Competing in the high-end price segment, the Apple iPhone SE (2022) is the most affordable way to own a new iPhone. With a 4.7-inch IPS display, the device is quite compact and powered by Apple’s A15 Bionic chipset. In the camera department, the SE focuses on the essentials and only comes with a 12MP wide-angle camera.
Without an ultra wide-angle or dedicated camera on offer, let’s see how the Apple iPhone SE (2022) stands up Cons the competition from the Android camp.
Key Camera Specifications:
- 12 MP sensor
- Lens with f / 1.8 aperture
- OIS
- Flashing LED
- 4K at 24/25/30 / 60fps, 1080p at 25/30 / 60fps (tested at 4K / 30fps)
About SBMARK Camera Tests: For scoring and analysis in our smartphone camera reviews, SBMARK engineers capture and evaluate over 3000 test images and more than 2.5 hours of video in both controlled laboratory environments and indoor and outdoor natural scenes, using the default camera settings. This article aims to highlight the most important results of our tests. For more information on SBMARK Camera Test Protocol, please click here. More details on how we rate smartphone cameras can be found here.
Test summary
Pros
- Good exposure in bright light and indoors for photos and videos
- Fast and precise autofocus, wide depth of field
- Accurate colors and neutral white balance
- The preview image is close to the final capture
- Fairly good texture / noise compromise in bright light video
- Nice color in bright light and indoor video
versus
- Lack of fine details
- Luminance and chromatic noise
- Image artifacts, including ringing ghosting and color fringing
- Strong lack of detail during the tele zoom
- Occasionally extremely underexposed night shots in flash-off mode
- Strong underexposure and shadow clipping in low light video
- Low texture / noise compromise and video indoors and in low light conditions
- White balance spreads across the video
- Ineffective video stabilization and unstable autofocus when moving around while recording video
With a SBMARK Camera score of 118, the Apple iPhone SE (2022) performs well in its segment and has made significant improvements over its predecessor iPhone SE (2020). But the lack of ultra wide-angle and telephoto cameras in the 2022 version means it can’t keep up with the best-in-class Google Pixel 6.
When capturing still images, exposure is good in bright light and typical indoor conditions, but images taken in low light are often underexposed. The autofocus works well and is fast enough, thanks to the zero-shutter-lag technology. A large depth of field means that the subjects in the background are sharpened. Color rendering is accurate, with a fairly neutral white balance.
On the downside, the texture / noise tradeoff is pretty low. Images lack fine detail, and luminance noise and low-frequency chroma noise are often noticeable. Our testers also occasionally found artifacts, such as ringing, ghosting, and color fringing.
This graph shows that the iPhone SE is capable of capturing good details when mounted on a tripod in bright light and indoors. However, things quickly go downhill in low light. When you hold the detail of the phone in your hand, the retention is already low at indoor light levels and further decreases in low light conditions.
This graph shows the retention of DMC details versus light level (in lux). The DMC detail retention metric is an AI-powered plot analysis, trained on crops selected from the DMC chart.
Zoom is not a strong point of the iPhone SE. Without an ultra wide-angle camera there is simply no way to zoom out of the main camera. The telezoom is done purely digitally, which results in a large loss of detail as you can see in the examples below.
Apple iPhone SE (2022), long range telephoto lens
Apple iPhone SE (2022), crop: lack of detail, limited dynamic range, noise
Apple iPhone 13 mini, long range tele
Apple iPhone 13 mini, crop: lack of detail, limited dynamic range, noise
Xiaomi 12, long range tele
Xiaomi 12, crop: lack of detail, better dynamic range, noise
In video mode, the camera produces accurate exposure in bright light and indoors but, as with photos, underexposure can occur in low light conditions. When recording in bright light or indoors, the white balance is fairly neutral and the colors are pleasant and saturated. However, the autofocus can be a bit unstable. This is especially noticeable with moving subjects in the scene. The footage lacks fine detail, and while the noise is only slightly visible on the outside, it becomes more intrusive indoors and in low light, with some color noise mixed in. Stabilization works well during static recording, but when moving or running while recording there is a lot of camera shake.
In this example clip, the face is well exposed and a wide dynamic range ensures good detail on both the face and the sky. Exposure and dynamic range are also fairly stable throughout the video. Colors are pleasant, with good saturation, but some instability in autofocus and pumping are noted. When in focus, the face has good detail, and the noise is low. The stabilization system cannot compensate for all camera shake.
Apple iPhone SE (2022), good exposure, good detail and low noise on the face, autofocus instability, camera shake
Apple iPhone 13 mini, better texture, less noise, effective stabilization
Xiaomi 12, better texture, lower noise, effective stabilization, blue cast
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