If you combine the SE with the local used market, it can get extremely inexpensive. I'm currently rocking an SEv2 that I got for $150.
I'm not saying that $150 is cheap objectively, but in relation to Android phones - even used ones - it stands up pretty well.
This is especially true since Apple supports phones for so long. If you're cost constrained, you can spread the cost of a phone over more years than a typical Android phone.
But with Android you get much more features for the money. All Android phones are bezelless for instance, even the cheapest budget phone. The SE still rocks the iPhone 8 design from 2017 with all its drawbacks.
Personally I don't use Apple because I have far too many things I can't do on it (mostly due to their restrictions in the app store, like using open PGP keys over NFC). But if I did I'd never consider the SE.
If the discussion is around phone for kids, I think a second hand SE is still a great choice. Kids don’t really care about the features that you or I would care about.
I mean, it makes the phone smaller for the same screen size. That's an improvement for me.
Not enough for me to drop $$$ on an iPhone-mini, but I'd be happy if Apple put future SEs into an "iPhone 13 mini" body (presumably with a single lens camera).
Because it's optimising the usable surface of the phone of course. The bezels don't serve any purpose other than they were technically necessary during the first years of smartphones.
On a tablet you can use them to hold the device but a smartphone is small enough to grip by the edges only.
And OLED really is a total must-have for me these days.
The screen size/battery size would probably be larger on a price competitive Android phone then the SE, however I doubt you'd get as fast a processor/as many years of software updates either so it really depends what you prefer. I may be biased though having the SE, think I'll only bother to upgrade it when Apple finally switches to USB-C
I wish Apple would bring back the fingerprint scan. Once my iPhone 8 plus bricks they won't sell me a new 8. Face scanning is too dystopian and violating for me, but any iPhone after 8 requires it. I tried buying the SE to resist this practice, but it's designed to be intentionally tiny and inconvenient to force us neo-Luddites into the current corpo-dystopian era
The SE is so dang small, and I love the 8 Plus's still having a home button and fingerprint sensor. I feel stuck because I don't want having my face scanned (even if Apple says it's not sent to a centralized auth server, it creeps me out).
If you combine the SE with the local used market, it can get extremely inexpensive. I'm currently rocking an SEv2 that I got for $150.
I'm not saying that $150 is cheap objectively, but in relation to Android phones - even used ones - it stands up pretty well.
This is especially true since Apple supports phones for so long. If you're cost constrained, you can spread the cost of a phone over more years than a typical Android phone.