A Seniors Guide To iPhone SE (Second Generation) For iOS 14: A Beginners Guide To iPhone SE

By Scott La Counte

★★★ Are you ready to master iPhone SE?  ★★★

The iPhone SE (Second Generation) is a phone that proves power and quality don't have to be expensive.

Packed into its thin body is a brilliant HD display, a rocket fast processing chip, and a camera that will take photos that will blow your f

• Language: English
• Publisher: SL Editions
• Release date: Sep 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781629175454

Book preview

Introduction

The iPhone SE (Second Generation) is a phone that proves power and quality don’t have to be expensive.

Packed into its thin body is a brilliant HD display, a rocket fast processing chip, and a camera that will take photos that will blow your friends and family away. That’s all great, but if you are new to iPhone (or still trying to master it), then knowing how to do everything might feel a little daunting. This beginners guide will help.

It covers things like taking photos. And how to Use Facetime with grandkids, and also walks you through what you need to know step-by-step, and also helps you understand how it’s different from other iPhones..

It covers only what most people want to know--so you don't have to comb through hundreds of pages of tech-speak just to find out how to do a common feature. 

Some of the covered topics include:

What's new to iOS 14

How to use Picture in Picture for movies and TV shows

How to add widgets to your Home screen

Organizing apps with the App Library

Buying, removing, rearranging, updating apps

Taking, editing, organizing and sharing photos

Apple Services (Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Card, iCloud, and Fitness+)

Using Siri

Using pre-installed apps like Notes, Calendar, Reminders, and more

Making phone calls and sending messages

Must have apps

AirPods

And much, much more!

This book is based on the book iPhone SE (2020 Edition) For iOS 14 but includes an expanded section on accessibility (like how to make text easier to see).

Are you ready to start enjoying your new iPhone? Then let's get started!

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What’s the Difference Between All the Phones?

iPhone SE? iPhone Pro? iPhone XR? What’s the difference!

There are several iPhone models available. If you look at them side-by-side the only thing that’s different (size aside) is the SE has a physical Home button on the front, and the others do not. Is that really the only difference? Not exactly. Let’s break it down, so you know exactly what you are buying. This is mainly going to look at the difference between the two most least expensive iPhones: the iPhone SE and iPhone XR

Size

If you are looking at the phone on display somewhere, then you’ll probably notice the size difference. The iPhone SE has a 4.7-inch display and the XR has a 6.1-inch display (the larger displace is partially because it has more room without a physical home button).

There’s also a thicker bezel up top on the iPhone SE (where the front camera is); the iPhone XR has a notch up top but is a nearly edge-to-edge display.

In terms of pixels per inch, however, they’re identical (326 pixels per inch); and both are using a LCD display.

Speed

If you think you are getting a slower phone because it’s cheaper then you are wrong!  The iPhone XR, which is a more expensive phone, actually has an older chip (it’s called the A12 Bionic). The iPhone SE is using the same chip (it’s called the A13 Bionic) that’s in those pricey, top of the line, iPhone 11 Pro’s. The A13 is actually up to 20x faster than the A12 chip.

Touch ID vs. Face ID

The iPhone SE uses your fingerprint to unlock your phone; the iPhone XR and Pro models use Face ID (i.e. facial recognition) to unlock the phone. Apple has made convincing claims that facial recognition is far more secure, but fingerprint recognition is also very safe as well.

The big disadvantage here is without Face ID, the iPhone SE does not support Animoji or Memoji.

Camera

The bread and butter of any phone is the camera. iPhone XR has the edge here, but it’s minimal. They both have a 12-megapixel wide-angle rear lens, but the sensor on the XR is newer and a little sharper. But again, it’s minimal and you’d have to have a pretty sharp eye to spot the difference.

Battery Life

The iPhone XR is slightly larger, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s room for a bigger battery that keeps it on longer without a charge; but, again, the difference is minimal. The XR will get about 16 hours and the SE will get about 13 hours of non-streaming video playback (video playback is about the most intensive, battery-draining, thing you can do on your phone.

