Strong demand for the second-gen Apple iPhone SE pushes some shipping dates back to May 13th

It looks like demand for the second-generation Apple iPhone SE is strong as the pre-order period for the company's budget-priced handset kicked off yesterday. Already, the shipping date for certain models has been pushed back from April 24th to as late as May 13th. The phone was introduced online by Apple on April 15th and reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects Apple to sell at least 20 million units this year.

Since the coronavirus outbreak has left many people around the world without a job (22 million in the U.S. alone), you would expect that most would prefer to pay for food to put on the table instead of buying a new phone. But the second-generation iPhone SE starts at $399 and in the states, some individuals might have the feeling of being "flush" after receiving their stimulus check from the government. The amount of the checks is based on a sliding scale of income reported by consumers on their latest income tax filing. Eligible individuals will receive up to $1,200 and an additional $500 for each qualifying child. So all it takes is an extra payment for one child to afford either the 64GB model ($399) or the 128GB variant ($449). The 256GB model is priced at $549. With the global economy possibly heading into recession, we would expect to see consumers holding on to their current smartphones for longer than they usually do.

The second-generation iPhone SE uses the same body that Apple employed on the iPhone 8 which means it is equipped with a 4.7-inch LCD display carrying a 750 x 1334 resolution. There is no notch, no Face ID (just Touch ID) and an old school 16:9 aspect ratio. The biggest change between the new iPhone SE and the iPhone 8 is found under the hood where the 10nm A11 Bionic chipset is replaced by the 7nm A13 Bionic SoC. The latter is used to power the iPhone 11 series and contains 8.5 billion transistors compared to the 4.3 billion found inside the A11 Bionic; thus, the second-generation iPhone SE should be more powerful with improved battery life compared to the iPhone 8.

The second biggest change between the iPhone 8 and the iPhone SE (2020) is the 50% hike in memory found on the new phone. That means the latter features 3GB of RAM compared to the 2GB of RAM that the iPhone 8 was released with. The camera setup remains the same which means that the new iPhone SE sports a 7MP front-facing FaceTime camera, and a 12MP camera in the back; Apple calls the latter the best single-camera setup currently found on a smartphone insinuating that it tops the 12.2MP camera on the Pixel 3a. The 1821mAh battery supports 18W fast charging although you will have to buy a compatible charging brick from Apple. The brick that comes in the box with the phone supports 5W charging. If you spring for the fast charger, the battery on the phone will go from 0% to 50% in just 30-minutes. Color options are White, Black, and Product (RED).

Now let's take a look at the current shipping dates for the second-generation iPhone SE published on Apple's own website:

Expedited shipping, for those interested, adds an extra $8 to your order. Also, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the possibility that instead of heavy demand for the new model, Apple just wasn't able to build the usual number of units it keeps on hand during a new iPhone launch because of the coronavirus outbreak. Apple's supply chain and its manufacturing partners had to close many of their assembly lines throughout most of February before restarting production.