'Some people simply love smaller phones': Apple launched the i Phone SE ten years ago today — and it makes me long for an i Phone 17 mini | Tech Radar

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'Some people simply love smaller phones': Apple launched the i Phone SE ten years ago today — and it makes me long for an i Phone 17 mini

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The recent launch of the $599 Mac Book Neo — which has just helped to break Mac sales records, according to Tim Cook — has shaken up the assumption that Apple focuses only on premium products. Yet that idea was never really true.

Steve Jobs often made the case that Apple’s desire was to make premium products attainable to more people, and in many cases its devices came in at lower prices than rival offerings with similar specs.

But before the Mac Book Neo demonstrated that Apple knew how to combine top-quality touches with accessible price tags, there was another affordable Apple product on everyone’s lips: the i Phone SE.

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The original i Phone SE was introduced to the world on March 21, 2016, making it ten years old today. With Apple returning to its low-cost ambitions a decade later (for both the Mac and the i Phone), now is a good time to look back at the i Phone SE’s impact — and what the future might hold for cut-price i Phones now that the Mac Book Neo has made such a splash.

Today, the standard i Phone 17 will set you back a minimum of

While the original i Phone was priced at

It was into this world that the

The i Phone SE also offered something very different: a return to smaller phones. The i Phone had been growing in size ever since its debut. Not only were the standard i Phones getting bigger, Apple was offering the i Phone Plus range as an option with even more screen real estate. If you wanted things to shrink in the other direction, you had few options. Until the SE...

Apple was very clear when it launched the i Phone SE that small-scale simplicity was the goal. As Greg Joswiak (then VP of i OS) said at the i Phone SE launch: "While the vast majority of our customers prefer larger display i Phones, we're here today to talk about a smaller i Phone".

"So why are people buying 4-inch i Phones? Well, there's two reasons. First, some people simply love smaller phones. They want the most compact i Phone design. Second, we found that for a lot of these customers, it's their first i Phone," he added.

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Cue those Mac Book Neo comparisons. Tim Cook said this week that "Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers", and without explicitly saying why, it was a clear nod to the success of its affordable new laptop. For Apple, the Neo is a gateway drug for mac OS, just as the i Phone SE once was for i OS.

Describing the SE as “the most powerful phone with a four-inch display,” the company took pains to emphasize its “beloved compact aluminum design” as a key selling point.

Still, compared to the Mac Book Neo, the i Phone SE achieved its low price in a very different way. While the Mac Book Neo cuts features but keeps roughly the same dimensions as the M5 Mac Book Air, the i Phone SE kept the power and put it into a smaller frame.

For instance, the i Phone SE launched with the same A9 chip as the then-current i Phone 6s. You got just as much power as Apple’s flagship i Phone, just in a more compact package. You also got longer battery life than the i Phone 6s – up to 13 hours of video playback compared to the i Phone 6s’s 11 hours, for example – despite the i Phone SE using the same chip and a smaller chassis with less internal space for batteries.

The Mac Book Neo, on the other hand, runs on an A18 Pro chip designed for mobiles, not a desktop-class M-series chip. It loses the backlit keyboard, the Force Touch trackpad, capacious memory and storage options, a few hours of battery life, and more. It’s clear that it’s a cut-back device, albeit one whose

So how did Apple keep the i Phone SE’s price down? Well, it had to make a few sacrifices.

The front-facing camera was inferior to that of the i Phone 6s, offering 1.2MP photos compared to the i Phone 6s’s 5MP snaps. The i Phone 6s was also a little slimmer, despite being taller and wider. And by basing its chassis on one first used by the i Phone 5, Apple could save on the design and manufacturing costs that would have come with a new look.

But other than that, there really wasn’t much to separate the two products — reinforcing the idea that the i Phone SE focused on bringing its cost down primarily through physical means, not by cutting features.

Now that Apple is returning to the world of low-cost Macs, what does that tell us about the future of affordable i Phones?

Well, the i Phone SE’s successor is seemingly in rude health. Apple has just launched the i Phone 17e, which has taken the place of the SE line. The i Phone 17e has been released one year after the i Phone 16e, which rebooted the company’s affordable i Phone range. The fact that Apple is seemingly planning on yearly releases for this device suggests that there is sufficient demand to justify frequent updates.

Yet like the Mac Book Neo, the i Phone 17e is not the same beast as the i Phone SE. While the i Phone SE was an explicitly palm-sized device – its 4-inch frame was conspicuously smaller than the 4.7-inch i Phone 6s – the i Phone 17e is only a touch more compact than the i Phone 17.

If you want a true heir of the i Phone SE – that is, a shrunk-down i Phone that maintains the power and performance of its peers – then you don’t really have that choice anymore. Apple has seemingly given up on its “mini” i Phone range, with 2021’s i Phone 13 mini being the last in a short-lived dynasty of compact i Phones.

That all means that the legacy of the original i Phone SE, launched ten years ago today, is a little complicated. Because while affordable Apple devices are alive and well in the form of the i Phone 17e and the Mac Book Neo, they take a slightly different approach to the one set down by the i Phone SE.

But what’s not in doubt is the fact that now is potentially the best time in decades – possibly ever – to be an Apple fan on a budget. Thanks to the i Phone 17e and the Mac Book Neo, you can now grab a low-cost Apple phone and laptop for

And with Apple’s newly rediscovered commitment to affordable pricing, we’ve got the i Phone SE to thank for getting us to where we are today.

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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as Tech Radar, Alex writes for i More, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at Mac Format magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.

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Key Takeaways

• 'Some people simply love smaller phones': Apple launched the i Phone SE ten years ago today — and it makes me long for an i Phone 17 mini

• When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission

• The recent launch of the $599 Mac Book Neo — which has just helped to break Mac sales records, according to Tim Cook — has shaken up the assumption that Apple focuses only on premium products

• Steve Jobs often made the case that Apple’s desire was to make premium products attainable to more people, and in many cases its devices came in at lower prices than rival offerings with similar specs

• But before the Mac Book Neo demonstrated that Apple knew how to combine top-quality touches with accessible price tags, there was another affordable Apple product on everyone’s lips: the i Phone SE