In some ways, I miss my iPhone SE. With the renewed rumours of an iPhone SE 2 (fool me once…) I thought I’d finish writing a post I started on the benefits of small phones.

Pocketable

I have the smaller iPhone Xs but even this beast can be difficult to fit in some of my pockets! Every now and then, I accidentally set off Siri as my phone gets squeezed in my pocket.

With the old iPhone SE size phone, I can’t remember ever having issues with buttons being accidentally pressed. Admittedly, siri was on the homebutton back then but there was still the volume button.

One Handed

I have larger hands and long fingers but I often default to the bird pecking approach to using the iPhone Xs. It’s not terrible, but I miss the ease of using one hand and being able to touch the whole screen. Not to mention how secure it felt in my hand all the time.

Popular in Poland - price?

This is a business point but a year or so ago, I noticed that the iPhone SE/ the iPhone 5s? was clearly the most popular phone around. Maybe not more than all the android phones combined, but more than any other individual model.

The price was surely a big part of that for a country with slower mean salaries than say the US or UK. Many of those users wouldn’t replace an SE with any regular iPhone due to the price. That’s potentially a lot of lossed customers and service revenue.

From the personal side, I find it harder to recommend an apple device to Polish friends as it can be a signifcant percentage of someone’s sallary.

No other companies are doing it

One of the things that is great about Android is the variety. If you need a specific type of device, you can get it. It’s basically the free market dream. But, there aren’t any companies making small phones anymore.

That’s a real shame as some users do want smaller phones.

Wouldn’t it be great if Apple was the company offering more variety than the whole Android ecosystem (at least in some aspect).

Less distracting

Personally, I find smaller phones discourage me from fidgetting with them. Perhaps it’s just not looking at YouTube or maybe it’s just harder to use (which encourages you not to use it).

Perhaps that’s a strange idea — the device is better because it’s worse…

Helps with other issues

As the iPhone SE was simplified, it had some unexpected benefits. For example, as the iPhone SE’s screen was smaller and lower resolution than the iPhone 6S (which had much the same hardware), it had better battery life and faster performance.

Those are significant benefits.

Admittedly, there were some downsides but perhaps an iPhone SE 2 would have some performance related benefits.

Will it happen?

I’ve had my phones of an iPhone SE 2 or SE version of the iPhone X (an iPhone SE X if you will 🥁) raised before only for nothing to come. Maybe the same will happen again… but perhaps this time something is coming.

I guess we’ll see.