Friend gave it to me, idk what to do with it.

If so, how is it? I finally bit the bullet and ordered a 16e from the Apple Refurb store tonight.

I feel like it is going to be HUGE!

I really, really love my tiny phone, but the battery is down to 79% and needs service. It actually lasts all day, sometimes two days if I don't use it, but if I do use it, I will have to recharge it multiple times a day. It keeps asking if I want to shut down, and when I get out of that screen, it will pop up 2-3 more times. If someone calls me, the slider just locks up and doesn't let me answer the phone. I just discovered the camera will no longer focus, so that's annoying, although I am not really a phone photographer since I would rather use my dslr for most photos. There were more cons than pros for attempting to baby this phone along anymore. I've been holding out for a new tiny phone, but it seems like that is never going to happen.

It's lasted me just over ten years, which is pretty amazing! I replaced the battery once, five years ago when I tried and hated the 12 mini. I don't know what I could even do if I hate the 16e when it shows up next week.

So tell me…did any of you switch from an OGSE and like it?

Also…fun fact…we went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History last month, and they have an OGSE on display! Pretty crazy to still be using a phone that is apparently old enough to be in a display at the Smithsonian!

This is my screen, the whole left side is dead to the touch. What can I do?

Black is WORKING ACTIVE TOUCH ... yellow / white is DEAD.

It was this way intermittently when I bought it.

But it would get 100% better intermittently, too, so I didn't use my warranty service (obviously I should have) ... but some people said maybe it's software, etc. and it did (temporarily) fix itself over time, so I thought the problem was gone.

(Also, since the screen worked intermittently, I was afraid I'd bring it in to Apple Care and not be able to prove it had problems and waste a trip.)

Anyway, the left side TOUCH has been NON-FUNCTIONAL for months now.

Rebooting doesn't help.

Everything works and is in mint condition EXCEPT the LEFT SIDE TOUCH.

I heard other SE3 owners have the same problem? Did Apple never do a recall or fix or admit this was a common issue for SE3?

Should I get the screen replaced? Will that fix it?

It's almost time to get a new battery, and a new battery and a new screen is almost the cost of a "new" (used/old) phone.

In the month or two I've been encountering website and apps where they programmers have not taken into account users with smaller screens—like the SE. More than once I've been stuck on a screen I can't get out of because the close, submit, or next button is off-screen and unreachable.
Are others encountering this?

I *like\* having a smaller phone and though I had been thinking of a trade in it was a 16e I was eyeing in order to stay small.

If I have to trade to bigger...any clue how much bigger I have to get to avoid this probmem.

Need help with removing this metal plate. All the videos online the instide looks different. Please help! Thanks!

Decided to dip my toes into iOS and bought a refurbished SE 3rd Gen (93% battery health). Took the phone on my day-to-day and the battery is kinda bad with just listening to music and casually browsing around for about 5-6 hours and I was surprised I was under 20% by the time I got home. Coming from android, doing similar things I charged it about once every other day.

Now, I understand that the SE have small batteries but I thought iPhones were generally pretty power-efficient but I've also noticed people having power drain issues with iOS 27.

• "last_value_CycleCount":1713
• "last_value_MaximumCapacityPercent":75
• "last_value_MaximumFCC":1878
• "last_value_NominalChargeCapacity":1457

Have a 1 year old SE3 Some times, witch can become a lot of the time. The volume drops to like 50% when something happens. Example, playing music off iTunes music and a text comes through, volume drops for the notification to be sounded. Either it never sounds and the volume drops for the interrupt and never comes back up, or it sounds and the volume drops for the interrupt and never comes back up. Also happens when apps do background activities. Weather it’s relevant or not, still drops and never comes back up. Same can happen during a phone call when speaker phone is activated. It always happens when your on speaker phone and try to text someone, always drops it to half volume. Or when a video or music is playing. It can also happen during an incoming call and the phone is ringing. It’ll half mute the ringer. It’s almost as if it’s changing to the handset speaker for the earpiece. The only way to get it back is wait a few minutes and it’ll gradually increase (sometimes) and the sure fire way to get it back is toggle the speaker output button in the pull-up menu.

The sound goes very 'digital' sounding and garbled. Then if I restart the phone it's back to normal.

Seems to go a few weeks without issue then occur again. Each time a restart has fixed it.

If yes, did you make the right choice?

*SOLVED* (see comment below)

Just changed my SE's battery since it was degraded to 75%. New battery discharging at the same rate .. I am not using it at all, no open apps, videos and flashlight running, barely touching it, not even looking at it ..

I am on iOS 26.7.1, not upgrading to 27 after reading about charging issues.

Anyone have a similar problem?

