There’s a fantastic cellphone below $500 that I’d suggest to only about anybody searching for the very best midrange cellphone in the marketplace. It makes use of the identical chipset as the corporate’s rather more costly flagships, and it consists of an IP67 score, an excellent 12-megapixel digital camera, and an extended lifespan forward of it with software program help for a few years to return. It’s not the iPhone SE, which I want I may suggest as freely as the present class winner: the Pixel 6A. It’s a greater cellphone, and it’s what the SE ought to have been. Here’s what Google obtained proper — and what Apple ought to have performed in another way.

The Pixel 6A’s 6.1-inch display isn’t excellent. It’s not nice outside, and it’s a 60Hz display in a world the place quicker refresh charges have gotten the norm. But right here’s the factor: it’s ok. The iPhone SE’s also-60Hz display isn’t as a result of, at 4.7 inches, it’s simply method too small for a cellphone in 2022. I say this as somebody who loves small telephones, so if I suppose it’s too small, then it actually is simply too small.

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

You can’t have every thing from a midrange cellphone, and the display is the place each Apple and Google made some tradeoffs to hit a lower cost level. But a too-small display isn’t one thing you’ll be able to simply make do with. Take wi-fi charging — the SE consists of it, which nearly no different cellphone within the midrange class does, together with the 6A. But that’s one thing I feel most individuals can reside with out. On the opposite hand, we take a look at our cellphone screens ten thousand instances per day; a pretty big display isn’t a comfort function — it’s your complete cellphone.

Another place the place Apple went too small: storage. The iPhone SE begins at $429 — a fantastic value! But that solely will get you 64GB of storage, and that isn’t sufficient for all of the apps we use and images and 4K video we seize lately. The Pixel 6A’s base mannequin prices a little bit extra at $449, however it affords 128GB of storage. That’s not an enormous quantity, particularly contemplating that the cellphone is designed to final for 4 or 5 years, however it’s what I might contemplate a naked minimal.

For reference, the iPhone SE that I examined for just a few weeks is already at 43GB simply between system recordsdata, apps, and my photograph library. Hitting 64GB can be all too simple in a 12 months or two — and even sooner, relying on how a lot 4K video you shoot. Bottom line — even at a fantastic value, 64GB actually isn’t sufficient house. Google made the good transfer by beginning at the next value with a habitable quantity of storage.

Both the 6A and SE embrace excellent cameras for the midrange class — 12-megapixel most important rear cameras with OIS in each circumstances. But Apple made one unlucky resolution that places its in any other case excellent digital camera behind the remainder of the category: it excluded evening mode from the SE. There’s actually no good rationalization for this apart from the truth that it helps Apple differentiate its higher-priced telephones from this entry-level providing.

That, to place it bluntly, sucks. Even $300 telephones supply usable evening mode lately, and so they handle to do it with out utilizing a flagship-level chipset. And it’s not as if the 6A consists of each digital camera function on the Pixel 6 — it makes use of an older digital camera module than the flagship, and the Motion Mode function isn’t enabled. But you realize what it does embrace? Night mode. The SE doesn’t want to incorporate the newest digital camera options; it simply wants the necessities — and lately, that features evening mode.

Between the Pixel 6A and the Samsung A53 5G, Android prospects have some wonderful choices below $500. The options these fashions exclude, like wi-fi charging and higher-powered cameras, are issues that most individuals can get by with out. It’s a disgrace that Apple customers don’t have an equal possibility. Maybe Apple can borrow Google’s midrange system playbook for the subsequent model of the SE.