Tech: Apple iPhone SE (3rd generation) review - The New Old Phone

There was a time when Apple's iPhone was cutting-edge - a hot new tech product no one had ever seen before. Nowadays, iPhones are old hat, with talking points that are more pedestrian than pioneering. Case in point: iPhone 14 touts the "longest battery life ever," emergency SOS signals via satellite, and low light photo taking - not exactly killer features for an $800 phone.

So, when my old hand-me-down iPhone 7 finally kicked the bucket after five years of faithful service, I went out and bought what is essentially the exact same phone with a faster CPU - the third-gen iPhone SE:

Is it flashy? Nope. Is it a better choice than its Android counterpart, the Samsung Galaxy A? Debatable. But this is the cheapest phone you can buy from Apple, and its performance isn't too far off from the top-dog, just-released iPhone 14 models, at least for everyday use. If all you need from your smartphone is to make calls, take pictures, and navigate you to the nearest McDonald's, this is your jam.