The Original iPhone SE is the Best iPhone Apple Ever Made

Jan 11th, 2025

I have used the original iPhone SE from January 2017 until the end of 2024. After using more modern iPhones, I still believe the 2016 SE is the greatest iPhone Apple ever made, and likely one of the greatest phones of all time. It has made me reconsider what we really need from a phone, the inefficiencies of "progress" in software, and the obscene amounts of e-waste we generate in order to obtain incremental hardware updates.

Since I used it for so long, it felt fitting to give a little writeup on my experiences with it to send it off, as I'm moving to a 13 mini.

From Android to iPhone

In January of 2017, I was skiing in Colorado, unknowingly exposing my Google Nexus 5 to extreme cold which ended up damaging its battery seemingly beyond repair. I was traveling and needed a new phone pretty quickly before I returned to Japan. Up to that point I had only used Android phones, since 2012. I was staunchly against Apple products before I used a company-issued MacBook at work around 2013. I actually ended up liking it quite a lot, so I was warming up to the idea of an iPhone to go with it.

I don't care for having the absolute newest or most pristine phone so I looked at my options. The 2016 SE stood out as being the cheapest entry in the lineup, and even moreso when it's refurbished. It launched at a price of $399 for the cheapest variant. On paper it also seemed like a solid phone - at the time, the latest to release was the iPhone 7, but the SE had the guts of a 6S which wasn't far behind. It seemed like the most reasonable way to own an iPhone, so I purchased a refurbished one from walmart for $294.99.

It arrived in a generic smartphone box, with only minor cosmetic scratches on its (aluminum!) back. The screen glass was essentially flawless, and there were other minor scratches around the edges. Totally acceptable!

Running a fairly modern processor at the time (Apple A9), it was noticeably smooth and responsive compared to the Nexus 5 it was replacing. I'm sure iOS was also a bit more polished in performance around that time compared to Android, which also helped. It felt like I had the power of a recent iPhone, with the price of a mid-range Android.

I quickly became accustomed to the features I was missing at the time - AirDrop, Touch ID, slow motion video capture, Apple Pay, and an OS which aggressively stopped background apps from running. Since I had migrated from Android, a lot of the apps I used were from Google. I realized they all ran much smoother on this iPhone than the Nexus 5, and that became my new favorite way to run their software. They don't own both the OS and the apps, so there was a strong separation between the two which somehow felt comforting, like a properly functioning checks & balances system.

Between the two phones, I compared one of the most complex apps from Google: Google Maps. It ran at a beautiful 60 FPS on the SE, while there was noticeable jank on the Nexus 5. From that point I was sold on the iPhone as a cheap and compact, yet powerful and efficient phone. It took pretty good pictures for its time, too!

The 2016 iPhone SE in 2025

With over 8 years after release, the 2016 SE is still a great phone to use, if it fits your use cases. With a recently installed battery, the OS is still plenty smooth. I was using it recently at a meetup and someone remarked on how "fast" it still is in terms of navigating apps and, you know, using the phone generally.

The size is perfect for one-handed use and satisfying pocketability. The camera is flush with the back which means it sits flat on a table, and even just the act of placing it on a table is nicer. The flat surface creates a small air cushion when placed on a table, which creates a soft thud if you let it go a bit early. Do that with a modern iPhone and you'll wince and check the back for cracks on the body or lenses.

Despite having larger hands, the screen size is pretty much perfect for me. I can hit all 4 corners of the screen where important UI elements often are, without having to really adjust the phone in my hand. Anything larger and it all feels much more precarious to reach for those farther elements. Due to the easy reachability, the square edges, and the cheap price of the phone, I also feel confident using it without a case. The pixel density of the screen is still also completely acceptable to me in 2025.

Finally, it's one of the last iPhones that still has a headphone jack. I own and enjoy AirPods, but it's still nice to be able to just plug in wired headphones or a stereo cable in older cars. Somehow I didn't know this, but it also supports USB audio out of its lightning port, which my car happily accepts and plays. Knowing this, I'm more accepting of the loss of the jack, which I know most people got over years ago.

For $300 (at the time) for a nicely refurbished SE, I got a phone that was fast and smooth, took good photos, and saw seven supported releases of iOS. Even if it was the "cheap" one, it still had full Apple ecosystem support, and that's a big multiplier if you have a few other Apple devices.

Later Generations

Over the years, new iPhones came out as they do, but nothing ever felt compelling enough to upgrade.

iPhone 7

A minor spec bump, still the same rounded slippery edges as the iPhone 6, removed the headphone jack, added a less satisfying home button (taptic instead of a real button), and made it larger.

One tempting feature was the addition of Suica support to be able to tap into gates at train stations in Japan. But the existing IC cards are already plenty convenient and I still needed to carry a wallet in Japan around that time anyway, so it wasn't going to be worth the cost of a new phone just for that.

$649 for the cheapest option.

iPhone 8

They added wireless charging and a spec bump.

$699 for the cheapest option.

iPhone X

Arguably one of the biggest changes was Face ID, removal of Touch ID, and a bezel-less display. They also added a dual camera setup for a wider angle lens. It had similar CPU specs to the 8.

It still had the slippery rounded edges and was significantly more expensive than previous flagships.

$999 for the cheapest option.

iPhone 11

A spec bump and better cameras?

$699 for the cheapest option.

iPhone 12

The launch of the 12 caught my attention a bit. They returned back to the squared off edges, and they launched a Mini variant. An OLED display was added, along with MagSafe and 5G.

However, the Mini started at $699, and its new features were not compelling enough to get me to switch.

iPhone 13

The 13 seemed to be a spec bump on the 12. Slightly better camera, slightly better battery life, and some other small details. Thankfully a Mini was also released in this generation.

