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--></style></head><body lang=EN-CA link=blue vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Scott, what stand do you use to photograph documents to read?</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Sent from <a href="https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986">Mail</a> for Windows</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'><p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0cm'><b>From: </b><a href="mailto:nfb-db@nfbnet.org">Scott Davert via NFB-DB</a><br><b>Sent: </b>April 6, 2022 10:07 AM<br><b>To: </b><a href="mailto:nfb-db@nfbnet.org">NFB Deaf-Blind Division Mailing List</a><br><b>Cc: </b><a href="mailto:scottdavert@gmail.com">Scott Davert</a><br><b>Subject: </b>[NFB-DB] Article, HKNC: WHEN THE OLD MEETS THE NEW: A REVIEW OF THE IPHONE SE 3</p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Just passing along FYI</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.helenkeller.org/hknc/iphone-se-3</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Introduction</p><p class=MsoNormal> This review was completed after 10 days of using the iPhone SE 3.</p><p class=MsoNormal>Most of my comparison will be with the iPhone SE 2 since that was the</p><p class=MsoNormal>phone I had been using previously. For the sake of clarity, when</p><p class=MsoNormal>referring to the previous generation of iPhone SE released in 2020, it</p><p class=MsoNormal>will be referred to as the iPhone SE 2. Apple refers to the current</p><p class=MsoNormal>model of iPhone SE simply by that name. This was also true of the</p><p class=MsoNormal>first and second generation.</p><p class=MsoNormal>The iPhone SE 3 is a step forward in some respects, but not in others.</p><p class=MsoNormal>The reviews from the mainstream are generally positive, though many</p><p class=MsoNormal>people feel the need to comment on the older design. This CNet review</p><p class=MsoNormal>details how the new iPhone SE 3 compares to the SE 2 and other devices</p><p class=MsoNormal>on the market. I will not spend much time discussing the mainstream</p><p class=MsoNormal>features, as other blogs have already done this. I will, however, be</p><p class=MsoNormal>discussing how the new iPhone SE 3 functions from the perspective of a</p><p class=MsoNormal>blind and DeafBlind user.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>It’s the same, only not</p><p class=MsoNormal>If you line up an iPhone SE 2, SE 3 and iPhone 8 side by side, it is</p><p class=MsoNormal>impossible to tell them apart since the physical profile of each</p><p class=MsoNormal>device is nearly identical. The 3 models are so similar that you can</p><p class=MsoNormal>use the same cases for all 3 phones. I purchased a Mophie Juice Pack</p><p class=MsoNormal>after being very confident in the rumors about the SE 3, and it fits</p><p class=MsoNormal>perfectly on the new iPhone, just like it did on the SE 2.</p><p class=MsoNormal>As noted in the linked review, the iPhone SE 3 doesn't have multiple</p><p class=MsoNormal>rear cameras like you would find on the flagship iPhone 13 series. It</p><p class=MsoNormal>also lacks the LiDAR sensor found on the iPhone 13 Pro. Another</p><p class=MsoNormal>missing feature is the U1 chip which means that if you are an owner of</p><p class=MsoNormal>Air Tags, you will not be able to take advantage of the precision</p><p class=MsoNormal>finding features which provide useful information when locating an Air</p><p class=MsoNormal>Tag.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The Setup</p><p class=MsoNormal>In my review of the iPhone SE 2, I noted that I was unable to transfer</p><p class=MsoNormal>data from one device to another unless all other Bluetooth devices</p><p class=MsoNormal>connected to my other phone were turned off. When setting up my SE 3,</p><p class=MsoNormal>I left my braille display and hearing aids connected to the iPhone SE</p><p class=MsoNormal>2 and found that the transfer between them and the new iPhone worked</p><p class=MsoNormal>flawlessly. This is a major improvement since I did not have to try</p><p class=MsoNormal>using speech only through the internal speakers to make the transfer</p><p class=MsoNormal>happen.