Apple’s spring event is now underway, and 30 minutes in, we’re finally getting to the main announcement. As expected, Apple unveiled a new 4-inch iPhone on Monday afternoon, called the iPhone SE. At a glance, it looks nearly identical to the iPhone 5, but there are some key differences that Apple has made sure to highlight.
First off, the iPhone SE features the A9 processor and M9 motion coprocessor — the same chips inside of the iPhone 6s. Apple stresses that it’s just as powerful as the iPhone 6s as well, and it can even respond to hands-free “Hey Siri” questions.
Apple has also upgraded to a 12-megapixel iSight camera with focus pixels, True Tone flash, a new image signal processor and panoramas up to 63-megapixels. It can shoot 4K video, 1080p up to 60 fps and slo-mo up to 240 fps.
Other improvements include improved battery life, faster LTE (and Voice over LTE), faster Wi-Fi (and Wi-Fi calling), Bluetooth 4.2, new microphones and Apple Pay compatibility. It’ll also run iOS 9.3 out of the box.
“The most powerful 4-inch phone ever,” as Apple calls it, will retail starting at $399 for the 16GB model and $499 for the 64GB model. You’ll be able to preorder the iPhone SE starting this Thursday, March 24th, and the phone will be available on store shelves on March 31st.
