Where is the iPhone SE Plus?
Last week, Apple dropped the new and improved iPhone SE. With the same build as the previous iPhone 8, the phone has been updated to today’s smartphone standards. At $399, this phone is certainly a very attractive purchase. As deliveries begin on April 24th, this leaves us wondering: Where is the iPhone SE Plus?
iPhones have been steadily growing in size since Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007. Now, the biggest member of the iPhone line-up is the iPhone 11 Pro Max with a huge 6.5inch edge to edge display. The market for bigger phones is huge. A lot of people simply prefer having a bigger screen on their phone. And to be honest, with all the content we are consuming on our devices and the increasing work we are doing on them, who can blame them? I myself have often found myself wanting a bigger screen on my phone. In the past, the major drawback of bigger phones has been the higher price tag but the iPhone SE Plus at $499 would have been a great deal!
The ‘plus’ variant of the iPhone 7 and 8 both had better cameras as a part of their selling points. With the same dual-lens design, the SE Plus would have been able to have night mode. As we found out from last week’s release, night mode requires dual focus pixels which is achieved by having an ultra-wide and a standard camera lens which take a picture simultaneously. Another big plus of this phone would have been battery life. With a bigger phone comes a bigger battery. In fact, its ‘would have been’ predecessor, the iPhone 8 Plus, was known for its amazing battery life! And if you add the fact that the device is still only using an LED display with the more efficient A13 chip, battery life would have been great on the SE Plus. That brings me to my next point, the better screen. With the same 401 ppi (pixel per inch) screen of the 8 Plus, it would have had a better screen than the iPhone 11 and XR which both have 326 ppi screens. The 1080p screen and the better aspect ratio of 16:9 for most video formats of the SE Plus would have made an incredible device for watching YouTube, Netflix, etc.
Right now, iPhones are more accessible than ever. With last week’s release, you can get an iPhone for only $399. One of the reasons why they are able to keep this price so low is that the company can keep using the production line of the iPhone 8. But why didn’t Apple do the same with the 8 Plus model and give us the iPhone SE Plus?
Well, the iPhone SE we got last week already has portrait mode, something that has been a major selling point for Apple’s bigger phones in the past. Taking this out of the equation, Apple may think that night mode alone isn’t big enough of a feature to warrant the SE Plus. So when it comes to opting for a better camera and bigger screen, Apple wants to push people towards buying the more expensive iPhone 11 or 11 Pro. Apple is also committed to Face ID. Regardless of what competitors are doing with in-display finger sensors, Apple is sticking to Face ID as its primary security system. Selling another device that still uses the old fingerprint sensor may diminish the image of its flagship unlocking mechanism. But considering the iPhone 8 Plus had very strong sales numbers, there definitely would have been a market for a bigger phone with Touch ID and bezels. And at $499 the iPhone SE Plus would have likely sold extremely well.