</p><p class=MsoNormal>In 2018, the Universal Serial Bus Implementers Forum (USB-IF) approved</p><p class=MsoNormal>a new Human Interface Device (HID) standard for braille displays.</p><p class=MsoNormal>USB-IF is a non-profit organization comprised of many industry-leading</p><p class=MsoNormal>companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google. Their goal is to</p><p class=MsoNormal>advance USB technology to make it more useable. What this means for</p><p class=MsoNormal>consumers is that, if both the braille display manufacturer and</p><p class=MsoNormal>mainstream technology manufacturer support it, you will be able to</p><p class=MsoNormal>start a screen reader, plug a display in via USB and have access to</p><p class=MsoNormal>braille with no further effort required. It will be unnecessary to</p><p class=MsoNormal>find and install drivers, connect via Bluetooth or change settings</p><p class=MsoNormal>before plugging your display into a USB port.</p><p class=MsoNormal>In 2020, Humanware announced that its forthcoming collaborative</p><p class=MsoNormal>efforts into the braille display market with APH will also support the</p><p class=MsoNormal>standard when it's released. I decided to see if the HID standard</p><p class=MsoNormal>would work 2 years after the announcement. Sadly, it did not work</p><p class=MsoNormal>during the initial setup, but did work after the initial</p><p class=MsoNormal>configuration. One limitation I found to the USB connection was</p><p class=MsoNormal>unresponsiveness from the braille keyboard after the screen has been</p><p class=MsoNormal>locked. This issue can be resolved by either restarting VoiceOver, or</p><p class=MsoNormal>unplugging the display and then plugging it back in. It may also be</p><p class=MsoNormal>worth noting that the braille display customized commands that have</p><p class=MsoNormal>been set up under Bluetooth do not appear to work when connecting to</p><p class=MsoNormal>USB. Though Apple indicated to me that they are not officially</p><p class=MsoNormal>supporting the standard, I thought it would be a good idea to try it</p><p class=MsoNormal>out.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Battery Life</p><p class=MsoNormal>The SE 3, according to Apple, will give the user 1 to 2 more hours of</p><p class=MsoNormal>battery life than the SE 2. I would say that I get several hours more</p><p class=MsoNormal>than I do with my SE 2. The SE 2 cannot give me enough power to last a</p><p class=MsoNormal>full day without a battery case these days, but that could be because</p><p class=MsoNormal>my location does not have reliable cell phone coverage. This was not</p><p class=MsoNormal>an issue 2 years ago when I worked at a different location and was</p><p class=MsoNormal>testing the iPhone SE 2, so I don’t feel confident in commenting on</p><p class=MsoNormal>how the SE 2’s battery life was when new compared to the SE 3. Running</p><p class=MsoNormal>5G certainly offers a speed boost over 4G and doesn’t appear to run</p><p class=MsoNormal>down the battery any more than when 5G is disabled. That said, I do</p><p class=MsoNormal>not stream HD video content, which is where the user would most likely</p><p class=MsoNormal>encounter the further battery drain. Streaming audio did not seem to</p><p class=MsoNormal>impact battery life as I consistently had between 15-20% battery left</p><p class=MsoNormal>at the end of the day.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Buying some bugs</p><p class=MsoNormal>This particular section is mostly for users of braille displays. If</p><p class=MsoNormal>you have been holding off on upgrading iOS due to some issues related</p><p class=MsoNormal>to braille devices, the iPhone SE 3, or any other new iOS Device, will</p><p class=MsoNormal>be running 15.4 or 15.4.1. The good news about iOS 15.4.1 is that one</p><p class=MsoNormal>frustration which has been eliminatet. The bug in 15.4 was that quite</p><p class=MsoNormal>often, when panning through text using a braille display, the panning</p><p class=MsoNormal>command or buttons will not respond, or will respond twice skipping</p><p class=MsoNormal>past content that should be displayed.