Apple’s New iPhone SE Now Available With Atypically Low $399 Price

Apple’s new iPhone SE is welcome news to customers who need an upgrade but don’t have the budget for an iPhone 11.

The iPhone SE, available beginning today from Apple or through the channel, starts at $399.

While Apple’s new iPhone SE is smaller and more basic than its most recent iPhones, it is a formidable upgrade of the original 2016 version. That iPhone SE only had a 4-inch display and started with a meager 16GB of storage. The new iPhone SE comes with 64GB with options for 128GB for $449 or $256GB priced at $549.

The new iPhone SE’s display is slightly bigger at 4.7 inches. That’s still small by today’s standards where phones typically have displays of nearly 6 inches or more.

Considering the atypically low price for a new iPhone, Apple appears to be offering a reasonable value for those with modest needs. It should appeal to those who balk at upgrading their phones until the battery can’t hold a charge or other performance issues arise. With more people working at home, businesses may also want a lower-cost option to outfit employees with phones for those who need them.

Despite its lower price, the new iPhone SE comes with Apple’s A13 Bionic processor, the same generation that powers the high-end iPhone 11. By comparison, the older iPhone SE had an Apple A9 processor.

Besides the fact that it is considerably smaller than the iPhone 11, the new iPhone SE only has a single rear camera. The iPhone 11 has 3 cameras.

The new iPhone SE has the same form factor as the iPhone 8 including the home button that uses its Touch ID fingerprint-based authentication.

“Whether it is the iPhone 6, the iPhone 7 or the iPhone 8, users have been accustomed to that size as well as features like the home button,” according to a post by Carolina Milanesi, a principal analyst at Creative Strategies. “It would be fair to characterize this user base as a more pragmatic one, that puts value on core features that have a long-lasting impact on their experience.”

For those who prefer Android or are looking to switch to it, Samsung earlier this month rolled out several lower cost alternatives to its Galaxy S20 and S10 lines. The new Galaxy S51, also priced at $399, has a 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display and 128GB of storage, expandable to 512GB though the microSD slot. A lower-end version of that phone, the A21, offers 32GB of storage, costs $249. For those with minimal requirements, Samsung also added the A11, priced at $179 and the A01 for $109.