iPhone 7 to iPhone SE 2020

[The Great Kamek]

I have not given much logical thoughts on whether I would upgrade to the upcoming model. What is your thought on this move? Should I or not?

[Viordache]

A good idea if you love iphone and won t change to android, but else i would recomand  you to wait for the google pixel 4a or buy the xiaomi pocophone 2 for 75 dollars less

[schwellmo92]

I would try get a used XR instead. Unless you’re set on having a physical button and large bezels.

[The Great Kamek]

1 minute ago, Viordache said:

A good idea if you love iphone and won t change to android, but else i would recomand  you to wait for the google pixel 4a or buy the xiaomi pocophone 2 for 75 dollars less

I cannot discard all the purchases I have made over the years of my iOS usage on iTunes and App store

[The Great Kamek]

Just now, schwellmo92 said:

I would try get a used XR instead. Unless you’re set on having a physical button and large bezels.

the iPhone X series? Nah i wont get that

[Viordache]

aha so android is clearly not an option for you, yes you should buy the se

[The Great Kamek]

3 minutes ago, Viordache said:

aha so android is clearly not an option for you, yes you should buy the se

Yep

[schwellmo92]

1 hour ago, The Great Kamek said:

the iPhone X series? Nah i wont get that

XR, not X. And why not?

[Zodiark1593]

I would consider the 7 to be perfectly competent today, though the batteries are probably pretty old by now. 
 

Though the SE doesn’t get updated often, and may not get updated for a long while, so now may be a good time to pull the trigger. 
 

I’d give a nod to the iPhone XR, primarily due to the much larger battery. 

[NineEyeRon]

1 hour ago, schwellmo92 said:

I would try get a used XR instead. Unless you’re set on having a physical button and large bezels.

I am probably going to upgrade to the 2020 SE for this reason, when I start to notice a performance drop with my iPhone 7.

 

At the moment the 7 doesn’t seem to be lacking in performance for my needs. Except in battery life as it’s down to 68%.

 

I have a larger battery pack for any all day/weekend adventures and a small emergency one when I’m just out and about like going to the shops.

[7412]

$400 is the price of the upcoming Xiaomi K30 Pro, a notchless, bezelless device with the latest chip, an OLED panel and a massive 4700 mAh battery as well as a new set of cameras.

 

I'll never understand Apple people.

[Zodiark1593]

3 minutes ago, 7412 said:

$400 is the price of the upcoming Xiaomi K30 Pro, a notchless, bezelless device with the latest chip, an OLED panel and a massive 4700 mAh battery as well as a new set of cameras.

 

I'll never understand Apple people.

Preferences and pros/cons aside, OP states specifically the substantial investment already put into apps. 

[7412]

Yep, he's trapped. Although discarding these "investments" would hurt today, on the long run, he'd be saving money as he would no longer need to upgrade for inferior yet exceedingly expensive Apple devices.

[NineEyeRon]

14 minutes ago, 7412 said:

I'll never understand Apple people.

I will never understand why people don’t buy Apple based on my user experience with android devices vs Apple.

 

You make your choice, you don’t need to justify it to others or force them to change.

 

1 minute ago, 7412 said:

Yep, he's trapped. Although discarding these "investments" would hurt today, on the long run, he'd be saving money as he would no longer need to upgrade for inferior yet exceedingly expensive Apple devices

 

I will say, based on my experience that I have to buy twice as many (at least) android devices in the time I keep Apple ones so being twice the price doesn’t end up costing much more money.

 

My main evidence is my father in law is on his third android device while I am still on my first iPad. We use tablets for very much the same things...

[Commodus]

7 minutes ago, 7412 said:

$400 is the price of the upcoming Xiaomi K30 Pro, a notchless, bezelless device with the latest chip, an OLED panel and a massive 4700 mAh battery as well as a new set of cameras.

 

I'll never understand Apple people.

Well, for one, "buy a phone with poor support in your country" is generally not sage advice. 

 

Also, keep in mind that it's not just about the specs race.  Real-world performance matters; the interface and app ecosystem matter; long-term software support matters.  I think many could ask you why you're focused so heavily on the numbers instead of the quality of the experience.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

2 hours ago, The Great Kamek said:

I have not given much logical thoughts on whether I would upgrade to the upcoming model. What is your thought on this move? Should I or not?

Considering the iPhone 7 will be getting iOS 14 (not confirmed but I don't see why it won't), I don't see much of an incentive to upgrade to the new SE. Apart from the camera, you aren't getting much of an upgrade. Yes it has the A13 Bionic, but when did the A10 chip feel like it couldn't keep up? Heck even the A9 runs iOS13 happily and would probably get the 14 upgrade. 

 

You're still missing the headphone jack and you're still getting the same display, and shell. 

35 minutes ago, comander said:

With that said, my iPhone XR seems to crash a heck of a lot more than any of my android phones and I personally find the UI clunky. 

Interesting. Ever since I got my refub 6S I've experienced fewer app crashes and overall stuttering compared to my old Galaxy A5 2017. Don't get my started on the new Galaxy Tab S5e I purchased in December. Damn thing takes a few seconds just to wake up from sleep for god sake. Should've just forgone the 4 AKG speakers + DeX support and went for the base iPad instead. 

[Commodus]

9 minutes ago, comander said:

Found the problem...

At some level non-flagship phones tend to get poor support. 

FWIW, I'm using Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 for my android phones and it's been generally smooth. 