</p><p class=MsoNormal>Some issues remain in iOS 15.4.1. If you enjoy writing emails in the</p><p class=MsoNormal>native Mail app, you probably will not on iOS 15.4.1 if you wish to be</p><p class=MsoNormal>able to insert line breaks. This is because when editing or composing</p><p class=MsoNormal>an email in the Mail app using a braille display, after inserting a</p><p class=MsoNormal>line break, focus will appear to jump to the top of the screen, even</p><p class=MsoNormal>though the cursor has not. If that’s not enough, the aforementioned</p><p class=MsoNormal>bug also appears to trigger another one: when composing a lengthy</p><p class=MsoNormal>email with the Apple Mail app using a braille display random words</p><p class=MsoNormal>will be inserted in the incorrect place, especially after a line break</p><p class=MsoNormal>is inserted. The first bug has been around since iOS 15.1, so there is</p><p class=MsoNormal>no guarantee a fix will be coming any time soon. Interestingly, there</p><p class=MsoNormal>were also issues with braille and editing text noted in my SE 2 review</p><p class=MsoNormal>so, in some ways, this seems as though things may not change anytime</p><p class=MsoNormal>soon. Those considering the purchase of any new iOS Device may wish to</p><p class=MsoNormal>bear this information in mind.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The Home Button and Touch ID</p><p class=MsoNormal>The SE 3 maintains Touch ID and the Home button. The Home button seems</p><p class=MsoNormal>to be preferred by a large number of the consumers I work with. In</p><p class=MsoNormal>fact, customizing a gesture for going to the Home screen on iOS</p><p class=MsoNormal>Devices without Home buttons is probably the most common thing I</p><p class=MsoNormal>support consumers with when we begin training. As such, many have</p><p class=MsoNormal>requested the SE 2 and now may begin requesting the SE 3 for this</p><p class=MsoNormal>reason.</p><p class=MsoNormal>Though Apple has said that users can now unlock their iOS devices with</p><p class=MsoNormal>a face mask in iOS 15.4, several Users have reported struggles using</p><p class=MsoNormal>this new feature. With Touch ID, there isn’t an issue. For my use</p><p class=MsoNormal>case, the Home button isn’t really a consideration itself. Touch ID is</p><p class=MsoNormal>the biggest reason I decided to upgrade to this particular model. As a</p><p class=MsoNormal>braille-only user, there is no point to me taking my phone out of my</p><p class=MsoNormal>pocket since my braille display is connected through Bluetooth. Touch</p><p class=MsoNormal>ID is very fast, since I can just rest a thumb on the Home button to</p><p class=MsoNormal>unlock my iPhone. When comparing Touch ID between the SE 2 and SE 3,</p><p class=MsoNormal>there was no noticeable difference in terms of the speed at which the</p><p class=MsoNormal>device was unlocked.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Recognition</p><p class=MsoNormal>One of the concerns with the SE 3 when compared to the other flagship</p><p class=MsoNormal>iOS devices is that the lack of a series of cameras will negatively</p><p class=MsoNormal>impact the results of OCR. In my testing, where I compared the iPhone</p><p class=MsoNormal>13 Mini with the SE 2 and SE 3, there is little discernible difference</p><p class=MsoNormal>between the 3. I used Voice Dream Scanner to obtain these results and</p><p class=MsoNormal>performed all testing on the same stand in the same environment with</p><p class=MsoNormal>the same lighting. One of the exceptions in my results was in</p><p class=MsoNormal>situations where there was less light. The iPhone SE 2 and SE 3</p><p class=MsoNormal>appeared to have the same number of errors, whereas the 13 I was</p><p class=MsoNormal>testing had none. The one area where the SE 3 outperforms the SE 2 is</p><p class=MsoNormal>the speed at which it gets an OCR result. The SE 3, not surprisingly,</p><p class=MsoNormal>produced faster results. This is likely a difference between the A13</p><p class=MsoNormal>chip on the SE 2 and the A15 processor found in the SE 3.</p><p class=MsoNormal>Currency recognition, when using the Cash Reader app seemed equally</p><p class=MsoNormal>fast and accurate on all 3 devices. The SE 2, SE 3, and 13 all were</p><p class=MsoNormal>able to recognize bills in under 2 seconds. These bills were tested</p><p class=MsoNormal>under the same environmental conditions mentioned above.