Apple has introduced the iPhone with a four-inch retina display and a compact aluminum design updated with matte-chamfered edges, a color-matched stainless steel Apple logo, and four metallic finishes (including rose gold).
It offers the same 64-bit A9 chip with a M9 motion co-processor offered in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, longer battery life, faster wireless, a 12-megapixel iSight camera with True Tone flash (and featuring Live Photos and 4K video), and Touch ID with Apple Pay, says Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
The M9, Apple’s next-generation motion coprocessor, is integrated into A9 allowing more features to run all the time at lower power, including “Hey Siri” without having to pick up your iPhone, and a range of fitness tracking capabilities like measuring your steps and distance. iPhone SE users can browse, download and stream content even faster with Wi-Fi up to three times and LTE up to 50% faster than iPhone 5s, says Schiller. It also includes more LTE bands for better worldwide roaming and supports Voice over LTE and Wi-Fi calling for wideband calls.
The iPhone SE’s 12-megapixel iSight camera sports Focus Pixel technology for fast focusing, an Apple-designed image signal processor, advanced noise reduction, third-generation local tone mapping and better face detection, all resulting in sharper, more detailed photos like the ones shot on iPhone 6s. Additional camera advancements include:
° The ability to shoot HD video with support for 4K at a resolution of 3840 x 2160. After capturing 4K video, customers can edit on a Mac, PC or iPad, and with the latest version of iMovie on iPhone, can even edit two simultaneous streams of 4K on iPhone SE.
° Retina Flash, which momentarily makes the display three times brighter with True Tone lighting technology, for wonderfully bright selfies in low light with the FaceTime HD camera.
° Features introduced with iPhone 6s, including up to 63-megapixel panorama photos, video capture up to 60fps for 1080p video and 240fps for slo-mo, time-lapse with video stabilization and cinematic video stabilization.
The iPhone SE will be available in space gray, silver, gold and rose gold metallic finishes in 16GB and 64GB models starting at $399 from Apple’s retail stores, Apple.com, Apple Authorized Resellers and select carriers, or for 24 monthly payments starting at $17 exclusively at Apple’s retail stores in the US. As part of the newly-announced Trade Up with Installments program at Apple stores in the US, customers can also purchase iPhone SE for as low as $10/month for 24 months.