News & Reviews:   Apple iPhone SE

If you are a Celcom customer, or thinking of porting into their service, their latest package may interest you. Celcom is now offering the new Apple iPhone SE for First Blue, Gold and Platinum customers with attractive prices, going as low as RM 578 for payment to own the phone. Better yet, the contract period can be as short as 6 months. 

This week, the biggest news began with the cancellation of Intel processors for mobile, effectively announcing their withdrawal from the smartphone and mobile industry, at least for now. We might see some Intel 5G LTE processors in the future, but it basically means that there will likely be no Intel powered smartphones this year.

Second biggest was the regional announcement of the Huawei P9, P9 Plus and P9 Lite, due for a Malaysia release date after May 2016. The folks at honor celebrated their 2nd Anniversary to #seastheday while Huawei continued the streak by announcing the Huawei G9 Lite and MediaPad M2 7.0.

Maxis recently announced that they will also be offering the Apple iPhone SE beginning on 13 May 2016. Featuring the 4-inch display and metal frame of the Apple iPhone 5S with the tech specs and hardware of the Apple iPhone 6S, the iPhone SE should offer a more powerful iPhone in a smaller yet classic form factor. Maxis preorders begin as early as tomorrow on 5 May 2016 at the Maxis site.

If you are still looking for a great deal for your next phone purchase, do head on to U Mobile. They have a great deal happening right now for the new Apple iPhone SE, one of the first telco to have it on sale in Malaysia. From only RM705, you can own the latest smartphone from Cupertino as your own.

According to the research firm TrendForce, their findings shows that Samsung has shipped twice as many smartphones than its nearest rival, Apple. The numbers shows that the Korean company has dominated the market, grabbing over a quarter of the marketshare worldwide.

Apparently U Mobile have created a page where you can register your interest for the upcoming Apple iPhone SE phone plan from them as well. Unlike the other telcos you can get the iPhone SE using their U MicroCredit installment plans or their UPackage all-in-one installment plan. You can choose to receive updates for both options as well.

Celcom has opened up a registration of interest page where you can sign up to get the latest news about their upcoming Apple iPhone SE offerings. This sign-up page is not for pre-booking purposes, but by subscribing to their mailing list, you can receive exclusive updates and be one of the earliest to know what plan they have in store for the phone. Apple iPhone SE was made available in the US on 31 March 2016. Therefore, the phone might be available in Malaysia around the end of May 2016.

In our first weekly roundup this week at TechNave, Malaysia's Technology hub, the biggest event was quite obviously the launch of the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus where they confirmed their dual camera and LEICA partnership rumours spectacularly. In addition, the Huawei TalkBand B3 was also launched. Fans of Apple devices got an early suprise as the Apple iPhone SE got its official pricing from RM1949 while the Apple iPad Pro 9.7-inch was priced from RM2699. 

Calling all Malaysian Apple fans! The Apple Store website in Malaysia has finally released the price tag for the iPhone SE, and depending on the storage variant you want, it's priced at RM1949 for the 16GB version and RM2449 for the 64GB version, which is considered very affordable due to its specifications inside the hood. To recap the tech-specs, the iPhone SE features:-

So far, from the good reviews we have seen, the new Apple iPhone SE does sound like a pretty good phone and even more so when we found out that the iPhone SE has a better AnTuTu score than its sibling the iPhone 6s. However, how well does the iPhone SE fare against a durability test? Will this phone bend easily like the old iPhone 6s?

Since it is based upon the old 5 inch iPhone 5s, it is not supposed to bend easily because it has an overall smaller dimension than its older siblings. Check out the video below from SquareTrade to see the answer.