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Phones · Apple iPhone SE

Apple iPhone SE 1st generation

40owners with an opinion
78%of verdicts positive
25/8positive/negative since 2024
8 yrslongest happy owner
3happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and battery; criticized for software and repairability.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 8 yearsStill going
2016-ish feels like the year phones peaked for me. After that it feels like things went in a direction I’m no longer interested in. I’m still using my original iPhone SE from 2016 and it’s still great. I replaced the battery recently and I can go two days on one charge. I love how small it is. I’ve never really wished for a larger phone (just better eyes). I also don’t need a faster phone because I only use my phone for basic phone things. For anything more demanding, I have a laptop.
NeutralOwned 5 years
Yeah, supply chain concerns. I maintained five iPhones SE 1st gen from 2016 through most of 2021. Toward the end of that time it grew noticeably more difficult and slow to source model-specific parts and tooling. This time around, I know how to plan ahead more effectively. I had a 12 mini, but knowing Apple only drops a good small phone every half decade to keep us weird nerds interested, when the successor model came out I immediately upgraded. I don't expect a real problem even in the worst case. The US is a huge internal market and has enough local internet to function. But for $300 flat I would otherwise just save anyway, why not hedge twice while I know I can?
Likes it
This must be a personal preference based on ear anatomy. The first-gen Airpods fit my ears perfectly, and were secure. When I lost them and upgraded to the 2nd gen, I was initially upset - aside from the body being fatter (and so less comfortable in my ears) they were very insecure - I couldn't even walk around without them loosening and dislodging. I was on the point of returning them when I saw the advice online to 'twist' them into a different position. I now use them with the stalks horizontal, and they're secure. Still a touch less comfortable than the v1s, but easily tolerable.
Neutral
isn't the main point of Fairphone to not use conflict minerals? by using FOSS only myself and hating monopolies like Apple etc., i still pretty much convinced that being "green" or "ethical" is more about participating/volunteering/doing-something towards a better world than off-loading your duty to other companies... one could easily make a point that Apple products despite locked down, are still green (Apple has a bunch of zero-emission and whatever policies) and much more if one uses their devices for a long while. i had a 2° hand iPhone SE 1° gen. till 2021? if stuff breaks despite your not being able to fix it's not like you can't hop into a specialized shop to change batteries or even pay the expensive service Apple offers... sure that allows exploitation and it's always nice to get rid of it, that's why somehow these emerging companies are important and/or policies like the right of repair will make them obsolete
Doesn’t like it
While I agree with your general gist and definitely your final paragraph, > There are plenty of people with old android phones with no free disk space using ancient browsers. How many people have 10 year old phones? I've got an 8 year old iPhone XR which I keep around as a backup/travel device because it's not worth selling, and the battery is… not happy even in airplane mode. For me to have a 10 year old mobile browser, I'd have to have kept the iPhone SE 1 (or was it a 5c?) that I bought second hand in 2018, and not upgraded it since I bought it. I got rid of it because the battery wouldn't hold a charge for 10 minutes.
Likes it
Not a phone, but I use my old first gen AirPods Pro with my Windows laptop for work just fine using Bluetooth. I haven’t had any problems at all with them. One thing I did was completely remove them from my Apple account and factory reset them, so they didn’t try to join my iPhone or my personal laptop. Maybe try that to see if it helps with your issues?
Doesn’t like it
reminds me the time i had an iPhone SE (1° gen) and i could play 1-3 minutes of garageband with my Korg keyboard using it and then it stopped saying my (adapter) wasn't offcial :) the official gadget in Brazil was > 10 times more expensive than the cheap copies
Likes it
AirPod Pro v1 seems to always work, but they favor connecting to Apple branded devices and move seamlessly between them. What doesn't work so well is that iPad Pro M4 doesn't play nice with Bose QC35 multi-point connections because it appears to "play silence" to the headphones even when there is no audio, preventing the other connected device from switching over to play audio. When I turn my iPhone on and open iMessage, it will sit at a black screen and won't open for several minutes and usually crashes. I want sync to happen on a background thread and be able to access existing content immediately. Sometimes it happens with the phone app too. There really ought to be a universal gesture or trick (that's not pull to refresh) to force iCloud sync in any app that has iCloud sync functionality. Also, Universal Clipboard works half of the time. Learn Spelling was removed from most/all non-Pages apps, which is extremely inconvenient because the Apple US English dictionary has tons of missing adverb forms. iOS/iPadOS selection of text in a web browser (Brave or Mobile Safari) doesn't work as reliably as it did in earlier OS versions. Often, text is selected but refuses to show the text selection popup. And I refuse to use iOS and macOS 26 because liquid glass is slow and unusable.
Likes it
Earlier this year I downgraded my S24 ultra to an iphone 13 mini and then to the first gen iphone SE. I replaced the battery myself on the SE and couldn't be happier. Less screen time and more IRL time. People should just use less of their phones and for battery longevity they should not let their phones go daily below 20%. No one on this planet should use their phone more than 2 hours per day. Period. More is just plain stupid.
