Yesterday, Apple finally announced the iPhone SE after months of leaks and reports, and honestly, years of waiting for the successor to the ‘affordable flagship’ iPhone idea that started with the original iPhone SE. The new iPhone SE (or iPhone SE 2) is here now and it’s a solid option for anyone looking for a budget iPhone in 2020. However, there’s also the iPhone XR that comes in at a similar price point in India. So, if you’re looking for the best budget iPhone, here is a detailed comparison of the 2020 iPhone SE vs iPhone XR.
The first thing you’d notice with a brand new phone, and this is especially true with iPhones, is the design and build. Cupertino has a very specific way it designs its smartphones, and they are quintessentially Apple in the way they look and feel. The iPhone SE takes a step back in time, as far as the design is concerned and occupies the shell of the now discontinued iPhone 8.
Apart from that, both the iPhone SE and iPhone XR come with the same glass-back design, which affords them wireless charging capability, and a huge tendency to be fingerprint magnets.
Moving on to the display, there’s obviously the big size difference in the screens when you pit the iPhone XR vs the iPhone SE 2, but there’s more there than you might realise.
Between the iPhone SE and the iPhone XR, the processor varies by a pretty solid margin. The iPhone XR comes with the A12 Bionic chipset from 2018 whereas the iPhone SE comes with the latest A13 Bionic chipset that’s inside the iPhone 11 series as well.
The A13 Bionic offers 20% faster performance cores that use 30% less energy. The high efficiency cores are also 20% faster but use 40% less energy. The GPU uses 40% less energy as well, and the Neural Engine uses 15% less energy as compared to the A12 Bionic.
Anyway, as far as the processor is concerned, there is no reason to even consider the iPhone XR when compared to the iPhone SE 2020. The SE brings the latest chipset which is not only more powerful in every way, but also more power efficient.
In terms of cameras, both the iPhone XR and the iPhone SE are fairly evenly matched. Both the phones are equipped with a single 12MP shooter on the back with an f/1.8 aperture along with a slow-sync flash. They have Portrait Mode, and Portrait Lighting effects as well. However, the iPhone SE has access to all 6 portrait lighting effects, while the iPhone XR only gets 3 of those — not a big deal by any means, but if you use Portrait Effects, then you might like to know this.
However, for some reason, the iPhone SE can only shoot 1080p 30FPS videos from the front camera while the iPhone XR can shoot 1080p at 30/60FPS. I don’t think this is too big a deal, but it’s an interesting difference.
This is a tough one to call for me. I’ve always loved Touch ID on iPhones ever since I first used it on my own iPhone 5s back in the day. This means that I’m nostalgically happy about seeing the Touch ID sensor back on the iPhone SE.
However, more importantly, Face ID offers more safeguards than Touch ID. For one, Touch ID can be used even when you’re sleeping because it’s just a fingerprint, and unless you deliberately enable Lockdown mode on your iPhone every night before you sleep, Touch ID will unlock your phone regardless of whether you’re asleep or awake. Face ID, on the other hand, has an opt-out option to check for awareness. Your phone will only unlock if it detects that your eyes are open and looking towards the phone, which is just a neat little safeguard to have, and is something that other phones are also using, such as the Pixel 4 which recently got this feature.
In terms of connectivity, both phones support FDD and TDD LTE bands, although the iPhone SE does support more TD-LTE bands than the iPhone XR. How much of a difference this would make is uncertain to me right now, but it’s definitely not worse.
Also, the iPhone SE improves the WiFi capabilities by adding support for WiFi 802.11ax (commonly known as WiFi 6) whereas the iPhone XR only supports WiFi 802.11ac. So the SE is definitely more future-proof in terms of wireless connectivity than the iPhone XR is.
Apple doesn’t give numbers when it comes to batteries on its phones. Instead, it compares them with older iPhones. For the SE, Apple says the battery life is about the same as the iPhone 8. That’s not the best battery life at all.
What’s more, a recently spotted listing on a Chinese telecom website claims that the iPhone SE has a 1,821mAh battery. Let me just put this in perspective here — the iPhone XR has a 2,942mAh battery. That’s a big difference, and maybe the A13 Bionic will help aid battery life, but I doubt it will come anywhere close to the iPhone XR’s stellar battery life.
Still, I would say the iPhone XR wins here purely because it has a much larger battery pack than the iPhone SE.
As you would have guessed by now, both these phones are fairly similar except in ways that are more subjective in nature — such as the full-screen notched design of the iPhone XR. If I had to choose, I would definitely go with the iPhone XR purely because the design isn’t outdated, and if I’m spending so much money on a phone, I want it to look, well… not old.
