I agree with this, and the article I quoted before speculated that the new SE was designed not just to make owners of older SEs or earlier to be happy, it’s also aimed at being an introductory product for developing markets that have been challenging for Apple, esp. India and China. China and India are now the world’s two largest smartphone markets; the US recently fell to #3.
A key goal for Apple is locking in new iPhone users into the Apple ecosystem. It’s probably why they built a newest A chip into it…gaming, movies, photos, iCloud storage, Music as well as throwing in free productivity and photo editing apps. Although it doesn’t have three or four lenses, it has a camera that’s comparably better than what’s available in these in these markets in the price range. And for the price, it’s got a good sized screen for gaming, movies, TV, FaceTime.
In addition to convincing Foxconn to build a manufacturing center in India, Apple convinced a manufacturer of chargers and other components to buy a Nokia plant that was sitting idle there:
Apple, after years and years of politicking and negotiating, will be opening Stores throughout India:
Apple also opened stores in Brazil, Macao and other countries. So I think they developed the new SE to sell to high opportunity markets for hardware and services at least as much as keeping fans of smaller sized phones in the US that just want to talk and text happy. And I strongly suspect there won’t be a five or six year lag before another new SE is introduced. And I’ll bet it will be in about a year or two because 5G is aggressively rolling out in China.
As @Simon said, it’s just that many people are small enough that an iPhone 8-sized phone is awkward, and if you don’t do a lot of reading onscreen you may not care about the screen size. The old iPhone 5s form factor and industrial design was a sweet spot for many.
Would I get one that small? Probably not unless it had the power and cameras of the bigger phones, but I find the iPhone 11 Pro constantly uncomfortable to have in my pocket.
Let me attempt to quantify. My hand is about 8 1/4" from tip of thumb to tip of pinky. I could not use my iPhone 6 singlehandedly. I can however, mostly use my 2016 SE that way. Now it’s entirely possible I’m just terribly clumsy, but when it comes to my left hand (my finger hand) I’m fairly confident that’s not it — I’ve been playing the violin since I was six.
I was always one of the smallest kids in school and grew up to be a petite adult. I wear small size gloves, and I love big screens. Less scrolling of web pages or turning pages of books. Larger sized photos or illustrations with more detail are important to me as well. I gladly switched from a 4s to an 8+ and never once regretted the size. Using a large phone was no problem for me, and I type much faster on a larger screen.
And there’s no lack of them for you. It’s those who don’t want to use two hands, or be unable to put the phone in a pocket, who are suffering with the current design trends.
So I’m still using an iPhone 4 with a Verizon account (a hand-me-up from a young nephew). So would someone explain like I’m 70 how I would transfer files from that to a new iPhone SE if I order one? Apparently they’re only available by mail, as the local Apple store is closed indefinitely and the Verizon store doesn’t have them. There’s no little SIM card in the iPhone 4 to move over.
The best way I suspect that is available to you is to backup your iPhone 4 and restore the backup to the new iPhone. You might feel more comfortable doing this via iTunes.
When I last bought an iPhone (6 to 11) i put the 2 phones next to each other and the new iPhone gave me the opportunity to transfer my data directly from my old iPhone. I do not know if the version on your iPhone 4 supports this feature.
As a Verizon customer who has moved several times to new iPhones, there has never been need to go to a store. I might have had to call them once when there was no sim card, but never had to go to a store.
When we bought our iPhones in Apple Stores they always asked about our provider (Verizon) so they could load it up with the appropriate new SIM cards for the new phones. I’m assuming that they will ask you for the info when you buy the new SE online. We both upgraded from 4s to 8+.
The easiest way is via iCloud. Just make sure you back up your current phone before starting. The directions are here:
Or you can set up your new SE through a Mac using iTunes or the Finder. Again, just be sure you backed up just before you start:
Here’s the Finder or iTunes backup procedure if you haven’t used it before:
If you run in to any problems, you can call Apple for help. Lately I’ve found Apple’s phone help people to be somewhat better than those in Apple’s stores. (I’m refraining from using bad language about that particular Apple Store purchasing experience). Due to the current Coronavirus problem, there will probably be a longer wait for phone help.
As a Verizon customer who prefers in-person business over web sites, I’ve found that over the years you don’t really have a choice. For my first three phones, I could go to a Verizon store, select a new phone and walk out fully upgraded - they would even transfer my address book and photos (the only data retained on those old models). After that (including all of my various iPhones), the store would just place an order to be delivered by mail later in the week. In other words, the worst of both worlds.
