'Some people simply love smaller phones': Apple launched the iPhone SE ten years ago today — and it makes me long for an iPhone 17 mini

Affordable Apple, then and now

21 Mar 2026, 10:00 · TechRadar

Features By Alex Blake published 21 March 2026

(Image credit: Shutterstock / Apple)

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The recent launch of the $599 MacBook Neo — which has just helped to break Mac sales records, according to Tim Cook — has shaken up the assumption that Apple focuses only on premium products. Yet that idea was never really true.

Steve Jobs often made the case that Apple’s desire was to make premium products attainable to more people, and in many cases its devices came in at lower prices than rival offerings with similar specs.

But before the MacBook Neo demonstrated that Apple knew how to combine top-quality touches with accessible price tags, there was another affordable Apple product on everyone’s lips: the iPhone SE.

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The original iPhone SE was introduced to the world on March 21, 2016, making it ten years old today. With Apple returning to its low-cost ambitions a decade later (for both the Mac and the iPhone), now is a good time to look back at the iPhone SE’s impact — and what the future might hold for cut-price iPhones now that the MacBook Neo has made such a splash.

Enter the iPhone SE

Apple - March Event 2016 - YouTube

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Today, the standard iPhone 17 will set you back a minimum of $799 / £799 / AU$1,399, and entry-level iPhones have hovered around this mark for many years now. When that’s the case, it’s easy to forget that the iPhone used to be much more affordable — and you get a taste of that time by watching the iPhone SE launch segment above.

While the original iPhone was priced at $499 for 4GB of storage in the US, Apple quickly dropped the price of the 8GB model to $399 and discontinued the 4GB option. After that, the iPhone 3G was available for $199 alongside a two-year cell plan. That $199 price quickly became the norm for Apple’s most affordable iPhones, lasting right through until the iPhone 7 jacked the price up to $649 / £599 / AU$1,079 in September 2016 (although it also dropped the two-year plan requirement).

It was into this world that the $399 / £379 / AU$679 iPhone SE arrived. Because while its price tag seems odd when the iPhone 6s – an ostensibly better device released six months earlier – cost $199 up front, it also came with a potentially onerous two-year cell plan, which could rack up the costs.

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