Wi-Fi and LTE

Wi-Fi may seem to be an odd thing to list here--isn’t all wi-fi the same, after all? In a word: no. The SE supports 802.11ax; the XR supports 802.11ac. What on earth does that mean? Let’s just say the SE has the latest standard of Wi-Fi, and it will give you better connectivity--especially in areas that have several devices trying to log onto the same network. Security / Encryption is also better with this new standard. You probably won’t notice the difference, but the SE is better here.

The same thing is true about LTE; the iPhone SE supports Gigabit-class LTE, which is a newer standard and could technically allow for slightly faster LTE--a lot of this depends on the wireless carrier, however.

Weight

The SE is 7.3mm thick and 0.3 pounds; the XR is 8.3mm and 0.4 pounds.

Similarities

Those are some of the key differences. How are they the same? Here are the most important ways:

Both support wireless charging (with an extra accessory--there’s no wireless charger in the box)

4K video recording at up to 60 FPS

No headphone jack

Water resistance to a depth of 1 meter for up to 30 minutes (IP67-rated)

Feature This…

What’s New in iOS 14

In terms of the overall look of iOS, there are two big changes: Widgets on your Home screen and a new view called App Library. Both will be covered in greater scope later in this book.

In terms of new features, the biggest ones you should be aware of are below:

Widgets - If you have ever used Android, you might already know a thing or two about widgets; they’ve been available to some degree on the iPhone for a while, but iOS 14 is the first time you can put them right on your Home screen. What are they? Think of them like tiny versions of your app to give you insights without having to open the app—to see the weather, for example, or what calendar events you have coming up.

App Library - App Library is a new view meant to keep you even more productive and organized. It puts all of your apps in one place and makes it easier to find the apps you commonly use, or search for the ones that you don’t. You no longer have to have all of your apps on Home screens; you can hide them in the App Library while keeping them on your phone.

Translate - Translate is a new Apple app that lets you translate a conversation in real-time; it’s great for traveling to other countries. Just say in English what you need to ask and pick the language—or have the person speak into your phone and it auto detects the language that they are speaking.

Maps - Maps gets a minor update with iOS 14; in addition to all the different types of directions that you can get (like walking, driving and transit), you can now get cycling directions. The app can also give you electric vehicle routing to help you find the best directions that include charging locations.

Picture in Picture - This mode has been on new iPads for a while, but it now comes to iOS; it lets you see videos playing in the background as you do other things—like surf the Internet or even play games.

Redesigned Messages - Message comes with several new features; the best: pinning conversations, so you can keep the people you talk to most up high; the reply to mention someone in a group reply, and reply directly to specific messages within a text exchange.

New Memoji Styles - Memoji works the same as always, but there are more options to dress your avatar up.

Password Monitoring - Password monitoring alerts you when there’s a data breach somewhere that you have a password stored, so you can change it right away and prevent identity theft.

App Clips - App Clips are like mini apps; they let you use the most basic features of an app without having to download the app.

Compact Calls - One of the best features in iOS 14 is not so much what it does, but how it does it; you’ll notice that things like Siri and incoming phone calls are now much more compacted—so you can keep doing what you're doing, and not be pulled away from the app to decline the call.

I’ll talk about each of these features later in this book, so don’t worry if you don’t quite understand them.

SE vs. Home-less iPhones

Because some iPhones have buttons and some iPhones don’t have buttons, below is a helpful chart on how to use gestures on each.

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Setup

Setting Things Up

Now that you know about the main differences between the physical nature of the phone, let’s take a step back and talk about setting it up. If you’re already at the Home screen, you can obviously skip this section.

Unboxing the iPhone shouldn’t throw you any surprises. It doesn’t have a manual, but that’s normal for Apple. You can find the manual on Apple’s website (https://support.apple.com/manuals/iphone) if that’s something you’d like to see. What is worth pointing out is the headphones. A few years back, Apple decided for us that we no longer needed a normal headphone jack. How sweet, right? But to be nice, they always threw in a 3.5m Lightning Adapter—so you could use any headphones when it was plugged in. New models ditch that. If you’re keen on using it, then you can buy one for under $10.

Once you turn the phone on with the Side Button, it will load to a setup screen. Setup can be intimating to a lot of people, but Apple’s setup is probably the