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Apple announces low-cost iPhone SE with 5G, better battery life, faster chip for Macs

iPhone SE will be available for pre-order this Friday, March 11

Apple Inc on Tuesday announced a new version of its low-cost iPhone SE that includes 5G connectivity, a new iPad Air and a faster chip for its desktop Mac computers.

iPhone SE comes in a compact and durable design, and together with iOS 15, delivers a seamless user experience.

The new iPhone SE features impressive upgrades including the performance of A15 Bionic, which powers advanced camera capabilities and makes nearly every experience better, from photo editing to power-intensive operations like gaming and augmented reality.

Along with 5G, longer battery life, and improved durability, iPhone SE comes in three stunning colours — midnight, starlight, and (PRODUCT)RED.

iPhone SE will be available for pre-order this Friday, March 11, with availability beginning Friday, March 18.

“iPhone SE has been an incredibly popular choice with our existing users and for new iPhone customers, thanks to its iconic design, exceptional performance, and affordable price. This year we’ve built the most powerful and durable iPhone SE yet, with better battery life thanks to A15 Bionic, the same chip as our iPhone 13 lineup that also unlocks advanced camera features like Smart HDR 4, Photographic Styles, and Deep Fusion,” said Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide iPhone Product Marketing.

“And with 5G, iPhone SE gives users faster downloads and uploads, higher quality video streaming, real-time interactivity in apps, and much more. Delivering the latest generation of technology and performance at this price is something only Apple can do.”

Iconic Design with a 4.7-inch Display

iPhone SE is as durable as it is beautiful, and features an aerospace-grade aluminum and glass design, now with the toughest glass in a smartphone on the front and back — the same as on the back of iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13.

Rated IP67 for water and dust resistance, iPhone SE is designed to protect against spills.

iPhone SE features the familiar Home button with Touch ID — an easy, private, and secure alternative for logging in to apps, authorizing App Store purchases, making Apple Pay transactions, and more.

A15 Bionic: The Ultimate Smartphone Chip

The power of Apple silicon delivers industry-leading performance and cutting-edge capabilities to iPhone.

The lightning-fast A15 Bionic — introduced with iPhone 13 — comes to iPhone SE and makes nearly every experience better, from launching apps to handling demanding tasks with ease.

A15 Bionic packs a powerful 6-core CPU, the fastest CPU in a smartphone, with two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, making iPhone SE up to 1.8x faster than iPhone 8, and even faster compared to older models.

The 16-core Neural Engine is capable of 15.8 trillion operations per second, enabling faster machine learning computations for third-party applications, as well as unlocking features for iPhone SE like Live Text in the Camera app with iOS 15 and on-device dictation.

Perfect for photography, gaming, and augmented reality experiences, A15 Bionic makes every action feel fluid.

Built for efficiency, A15 Bionic works in conjunction with the latest-generation battery chemistry and tight integration with iOS 15 to enable better battery life on iPhone SE.

Even with its compact form factor and new technologies like 5G, iPhone SE has longer battery life than the previous-generation and older 4.7-inch iPhone models. iPhone SE is compatible with Qi-certified chargers for wireless charging, and also supports fast charging.3

New Camera Experience Powered by A15 Bionic

iPhone SE features an all-new camera system powered by A15 Bionic, with a 12-megapixel ƒ/1.8 aperture Wide camera that offers incredible computational photography benefits, including Smart HDR 4, Photographic Styles, Deep Fusion, and Portrait mode.

Introduced with iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13, Smart HDR 4 uses intelligent segmentation to apply different adjustments for color, contrast, and noise to the subject versus the background.

This ensures faces are properly exposed in challenging lighting, and renders people in the same photo individually, with different adjustments optimized for lighting and skin tone for each person.

Photographic Styles allows users to bring their personal photo preferences to every image while still benefitting from Apple’s multiframe image processing.

Preset and customized preferences work across scenes and subjects, and unlike a simple filter, intelligently apply the right adjustments to different parts of the photo to ensure the important elements, like skin tones, are preserved.

Deep Fusion uses advanced machine learning to do pixel-by-pixel processing, optimizing for texture, details, and noise in every part of the photo.

The image signal processor in A15 Bionic delivers significantly improved videos with reduced noise, particularly in low light, with better white balance and truer skin tone.

5G Comes to iPhone SE

5G allows users to take advantage of the latest generation of wireless technology, with faster uploads and downloads, lower latency, and better experiences in more places — like seeing family with higher-quality HD FaceTime calls, even when on cellular data and not on Wi-Fi.

With iOS 15, SharePlay on 5G unlocks powerful shared experiences such as watching HDR movies or TV shows in sync with friends while on a FaceTime call.

And Smart Data mode will intelligently conserve battery life by automatically shifting iPhone to LTE when 5G speeds are not needed. Support for 5G worldwide is growing, with more than 200 carriers in over 70 markets and regions supporting it by the end of the year.

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Featuring iOS 15

iOS 15 enhances the iPhone experience with more ways to stay connected, powerful updates that help users focus and explore, and intelligent features to get more done with iPhone.

Now FaceTime calls feel more natural with spatial audio and a new Portrait mode, SharePlay delivers a way for users to share experiences with friends and family while on a FaceTime call, Focus helps users reduce distraction, notifications have been redesigned, and Live Text uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in a photo and allows users to take action.

Apple Maps brings beautiful ways to navigate and explore the world with a three-dimensional city-driving experience and walking directions in augmented reality. Weather is redesigned with full-screen maps and more graphical displays of data, Wallet adds support for home keys and state IDs, and privacy controls in Siri, Mail, and more places across the system further protect user information.6

iPhone SE and the Environment

Like iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13, iPhone SE is designed to minimize its impact on the environment.

iPhone SE is made with recycled materials, including 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in the Taptic Engine and audio magnets, 100 percent recycled tungsten in the Taptic Engine, and 100 percent recycled tin in the solder of the main logic board. Redesigned packaging eliminates the outer plastic wrap, bringing Apple closer to its goal of completely removing plastic from all packaging by 2025.

iPhone SE meets Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency and remains free of numerous harmful substances.

Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net-zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles.

This means that every Apple device sold, from component manufacturing, assembly, transport, customer use, charging, all the way through recycling and material recovery, will be 100 percent carbon neutral.