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iPhone SE 2020 Only Has 1,821mAh Battery & 3GB RAM – Should You Be Concerned?
April 18, 2020 Andrew Cheng

The second-generation iPhone SE was unveiled a few days ago, and it didn’t take long for folks to figure out the exact RAM capacity and battery size of the compact smartphone. As expected, the new iPhone doesn’t really impress in these two hardware: it’s said to only feature a 1,821mAh battery and 3GB of RAM.

These two hardware details come from 9to5Mac, which found the relevant information from a Chinese telco’s listing of the iPhone SE. That being said, it’s worth noting that the battery and RAM capacities of the iPhone have since been removed from the listing; quite peculiar.

Regardless, given the similarities between the new iPhone SE and the iPhone 8, we’re quite confident the 1,821mAh battery is accurate; it’s the exact same cell capacity found in the latter. To be sure, it’s a small capacity, and in a market where most – if not all – smartphones come with batteries twice as big as that 1,821mAh cell, it doesn’t look great for the iPhone SE.

However, when we talk about battery capacities, iPhones usually don’t have the largest cells, but they still deliver reasonably good battery life. This can be attributed to iOS’ power optimisation, which is quite impressive. Of course, you can only squeeze so much battery life out of the 1,821mAh cell, but will you struggle to get at least a day’s worth of use?

Well, until we have the iPhone SE in for review, we can’t say with pinpoint accuracy. But given that the iPhone 8 can return good enough battery life for most consumers, we see no reason why the iPhone SE wouldn’t be able to do the same. According to the Cupertino company, the SE has about the same battery life as the iPhone 8.

Okay, but what about the “measly” 3GB RAM of the iPhone SE? Well, to put this into context, both the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max only has 4GB of RAM; that’s just 1GB more than the SE. Trust us, the 3GB of RAM is enough to keep up with the phone’s fast A13 Bionic chip.

Really, you should be able to get comparable performance as the far more expensive iPhone 11 smartphones with the second-generation iPhone SE. After all, these devices are powered by the very same chip.

You might be wondering: if an Android smartphone only has a 1,821mAh battery and 3GB of RAM, it wouldn’t be as well-received as the iPhone SE 2020. But that is precisely the point – you cannot compare Android and iOS smartphones based on hardware alone (well, to an extent). Both operating systems behave differently, and the truth of the matter is, Apple makes better use of hardware with iOS.

See, iOS’ closed ecosystem allows Apple to optimise the operating system on many levels. Compare this to Android’s far more fragmented nature; it’s a lot harder to achieve the same level of optimisation on the platform. iOS’ restrictive nature and Android’s openness each have its own benefits and drawbacks, but when it comes to efficient use of hardware, iOS is – most of the time – superior.

So to answer the question: should you be concerned about the iPhone SE’s 1,821mAh battery and 3GB RAM? Performance wise, you have nothing to worry about, but you do have to manage your expectations when it comes to battery life. We reckon the SE will be able to last through a day of use for most users, but don’t expect it to last as long as the iPhone 11 series.

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