on the
eight plus so it may be a better option that way of course ios updates will be available for many
years to come since this has only been out two years so you have probably until at least ios 19
ios 20 depending on how apple decides to continue the ios rollouts and how long they support their
devices either way it's going to have the latest security updates and the latest features for a
long time as far as what it has now but it's not going to have pro motion ever like the iphone 13
pro max is that requires a different display and some different features and processors but either
way it will have ios updates for many many years and i definitely would consider this if it was
only a couple hundred dollars however again if you want the latest features you may want to wait till
that new one the third generation comes out it's it's said to be the exact same but we'll have to
wait and see let me know if you have an iphone SE second generation or maybe you're considering
picking one up i'd love to hear where you're getting it from maybe the price you're paying for
it since they seem to be pretty reasonably priced and what kind of battery life you're experiencing
using it are you a heavy user or maybe you're just a casual user and it gets you through two
days because you don't use it that often i'd love to hear from you in the comments below
and of course if you want to get your hands on this wallpaper i'll link it in the description
like i normally do if you haven't subscribed already though please subscribe and if you enjoyed
the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is Aaron i'll see you next time