How durable is your new iPhone SE?
The best answer might be “fair to middling”.
Recently, extended warranty provider SquareTrade subjected the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6s Plus to a series of excessive bend, drop, tumble, and water tests, and the results show that its compact design does not necessarily make it more durable than the slimmer 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones.
The company noted that the iPhone SE bent at 160 pounds of pressure as opposed to the 170 pounds that the iPhone 6s began to bend at. Moreover, at 178 pounds, the iPhone SE reached “catastrophic failure,” whereas the iPhone 6s Plus was only beginning to bend under the pressure.
The iPhone SE permanently shut off after less than one minute when submerged under five feet of water, whereas the iPhone 6s survived for 30 minutes and only lost audio. The iPhone 6s Plus, in turn, began malfunctioning after 10 minutes.
To be fair, the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus all suffered the same fate was the facedown drop from six feet high, which shattered all three smartphone screens. But when dropped on its corner, the iPhone SE split along its side after ten drops, while the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus only had minor cosmetic damage.
The results are relatively in line with what one might expect, especially seeing as how the iPhone SE is virtually the same as the iPhone 5s, which yielded similar results when tested more than two years ago.
If you’ve snagged an iPhone SE, please let us know what you make of it in the comments.
Via MacRumors