The SE looks exactly like the iPhone 5s. I’ve been carrying both phones around for comparative purposes for the past few days, and I’ve grabbed the old phone by mistake on multiple occasions. The only physical difference is that the iPhone SE I have happens to be pink, ( or, as Apple calls it, rose gold) . The SE also comes in silver, space gray, and gold.
It has the same aluminum body as the iPhone 5s, the same four-inch Retina display, even the same placement of round volume buttons on the side. The edges are chamfered, a departure from the round edges of the iPhone 6s or a return to earlier iPhone designs, depending on how you look at it. The only differences, aesthetically-speaking, between the iPhone 5s and the iPhone SE are the abovementioned colors, the matte edges, and the fact that the shiny Apple logo on the back of the phone is color-matched stainless steel. It even feels exactly like a 5s.
While I can’t say I’d go back to a four-inch phone at this point, I did like the build of the 5s back when I had one. The back is smooth and satisfying, as though the phone just shaved. It weighs just four ounces but feels fairly durable, due in part to its hard edges and the fact that it’s just slightly thicker than the newer iPhone 6s. It’s unclear exactly why Apple cribbed its own design, though the company has said this is a design people loved. I would also venture to say that the 5s body meant Apple didn’t have to design a smaller phone entirely from scratch. I also imagine a bunch of Apple execs sitting around, wearing indistinguishable button-downs and shiny Apple Watches, conspiring ways to keep this phone a secret. And what better way to thwart leaks than to make a new phone that looks exactly like an old phone! It’s a little trite to describe the new phone as an iPhone 6s in the body of an iPhone 5s, because that’s not exactly true. There are feature differences between Apple’s flagship phone and this one. For example, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus support 3D Touch, which means content pops out on the screen when you press on it a certain way; the iPhone SE doesn’t have this feature. The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus also have better front-facing cameras, but the iPhone SE is stuck with a 1.2-megapixel sensor. The iPhone SE doesn’t have a barometer — if you care about elevation tracking. And, technically, the flagship phones have a newer fingerprint sensor, though I didn’t notice any latency with the iPhone SE’s fingerprint sensor.
