Wireless carriers in the US and much of the developed world spent tens of billions of dollars on 5G airwes over the past few years and really want us to move over to those empty lanes on their wireless highways. Verizon, for one, has been battling congestion issues on 4G recently, a problem it could solve by transitioning customers to 5G network bands. The new iPhone SE moves you into that new HOV lane on your carrier's highway and out of the 4G gridlock.
How does this factor into the iPhone SE lineup? For reference, Apple sold its 2016 iPhone SE for four years. The iPhone 2020 SE, however, has been on shelves for only about two years. Because this latest update to the lineup appears to come in the middle of a cycle, I imagine the carriers pleaded with Apple to make the most affordable iPhone 5G compatible. And once the price on 5G chipsets became right, Apple did.
Apple wouldn't tell us which modem the 2022 iPhone SE uses, but the style of its Field Test Mode indicates that it's one from Qualcomm—my bet is on the same Qualcomm X60 chip that's in the iPhone 13 series. There are five different international models of the 2022 iPhone SE, but they're more similar to the various models in previous years, so make sure to buy the model appropriate for your country.
The iPhone SE keeps the home button alive (Photo: Molly Flores)In terms of basic calling and texting, the 2022 iPhone SE functions much the same as the 2020 model. It makes calls using 4G networks, and call quality is similar to other iPhones. The upcoming 3G shutdowns won't affect it. For hearing aid users, this is the easiest way into a post-3G lifestyle, as iPhones tend to offer superior compatibility with hearing aids than Android phones.
For data, mid-band 5G matters. It can matter a lot if you're somewhere with mid-band 5G coverage from your carrier; in this scenario, the 2022 iPhone SE offers significant performance improvements over older 4G iPhones. Check out our article on whether you need a 5G iPhone for more information.
If you he mid-band 5G coverage on T-Mobile or Verizon, this phone offers significant performance improvements over a 4G-only one. On AT&T's network, you likely won't get an advantage from 5G now, but this phone is an investment in the future, at least to some extent. The iPhone SE supports AT&T's C-band but not its 3.45GHz spectrum, which is a key part of the carrier's mid-band 5G rollout. This means AT&T network performance improvements here will be patchy—consider waiting for the iPhone 14 lineup if that's important to you.
That said, the iPhone SE is the weakest performer of the recent round of 5G iPhones. The phone lacks support for millimeter-we, a super-fast, short-range system that Verizon uses. Don't let that bug you too much; we he millimeter-we here in New York, but it's relatively rare throughout the rest of the country.
The iPhone SE's 2x2 MIMO setup (two data streams with two antennas) also weakens its network performance. Most modern phones use a 4x4 MIMO setup with four antennas. I compared the new iPhone SE with the iPhone 13 mini and the Samsung Galaxy S22, both of which he 4x4 MIMO setups. For testing, I connected the phones to Verizon's network and walked through a part of Brooklyn that has a mix of C-band and millimeter-we coverage.
Depending on where I was standing, the iPhone 13 mini or the Galaxy S22 had better speeds or signal strength. The most important takeaway is that the SE was almost always slower, even if it sometimes reported better signal strength than the iPhone 13 mini. That difference was clearest in my two tests in environments with slower network speeds—I performed the first one outside on a bridge and the second one indoors in a hotel. In both cases, the iPhone 13 mini and the Galaxy S22 had similar performance that was a lot better than the iPhone SE's.