Which makes me wonder why Verizon even has retail stores anymore since they don’t seem to do anything you can’t do everywhere else.
When you buy the iPhone SE, Apple will likely ask you if you want to transfer the number. (They do for AT&T; I assume Verizon would be similar.) Then, when you get the iPhone SE and start setting it up, it will automatically activate itself and deactivate the iPhone 4. Tonya just did this with her iPhone SE, moving from an iPhone 7.
But yes, make sure you have backups via iTunes and iCloud (one may be all that’s necessary, but it’s never a problem to have both) to move your data and settings over. In Tonya’s case, the iPhone SE was able to copy all its data from the iPhone 7 sitting next to it, but I suspect that requires a newer iOS than your iPhone 4 would have.
Yes, Verizon is the same. When you order a phone via the web site, you can choose to upgrade an existing line or add a new line to your account. If you upgrade, then activating the new phone deactivates the old one.
But I don’t know why they bother to do this. If the new and old phone use the same size SIM card, then they should be able to just give you instructions on how to move it from the old phone to the new one. But that’s never even presented as an option.
I think they do it because nano-SIMs are small and tricky to work with, particularly for those without decent dexterity or eyesight. I know I’ve had trouble with them when I’ve swapped in new SIMs for overseas travel. And the support cost of failure due to losing it or breaking it is high.
Also, for reasons I never understood, when we used to go into the local AT&T store to swap things around (such as when I’d get a new iPhone, Tonya would get my old one, and Tristan would get her old one), the guy there would often put in a new SIM in some of the phones even when one wasn’t needed by a form factor change. I got the impression that it was cleaner in AT&T’s system to assign a number to a new SIM than to reprogram an existing one.
I suppose, in the case of the new iPhone, if they shipped it with an unattached SIM, that could potentially leave that SIM available for hackery.
My guess is that most people replacing their mobile devices don’t realize how very delicate and easily damaged SIM cards are. There would be a large % of customers going ballistic about having to buy another one if someone dropped it into his coffee cup even after reading repeated warnings to be careful in the instructions.
I never understood why some US carriers like Verizon have such a convoluted approach. Maybe it stems from the old CDMA days when their devices didn’t have a SIM and handsets had to be “activated” by the carrier. In every single European country I worked over the years, I never encountered such a silly complicated process. They do it exactly as you propose,@Shamino. You usually get your SIM and move it from one device to the next as you please. Which ever device it’s in, automatically gets the number you have on that SIM. Extremely useful when traveling or when juggling different phone numbers. Need a different size SIM for a newer device or somehow manage to destroy your SIM? You call you carrier (or go to their website) and they send you a new SIM. Once the new SIM is inserted and the new device turned on, it automatically deactivates the old SIM. Done. None of this activation nonsense. No transferring phone numbers or any of that baloney.
Fortunately, not all US carriers are as antiquated. T-mobile in my experience has operated like I remember European carriers did. Your number is attached to a SIM. Wherever that SIM goes, your number goes. No going to stores and waiting in line, no calls to God knows where waiting forever on hold to have your handset “activated”, none of those shenanigans.
Actually, I’m a bit disappointed Apple didn’t throw around its weight to just dictate to US carriers that in the name of customer experience and ease of use this is how it will work on iPhone period. Would also save them from having to sell iPhones specifically for each and every carrier. Just ship out one model with an empty tray. When it arrives customer pops in their SIM (or the smaller replacement they got from their carrier). Done. Simple. No BS. The experience I’d expect from an Apple product.
The new SE is an eSIM phone, if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t bought one of those yet - do they actually still come with US carrier SIMs or do they activate the eSIM? (I haven’t bought anything but SIM-free from Apple since 2015 for all of the iPhones for our family; we always just transfer our SIM over from our old phone. We are all on Verizon, the new phones just activate as soon as we go through the set-up process.)
The new SE supports eSIM for the 2nd SIM. But according to Apple it still comes with a physical nano SIM if ordered by selecting a specific carrier (the thing Apple calls “carrier-activated”). If you choose SIM free it comes without nano SIM.
I’ve also always bought SIM free and simply brought over the old SIM I had previously been using (T-mobile). Never had any issues.