iPhone SE: 5 tricks every owner should know

1. The appeal of the Home button

You can see it either way: the iPhone SE is miles ahead - or behind, other smartphones with the retro-looking Home button. No matter how you perceive the return of the haptic-touch button in an iPhone model released in the year 2020, this nifty button sure offers some useful functions that are not immediately obvious when setting up the iPhone SE.

Configure Haptic Touch sensitivity

For example, the Haptic Touch sensitivity of the Home button in the iPhone SE can still be altered after setup. There are three levels to choose from, which will determine how sensitive the Haptic Touch is when you press the Home button. Here's how you change the sensitivity level:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Tap Home Button.
4. Choose the haptic feedback strength that you prefer, with 1 being the weakest and 3 being the strongest.

Fast unlocking on the iPhone SE

With the introduction of the non-mechanical Home button, a big discussion ensued concerning the iPhone unlocking process. This is because the fingerprint sensor is actually so good at reading fingerprints quickly, so much so that a brief touch of the Home button is enough to unlock the device. However, there are moments when you simply want to check the display of the iPhone SE in lock state to view the time or any messages/notifications without unlocking the iPhone SE.

In order to unlock the iPhone SE faster or by simply pressing the button, here is a useful trick:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Select Accessibility.
3. Tap on Home Button.
4. Configure the Rest Finger to Open slider at the bottom according to your preference.
5. If the slider is green, this allows you to Open the iPhone with Touch ID.
6. If the slider is grey, this means that Touch ID kicks in only when your press the Home button.

Enable single-handed operation

The Home button has a function that allows owners to bring the screen display closer to their thumb. This is useful if you only have one free hand at the moment and would like to key in some information, such as entering a URL in the browser. iPhone SE owners simply have to tap the Home button twice (don't press it, as doing so will launch the App Switcher).

1. Go to Settings.
2. Select General.
3. Select Keyboard.
4. Enable the One Handed Keyboard slider (it will turn green).

2. Use 3D Touch as a virtual trackpad

Probably the most underrated 3D Touch feature is text selection with the space bar on the Apple virtual keyboard. On the relatively small iPhone SE, this tip is worth its weight in gold! There are many iPhone owners who do grapple with moving the cursor in text messages or documents to the desired position with their finger when using WhatsApp or other instant messaging apps. This can get frustrating at times in the long run, which was why Apple introduced this feature for quite a while already. The space bar can now be utilized as a virtual trackpad with 3D Touch for all iPhone models.

1. Press and hold on to the spacebar to bring up the virtual trackpad.
2. The entire keyboard will be blurred, indicating that the virtual trackpad is now working.
3. Use your finger as you would on a regular trackpad to control the cursor's movement.

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3. Changing iPhone text size

I have already set up two iPhone SE among my circle of friends. Each of them had their own preference when it came to text size, and it makes perfect sense that on a small display, those with poor eyesight would benefit from using a larger font. By default, everything has been set to look small on the iPhone SE. For iPhone users who made the switch from a larger model to the iPhone SE can also benefit from the increased font size. This is how you change the font size in the iPhone SE:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Select Display & Brightness.
3. Select Text Size.
4. Drag the slider to your desired font size (there are up to seven possible sizes).

4. Improve your iPhone SE's battery performance

Despite having many positives, the battery in the iPhone SE happens to be one of its shortcomings. In all reviews, the iPhone SE that is equipped with the older generation iPhone 8 battery happens to run out of juice rather quickly compared to newer iPhone models. If you would like to obtain maximum performance from the integrated battery, then you should keep a close look at the installed apps. Checking on your battery usage status provides crucial information about which application consumes a particularly large amount of battery power in daily use. You will be able to figure out the different battery consumption levels of each individual app by doing the following:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Select Battery.
3. You can then see the battery consumption for each app in percentage or usage time.

Here, you will be able to discover which are the games or apps that consume the most battery life, in addition to how often you use them compared to the rest. In order to prolong your iPhone SE's battery power, it is worth to go through the following settings and make sure they are properly set.

1. Do not set the display brightness to the maximum level at all times.
2. Enable automatic screen lock: Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Auto Lock.
3. Activate Low Power Mode: Settings -> Battery -> Low Power Mode.

5. Adjust depth-of-field for your portrait photos

When snapping portraits in Portrait mode with the iPhone SE, you will realize that the results are superior to what the iPhone 8 is able to capture despite relying on similar optical hardware. This can be attributed to the software optimization in the iPhone SE, which will create a depth-of-field effect whenever you are snapping photos of people. You have the choice of changing this particular effect even prior to capturing a photo. This is how you go about doing so:

1. Open the Camera app.
2. Swipe to Portrait mode.
3. Tap the small "f" located in the upper right corner.
4. A slider scale will appear that allows you to adjust the depth-of-field effect.

Tip: The strength of the bokeh effect can also be modified later on for each portrait under Edit, followed by tapping on the aforementioned small "f".