Stefan Mileschin

Last week we published our initial review of Apple’s new iPhone SE. In the piece, I had remarked that the camera was relatively disappointing and suffered from a lack of detail in photos, with the phone’s camera seemingly suffering from optical weaknesses that manifested in partially blurred out shots. This was quite puzzling as the iPhone SE’s camera module should be of the same design as that of the iPhone 8, which produced sharp images.

I had notified Apple of the results ahead of the publication of the article, and the company communicated back that they had not seen such results before, and that they were not what was expected of the new iPhone SE’s camera abilities.

The company decided to dispatch out a new phone, and to collect my initial unit for analysis. I exchanged units earlier in the week, and was able to retest the new phone’s cameras.

In the new camera samples, we can see a dramatic improvement in sharpness of the pictures, and the new phone exhibits none of the optical issues that were initially described in the article.

Although I wasn’t able to test both units side-by-side, as the old phone had been collected at the same time, here’s some similar scene shots (although they are done on different days with different lighting conditions) between the two phones:

One can immediately note massive improvements in sharpness, with the new phone now performing as good as, or even better, than the iPhone 8.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15759...mples-retested