To be clear, that's many non-flagship Android phones.  That iPhone SE is likely going to get another five years of support just like the pricier iPhone 11/11 Pro models.  

 

That's something that has long bugged me about Android software support, that the number and frequency of updates is sometimes tied directly to how expensive your phone is.  Bought a top-of-the-line phone?  You'll be the first to get OS feature updates and will be lavished with security updates.  Bought a budget phone?  Be thankful you get any updates at all, plebe, this is your punishment for not living in a first-world country and buying an expensive phone.

[HummusCake]

i'd get the new iphone se if it had a larger display. it would be the only apple product i buy

[Commodus]

1 minute ago, comander said:

While this is true, I suspect that if you normalize for pricepoint (e.g. focus on "entry premium") you'll find a similar level of support and polish. 


With that said I churn through phones pretty quickly. 

I have a very hard time remembering an android phone as buggy as the iPhone XR that I'm using (random glitches with the keyboard, frequent app crashes, etc.). Apple's "it just works" reputation made this surprising to me. I think there's a lot of marketing behind that. 

I just don't like that the stratification in support exists in the first place.  Every user should get the same level of support; just because you have to buy a lower-cost phone in, say, South Africa doesn't mean you deserve worse treatment than someone buying an ultra-premium phone in the states.

 

It's odd that you're getting that kind of bugginess -- that feels like an outlier.  My iPhone XS has largely been rock solid.  Other than a botched OS upgrade (something interrupted it) and an app crashing once every few months, it's been very dependable.  Have you tried resetting the phone to see if it's just file corruption or some similarly odd glitch?

[Commodus]

14 minutes ago, comander said:

The per unit cost differential could end up being a tank of gas or a week's worth of food for some people. I think it SHOULD be an option. I am worried about externalities with respect to security. I am also somewhat worried about older people who undervalue security as well. 

It SHOULD be an option for someone in India. It could be the difference between having a phone and not. Low cost phones have razor thin margins. Even then for the more popular ones, it is often possible to flash the things. 

This strikes me as somewhat speculative.  I'm not wholly convinced that the extra development time for updates would add a significant premium.  It's not as if a Galaxy A5 is using wildly different software than a Galaxy S10, after all.  And I do worry that saving, say, $5-10 on the cost of the phone could be worse in the long run if there's a security flaw that goes unpatched.

 

19 minutes ago, comander said:

It's on my infinite to do list. Right now I'm still traveling (EUGH) back and forth across the state (now by car instead of air - hurray for 8 hour drives)... and trying to keep up with work and my own projects. 

Worth a shot when you have a little downtime.  Not guaranteed to fix it, but that kind of crash-happiness is rare based on what I've seen both on my own device and with others.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

12 hours ago, comander said:

Found the problem...

At some level non-flagship phones tend to get poor support. 

FWIW, I'm using Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 for my android phones and it's been generally smooth. 

It's not just a support issue. Android in general just has too many hiccups here and there for me to really consider going back. The same thing happened with my S3 as well. The Galaxy Tab S5e... boy don't get me started. Sometimes I have to press the power button twice or three times before the screen wakes up. And even with 4GBs of RAM and plenty of it available, I had apps needing to completely reload when I quickly switch back to them. I could have apps that I've left running since yesterday on my 6s, and I could switch back to them without them needing to reload. Like I can't just quickly go to YouTube and watch something without having to reload OneNote when I come back? And it's not like it's being bogged down by any of Samsung's bloatware. Bloody thing still has more than half of gig of memory at its disposal.

 

Now with the A5, it's generally smooth with the exception of the stutter every now and then (still less than the 6s). But since I've stopped using it, whenever I turned it on just to screw around... the best I could describe it was it felt like trying to run Vista (pre-service pack) on a machine that barely met the requirements for XP. Now it could just be WhatsApp and BlackBerry Services trying to get their act together after sitting idle for so long. But even after giving it a couple of hours to sort itself out, it's pretty horrid to use.   

[Zodiark1593]

7 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

It's not just a support issue. Android in general just has too many hiccups here and there for me to really consider going back. The same thing happened with my S3 as well. The Galaxy Tab S5e... boy don't get me started. Sometimes I have to press the power button twice or three times before the screen wakes up. And even with 4GBs of RAM and plenty of it available, I had apps needing to completely reload when I quickly switch back to them. I could have apps that I've left running since yesterday on my 6s, and I could switch back to them without them needing to reload. Like I can't just quickly go to YouTube and watch something without having to reload OneNote when I come back? And it's not like it's being bogged down by any of Samsung's bloatware. Bloody thing still has more than half of gig of memory at its disposal.

 

Now with the A5, it's generally smooth with the exception of the stutter every now and then (still less than the 6s). But since I've stopped using it, whenever I turned it on just to screw around... the best I could describe it was it felt like trying to run Vista (pre-service pack) on a machine that barely met the requirements for XP. Now it could just be WhatsApp and BlackBerry Services trying to get their act together after sitting idle for so long. But even after giving it a couple of hours to sort itself out, it's pretty horrid to use.   

I feel the same about going to my old phone, and it had a Snapdragon 821, so I hardly considered it slow. The difference in fluidity and speed is rather stark compared to my iPhone 11. Granted, the iOS platform is not perfect by any stretch (for one, moving over my music library was a pain in the butt), but for what I wanted out of a phone, the pros outweighed the cons for me.