Likes it
To be fair, back when it was released it did do that. I didn’t use my iPad often in 2010, but it held onto its charge extremely well. Almost no loss while sitting idle. I think all the push notification, cloud syncing, and everything else in the background are what kill it now. As someone who very occasionally used my iPad, I think this may be the root cause of why I gave up on it and no longer own one. I didn’t use it a lot, so the battery was always dead when I went to pick it up. This wasn’t a problem with the first gen. I’ve accepted that I need to charge my phone daily. I will not charge something like an iPad or laptop daily. If I’m not using it on battery for 8+ hours per day, there should be no reason it can’t hold a charge. There should be a proper sleep mode, instead of just turning off the display like on a phone. I always find it awkward and frustrating when an iPad is getting a bunch of notifications, waking up the screen, every few minutes while no one is even near it and those notifications are also going to the person’s phone. I feel the same way about the Apple Pencil. I would have used it more if they used Wacom-style tech that didn’t require the stylus be charged. Then it could simply be picked up and used… like a pencil. I don’t know what the Apple Pencil’s excuse is for not being able to hold a charge.
Likes it
The first SE was the best form factor I've ever owned. Incredibly small. Incredibly light. Pretty thin, even in a case. Had a headphone jack, Lightning and Touch ID. The only thing I like about the new iPhone designs is the action button. Having an automation which automatically turns silent mode off or on based on whether I'm home or not is pretty cool. You can't do that with a physical switch.
Doesn’t like it
I found a first gen ipad mini I had in a box of electronics and cables and thought it'd be great to use as a HASS controller. I found it's actually kinda impossible to run it on the device, both as the HASS ios app isn't built for devices that old and the web interface is broken for safari devices that ancient. https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1p7qn7q/old_... You can't even build apps for ARM7 architectures used by 9.3.5 devices on modern macOS, or even install an xcode old enough to do it. So, jailbreak the iPad, write a compatible app with Theos (but it's UIKit, so totally could be built for modern devices and put on the app store), and enjoy some home automation.
Neutral
I had the OG iPod Touch, which had the same software (minus the phone, camera, and GPS parts). It did web browsing very well. And it came with Maps (which, at that time, used Google's data). It was initially amusing back then when the world was commonly filled with wide-open 802.11 networks to pull out that little pocket computer, connect to a nearby network (if it hadn't already connected to "Linksys"), and browse an online map -- from about anywhere with a building nearby. Wifi-based geolocation was also spooky-good at that time. Anyway, it didn't do much else that I found useful. It was generally lacking features that I'd been using for years with a Handspring Visor (which itself ran on a pair of alkaline batteries for months). Early IOS didn't even have a clipboard to cut and paste with. So I jailbroke it. I added multitasking, an app "store," a clipboard and a bunch of other fun stuff long before Apple allowed those functions. I think I even had a good bit of the Debian userland installed at one point. After that, I used it all the time for stuff (until the OG Motorola Droid replaced it in 2009, which was easy as pie to root: just dump a special su on there and run it).
Likes it
To be fair, poor-quality cables are a more recent development at Apple. It basically follows the Tim Cook takeover, where full on greed has become the "raison d'être" of Apple at the expense of everything else. I had the 1,5G iPod (10GB variant) which was sold with all the accessories, including a carrying pouch, very nice quality remote (that could be used with any headphones, not just the ones included) and a very nice FireWire cable. It was literally one of the best quality cable I ever used. The first iPhone also had a pretty decent quality cable (and included a dock). Back then, iBooks/PowerBooks also included many adaptors for the various video-out standard of the time, that is to be contrasted with their all USB-C release MacBooks, where they basically told their customers: "fuck you, buy the necessary dongles at a nasty markup". It all went to shit when Apple became very successful with the iPhone and the bean counter fully took over, saving pennies everywhere he could (at scale it does makes a lot of money). And this is what feels so bad with Apple today, you pay a premium price, only to be taken for a fool and have a mediocre experience in the name of "ecology" (who are they kidding, seriously).
Doesn’t like it
That's fair. (Heading off topic:) My take on that saying is that I make art when the inspiration strikes. So I am often caught carrying a minimal amount of stuff but noticing something and wanting to play with it. My very mediocre 1st gen iPhone SE is indeed absurdly far in capabilities from my serious camera - but historically there have been far worse cameras. (And it has never been quite the same since I replaced the battery and I annoy my friends by tapping the phone so it will auto-focus.)
Doesn’t like it
Meh, I replaced the battery in a 1st gen (2016) iphone SE, per the ifixit instructions. The home pushbutton didn't work afterwards. Repeated disassembly and reassembly didn't help. No useful advice on ifixit forum. Unclear what if anything to try next. Luckily the phone was long obsolete by then, so replaced. Repairability of these things sucks and I miss swappable batteries.
Doesn’t like it
Absolutely disagree. Having replaced the screen, battery and home button on my 1st gen iPhone SE myself I can confidently say that Apple do not make these easy to repair yourself, and arguably make it more difficult to drive business for their own repair service. Lots of tiny screws requiring particular tools of different lengths that can't be mixed up, lest you permanently damage the phone. Glue that needs to be carefully removed or you risk dangerously damaging the battery. Just look at their repairability scores on iFixit: https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/smartphone-repairabilit... .