It's cool that Apple made a cheap phone, but what I actually wanted was a small phone and price wasn't that relevant. I liked small form factors more as well (

It's cool that Apple made a cheap phone, but what I actually wanted was a small phone and price wasn't that relevant. I liked small form factors more as well (though I am on an XS now). However, the ATP folks correctly pointed out that while many tech people classified the SE as 'the small iPhone' [1] and are now upset about the size of the SE 2020, for many non-tech people the SE is 'the cheap iPhone'. It is clear that most of the markets wanted bigger phones. And to them, the SE 2020 is a bigger phone than the old SE (thus good), while still being very price competitive in the iPhone lineup. [1] The question is if Apple really wanted to make a small phone or just something that fills a price range. And one way to reduce the production price of the iPhone SE was to reuse the iPhone 5s and now iPhone 8 production process. Also, it differentiates between cheaper/expensive models. In other words, the size may just be side-effect of what the SE happens to be based on.