$699 for the cheapest option.

iPhone 14

I can barely even tell what improved from the 13 to the 14. If you handed someone a 13 or 14 without telling them, they probably wouldn't even be able to tell which is which. The 14 added emergency SOS via satellite, that seems to be one of the biggest new features.

$799 for the cheapest option.

iPhone 15

Everyone rejoiced as USB C was added to the iPhone, and finally all of our tech woes were solved. The "Dynamic Island" from the 14 Pro was added to all variants, though I can't say it was anywhere close to tempting me to buy one.

$799 for the cheapest option.

iPhone 16

The 16 added an Action Button to the base model, supports Apple Intelligence, and has a Camera Control button. Nice improvements to be sure, but still nothing that would sell the whole system to me. At this point, these things are beefy over-powered computers which are used mostly for watching videos and sending texts.

$799 for the cheapest option.

Waning Software Support

From the original iPhone SE to the iPhone 16, it's an impressive jump in hardware. However, what's extremely unimpressive is the software support from app developers. The apps we use today are still largely CRUD apps that display text and images, and talk to a web server over an HTTP API. Slack runs perfectly on my SE, so why do I need to get a new phone just to use the latest version? Well, it's probably not because the phone is incapable of running Slack, but because they don't want to have a branch in their code to support older hardware. We're prioritizing the convenience of a few software developers and in the process, we're sacrificing the longevity of older, yet still capable devices.

Apple supported the hardware with iOS for a pretty impressive amount of time. Of course I would have hoped for an OS which continues to get faster over time, and thus run fine on older hardware. Sadly, this never seems to be the case for this world, as if it's some sort of law that software must get slower over time.

The latest supported version of iOS was iOS 15, which officially became outdated in September 2022, when iOS 16 was released. 6 years and 6 months of the latest OS support is admirable, and hopefully this support window widens as phone technology matures.

Despite no longer supporting the latest iOS, the iPhone SE 2016 continued to receive security updates, with the latest release being iOS 15.8.3, released on July 29, 2024. That is 8 years and 4 months of OS security updates. An impressive run for such a little guy!

iPhone 13 Mini

Due to software slowly dropping support for the phone, I decided to upgrade to something new. I originally thought I'd wait for the new iPhone SE (2025) to launch, but it's rumored to have the body of an iPhone 14. I prefer smaller phones, and I also prefer not paying more than three or four hundred dollars for a device that I could very well drop and destroy in an instant. I like the confidence in carrying a small cheap phone without a case, and somehow knowing it's cheap makes me even less likely to drop it.

The iPhone 13 mini makes the most sense as an upgrade target. It's the smallest recent phone to be released (though still larger than I'd like), it has a nice camera upgrade compared to the original SE, and it can be bought used for around $300.

Given that it's more than capable of running any modern app (aside from some AI slop), I expect it to have a support window at least as long as the original SE.

After using it for a few weeks, it's been an overall nice experience, especially when it comes to Face ID and the cameras. The ability to use eSIMs has also been a big quality-of-life upgrade when it comes to traveling internationally. Continuity Camera has worked surprisingly well too, and iPhone Mirroring is nice just for the notifications alone.

Almost everything else is a nice-to-have, but doesn't make much of a difference in my life. All in all, it's a great upgrade to jump 5-6 years ahead on hardware, but if the original SE had a new battery and better software support, it would still be very nice to use.

Hopefully the pendulum swings back on phone sizes and we start to see more small options from Apple. I'd love to see a 2016 SE form factor with the latest chips and battery tech. I'm willing to take a hit on the camera quality if it can be placed flush with the back of the phone where it used to be, or even make it chunkier to keep it flush and add extra battery capacity in the empty space.

Takeaway

I might be unfairly reducing the hardware changes over the years to a set of almost trivial improvements, but ask yourself: are you doing significantly more on your phone than you did 8 to 10 years ago? Things that would have been impossible on the hardware of the time? I'll admit that I'm not a smartphone power user - I bust out the laptop for big purchases or where I need to type anything significant. I have a dedicated camera when I want to take "nice" photos. I game on consoles and PC, and the games I do play on a phone could probably run on the original NES.

So if you're really into the cameras or gaming, I get it. You need better sensors/lenses, better chips, and more memory. But for many apps we use day to day, they can be mostly categorized to the following:

• Calling people
• Sending strings of text, and photos/videos back and forth to people
• Looking at various types of data displayed in a 2D interface (calendars, note apps, bank apps, social media)
• Listening to music
• Watching videos
• Navigating with maps
• Filling in forms which transmit strings and files to a web backend
• Taking photos and videos
• Viewing photos and videos

The original iPhone SE does all of these things well already. At its core, our usage of smartphones has not significantly changed in the past decade. Outside of camera improvements, phones have been more than capable of doing everything we've needed from them for a decade or more. These are multi-core, gigahertz CPUs with gigabytes of RAM, strapped to a touchscreen and packed with sensors. Of course they've been able to complete our everyday computing tasks for some time now.

I'm not saying we should never upgrade our stuff or make technological progress on more efficient chips. I'm certainly enjoying the faster speeds on this iPhone 13 mini. But it's sad that the default state of software is to get slower on older hardware, while offering the same functionality (or worse!) as years ago.

Think about what you do on a phone, and consider if it really makes a difference to "upgrade". Batteries are definitely a consumable and phones do need new ones to perform their best. You might be surprised at the difference a new battery makes, and they're significantly cheaper than a new phone (though I won't get into those 2 year plans phone providers get you on).

I would bet that for most people, buying a refurbished phone and optionally changing out the battery will serve them just as well as if they had bought a brand new phone. The phone is going to get scratched at some point as well, so might as well buy pre-scratched so you don't even have to worry about it 😉