Apple Announces a New iPhone, But Is It Really New?

On Monday, Apple introduced the iPhone SE, a smaller 4" iPhone for those who just aren't in the market for the larger iPhone 6/6s with a 4.7" screen, or the iPhone 6 Plus/6s Plus with a 5.5" screen. But the interesting thing is that this iPhone looks nothing like the others in the current iPhone lineup, but instead, pretty reminiscent of a previous generation...

That's right. It looks exactly like the iPhone 5s. Literally. The only main physical difference of the new iPhone SE vs. the iPhone 5s is the fact that the glass edges are no longer chamfered, but instead matted. And also, the "SE" logo under "iPhone" on the back of the new phone. Other than the addition of a Rose Gold color option, that's about it for looks.

But I'll give it some credit: the specs under the hood are pretty good, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. As a matter of fact, the specs of the new iPhone SE match up perfectly with the 4.7" iPhone 6s, with the exception of 3D Touch. So, this iPhone SE has the A9 chip with the M9 coprocessor, 2GB of RAM, Live Photos, Apple Pay, 12MP/4K rear-facing camera, front-facing flash, "Hey Siri" support, etc. 

So, just basically a smaller iPhone 6s that looks like an iPhone 5s. This isn't the only reason I think this was an unintelligent move from Apple though. See, Apple spent nearly the last 2 years pushing bigger-sized iPhones with larger screens. All was going well... smaller-screen'd phones were becoming a thing of the past, and more and more people were upgrading to the larger sizes. But now, yet another flop like the iPhone 5c, I bet you, the iPhone SE is here to bring that trend down. It's small. It packs a punch internally, but it's no mind-blowing device that we haven't seen before, nor is it in that positive trend direction Apple has been on track with for a while now. I'm utterly disappointed. 

Aside from the 9.7" iPad Pro they also announced alongside some new Watch bands, this was also my least-favorite Apple event in history. 

I'm looking more forward to those new MacBook Pros due right when the summer hits this year though...