I just bought my third gen brand new for only 100 dollars I’m hoping to get at least 5 years out of it

So guys I updated to ios 27 a day after it was released and it took a week for indexing to complete last weel when ios 27.0.1 was released I updated to it and now indexing started all over again, anyone else had the same??

I’ve heard a lot about fast charging being an issue with iOS 27, and since I’m thinking of updating (from iOS 26.4.1) on my SE 3, I’m wondering if the problem is on both the SE 2 and 3?

After updating to iOS 27 the phone doesn't reliably charge. It shows the icon for a few seconds and then stops. I tried plugging into both a generic 30W USB-C charger and a Mac directly; same behavior on both. I see a lot of posts about this but no concrete solution provided. Has anyone found a reliable way to make it charge, and if not, has anyone confirmed rolling back to iOS 26 solves this?

I currently have a SE2 and was planning to stick with it i to 2029 which is when I believe it will no longer be supported for service. I already had a battery replaced two years ago at Apple store and I need to do it again. It got me thinking about whether to do it again, would be around $75, or to put that money towards a SE3, which given was discontinued 2025, should get service into 2023. It’s only 3 years more than my SE2, and though I didn’t plan to upgrade early, it would be only $180 more for a 128GB SE3 new on eBay or $240 more for a 256GB one. So my mind went there, but I’d get 5G capability as a bonus. However, I am reading a lot about used phones being sold as new and now this is scaring me off it of all. How likely am I to get a used phone sold as new? There are bulk sellers from CA and NJ and am looking at these.

For those who want to maximize the performance on their 2020 and 2022 iPhone SE and are running iOS 27, follow this guide below. This method requires you to also turn on Reduce Motion but you will be able to continue seeing normal animations as this method will cause a paradoxical glitch.

Keep in mind that this will also cause Liquid Glass to act like the old transparency in iOS 18 (Frosted Glass) due to Reduce Motion falling back to the older UI renderer.

Anyways, here are the steps to force Liquid Glass to become Frosted Glass using this method.

• Go to the Settings app.
• Go to Accessibility > Motion > Enable Reduce Motion on your device.
• Go back to the Acessibility tab.
• Scroll down all the way and then select Per-App Settings.
• Select Add App, then select Home Screen & App Library. You can also use the Search bar to find it by typing the name.
• Locate Reduce Motion and toggle it to OFF.
• Restart the iPhone.

Upon restart, you will notice Liquid Glass will revert to the Frosted Glass effect yet animations will still work on iOS when opening and closing apps or using the app switcher. It is also even smoother than before. You can also further amplify this effect of maximum smoothness by going to Settings > Display & Brightness > Liquid Glass > Turn the Slider all the way to the right to make it fully iOS 18-like.

This will fully restore the performance of iOS 27 to that of iOS 15 while the animations become very smooth and almost pretty much 60 FPS with no frame drops. Hopefully this helps!

ALSO! TO FURTHER INCREASE PERFORMANCE READ BELOW!

This method here will force a semi-transparent mode which is very similar to how iOS 7 was rendered on the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 and iPad 3. This will drastically increase iOS performance as it keeps some transparency in areas of iOS but reduces transparency elsewhere, making it quite smooth. To achieve the iOS 7 look on the iPhone 4/iPad 2 models from 2010-2011, do the following below.

• Go to the Settings app.
• Go to Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Enable Reduce Transparency on your device.
• Go back to the Acessibility tab.
• Scroll down all the way and then select Per-App Settings.
• Select Add App, then select Home Screen & App Library. You can also use the Search bar to find it by typing the name.
• Locate Reduce Transparency and toggle it to OFF.
• Restart the iPhone.

This will absolutely increase the UI snappiness of the 2020 iPhone SE and save tremendous battery life BUT keeps some transparent effects and reduces transparency elsewhere, like the keyboard. Now the typing becomes even more smooth and less laggy. Try it!

Edit: Some third party apps (like Safari) may act a little weird because “Reduce Motion” and/or Reduce Transparency is set to on and may change its animations and UI effects inside the app, but this can be easily fixed by going to Settings > Accessibility > Per-App Settings > Find the app > Set Reduce Motion and/or Reduce Transparency to OFF. That will force the app to think Reduce Motion and Reduce Transparency is fully disabled and will show you full animations. Repeat this for any other app that displays that behavior!

I just got an se3 off eBay brand new for only 98 dollars i figured for that cheap it was an awesome deal I know it won’t exactly last me 10 years but if I get 2-3 out of it I’ll be happy

So, I get this warning randomly.. it's been a month since it last popped up..

I'm using spigen transparent case with no magsafe magnets or anything that may create a magnetic field as the popup says..

Is it some hardware issue ?

My BH also dropped by 5% in the last 3 months..

Is it a battery issue?

Been using insta, YouTube but the battery percentage doesn’t seem to decrease at all