Marketed as a reinvented 4-inch iPhone, the iPhone SE (Special Edition) models, regardless of network compatibility, are nearly identical in appearance to the iPhone 5s, apart from matte-chamfered edges rather than shiny ones, but have many innards more in common with the higher performance iPhone 6s.

All iPhone SE models have a 4 (diagonal) widescreen multi-touch IPS LED-backlit 1136x640 native resolution (326 ppi) retina display without 3D Touch support, dual cameras -- a rear 12 megapixel, 4K iSight camera with 1.22 micron pixels, an f/2.2 aperture, a dual LED True Tone flash and more as well as a much more modest front 1.2 megapixel, 720p FaceTime camera.

The iPhone SE is available in four metallic color options -- Silver, which has a white glass front and a mostly silver colored aluminum back; Space Gray, which has a black glass front and a mostly medium toned gunmetal gray aluminum back; Gold, which has a white glass front and a mostly gold colored aluminum back; and Rose Gold, which has a white glass front and a mostly pink-tinted gold colored aluminum back. Regardless of color, each also includes a first generation Touch ID fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button.

All iPhone SE models are powered by a 1.8 GHz 64-bit Apple A9 processor and have 2 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB, or 128 GB of flash storage (16 GB or 64 GB for devices sold from March 21, 2016 until March 21, 2017 and 32 GB or 128 GB for devices sold afterwards). They also support 4G/LTE, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, and NFC (for Apple Pay), have a bottom-mounted headphone jack and use the Lightning connector to hook up with a Mac, PC, dock, or power adapter.

Apple estimates that the iPhone SE models provide up to 50 hours of audio playback, 14 hours of talk time on 3G, 12 hours of Internet use on 3G, 13 hours of Internet use on 4G/LTE, 13 hours of Internet use on Wi-Fi, 13 hours of video playback and 10 days of standby time.