Who doesn’t love a smart phone that would fit in your hand that would sway other larger smartphones but performs equally to those? Well, we have pitted down iPhone 5s against iPhone SE to break down all the differences that you want to know before you pitch in money to devour your iPhone love without stacking up the functional differences.
Apple promises that iPhone SE will be everything that almost every Apple customer would want and the new-discontinued iPhone 5s is being replaced by iPhone SE and hence the quest for comparison.
If you are considering an essential buy, read on to know the differences broken down below.
Design and Display: Both the phones have virtually the same display, carrying 640 x 1136 pixels which is equivalent to 326 pixel per density. Both are 4 inches featuring the screen dimensions 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm (4.87 x 2.31 x 0.30 in). But both the phones are almost similar only in terms of mathematical measurements. The type of display is LED-backlit IPS LCD, capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors. The major key differences you will know only if you observe a little deeper. The new iPhone SE has edges which are matte-chamfered, which goes hand in hand with the stainless steel back. This gives you, the stronger grip and easy to use with one hand. So, the layout, the locations of the button, charger port, mic, speaker are the same in both the phones. You can’t really tell apart, both of them. Although, iPhone SE is a new phone, rolled out after iPhone 6 and 6s, it could have had some flagship feature like 3D Touch which definitely would have been a grabber in the market despite being niche in the features. Both the phones weigh almost the same except the iPhone SE is an ounce heavier.
Hardware and Software: Even thought the display and the design ties for both the phones, the major upgrade in performance and the system software certainly of iPhone SE motivates you on the buyfront. In terms of the chipset, iPhone SE has the upgraded A9 Dual-core 1.84 GHz Twister processor, making it better in performance against the iPhone 5s which has an A7 Dual-core 1.3 GHz Cyclone processor. The software doesn’t disappoint you in the iPhone SE too, as it comes packed with iOS 9.3.2 whereas iPhone 5S comes with iOS 7 with an upgrade to iOS 9 for sure, but they are still planning on the iOS 10 upgrades for both the phones. The battery standby in iPhone SE is non removable 1624 mAh whose standby is less compared to iPhone 5S non removable 1560 mAh battery, which makes iPhone SE’s battery 50% better than iPhone 5s’s battery. So, the result is, iPhone SE tops the performance amongst both with 2G RAM against iPhone 5s 1GB RAM.
Camera and Storage: In terms of storage, both don’t have the external storage slot, nothing to be surprised about because it is Apple, duh. But the internal storage variants come in the number of 2 for iPhone SE, 16GB and 64 GB whereas for iPhone 5S you get three variants namely, 16/32/64 GB. But I would suggest with all the high performance when compared iPhone 5s, you can pitch in some more money and totally can rock it with an iPhone SE 64GB variant. Why you ask? The space the iPhone takes up for the camera is a lot. The space management becomes a tiring task if you are a photo-freak. The camera options are also better in iPhone SE which carries 12MP rear camera and a 1.2 µm pixel size, front camera with dual-LED flash, autofocus, phase detection, geotagging and a flash. But iPhone 5s provides only an 8MP rear camera with the same front camera configuration as iPhone SE, along with a few enhanced features missing. This results in poorer display clarity and picture quality from iPhone 5s compared to iPhone SE. You can draw the conclusion now, right? Obviously, iPhone SE is the winner.
Misc: There are a lot of common features in both the phones, such as the 3.5 mm jack with 44.1 KHz 16 bit audio and also active noise cancellation with a nice dedicated to it. The phones are available in Space Gray/Silver/Gold colors except additionally iPhone SE is available also in Rose Gold color. In terms of sensors, the fingerprint, compass, proximity, accelerometer is all present. Fortunately, the NFC which makes the Apple pay has graced its presence in iPhone SE but not in iPhone 5s.
Weighing the better: So, if you do a brief run through on the pros of iPhone SE, it has got a better camera, high performance, and iPhone 6s flavored functionalities which makes it weigh a lot better than the iPhone 5s which is on the other side. Mainly because, iPhone 5s has become almost outdated with the features but remains same with the external appearance as of iPhone SE. Though iPhone SE has its flip side of flaws, such as the front camera configuration which is same as iPhone 5s. How can 1.2 MP in this current smart era would be enough for a selfie camera? Gives us second thoughts. Though it pulls in a few iPhone 6s flavor, it could have also carried the OIS and the latest version of the Touch ID.
Conclusion: With all the power related fronts, iPhone SE hands down defeats iPhone 5s. We can also say, in other words, that, iPhone SE is a mini version for less money on iPhone 6s. For $400, you can actually get a best possible 4-inch phone and definitely imprints as a worthy upgrade.