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Hearing aid performance</p><p class=MsoNormal>I reported in my SE 2 review that it seemed as though the difference</p><p class=MsoNormal>in processors between the iPhone 8 and SE 2 allowed the user to have a</p><p class=MsoNormal>more stable Bluetooth connection. I was a little disappointed to find</p><p class=MsoNormal>no further improvements between the SE 2 and SE 3, other than that,</p><p class=MsoNormal>the lag with Live Listen seems to have decreased. I would estimate</p><p class=MsoNormal>about a half second delay between when the person speaks and when</p><p class=MsoNormal>their speech comes through the iPhone using the SE 2. The SE 3 seems</p><p class=MsoNormal>to have a delay of about a quarter of a second.</p><p class=MsoNormal>Whether using mFI hearing aids or those which simply connect through</p><p class=MsoNormal>Bluetooth, the only improvement I noticed was that the Bluetooth</p><p class=MsoNormal>connection did not become less stable when I was using, for example,</p><p class=MsoNormal>my braille display to interact with the phone and my hearing aids to</p><p class=MsoNormal>listen to audio. Though the Bluetooth connection still becomes choppy</p><p class=MsoNormal>from time to time on the SE 3, I have noticed it happens a bit less</p><p class=MsoNormal>than on the SE 2. I noticed, for example, that I had issues with</p><p class=MsoNormal>Bluetooth 3 times in an hour when using the SE 2. That went down to 1</p><p class=MsoNormal>time the next hour when using the SE 3.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Audio</p><p class=MsoNormal>Though my ears are certainly not the best judge, I am still able to</p><p class=MsoNormal>hear sound quality differences when they are dramatic enough. Unless</p><p class=MsoNormal>I’m comparing the SE 2 with the SE 3. I had a friend hang on to both</p><p class=MsoNormal>the SE 2 and SE 3 and randomly play the same song through one device</p><p class=MsoNormal>or another. My guesses were only correct about 40% of the time. When</p><p class=MsoNormal>reversing the exercise, my friend, who says he has normal hearing,</p><p class=MsoNormal>could also not tell the difference reliably. If there is an</p><p class=MsoNormal>improvement, then it is my conclusion that the differences are very</p><p class=MsoNormal>subtle.</p><p class=MsoNormal>When testing for any sort of lagginess with the SE 2 and SE 3, I noted</p><p class=MsoNormal>none when using speech output. Concerning Siri, I noticed that the SE</p><p class=MsoNormal>3 is much faster than the SE 2, likely because of the 5G connection.</p><p class=MsoNormal>Speaking of 5G, the SE 3 does not have access to the MM wave band of</p><p class=MsoNormal>frequencies. What this means is that the iPhone 13 will likely</p><p class=MsoNormal>outperform the SE 3 when in cities where 5g has been deployed and</p><p class=MsoNormal>works correctly. Locally, there appeared to be no difference between</p><p class=MsoNormal>the 13 and SE 3.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Conclusion</p><p class=MsoNormal>Just like with the flagship products versus the older models going</p><p class=MsoNormal>back to the original iPhone SE, there are compromises with the SE 3.</p><p class=MsoNormal>One of those compromises is the price tag. At $429 for the 64 GB</p><p class=MsoNormal>version, it’s the cheapest iPhone on the market. Though there are some</p><p class=MsoNormal>things missing from the SE 3 which are on the flagship iPhones, like</p><p class=MsoNormal>the camera system, Face ID and a longer battery life, for some</p><p class=MsoNormal>individuals it will be a more solid solution. As for me, I was</p><p class=MsoNormal>considering returning the SE 3 due to the annoying braille panning</p><p class=MsoNormal>issues I did not have to contend with on my SE 2, which is still</p><p class=MsoNormal>running iOS 15.1. After some bugs were resolved in 15.4.1, I will keep</p><p class=MsoNormal>the phone since the increased speed and longer battery life when</p><p class=MsoNormal>compared to the SE 2 are welcomed changes.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>_______________________________________________</p><p class=MsoNormal>NFB-DB mailing list</p><p class=MsoNormal>NFB-DB@nfbnet.org</p><p class=MsoNormal>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfb-db_nfbnet.org</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>