The original iPhone SE was Apple"s best iPhone ever made, and I will fight anyone claiming that it was not. Compact and easy to use with one hand, beautifully designed and well-built, powerful enough to last long in terms of performance and support, and, more importantly, affordable. I was a happy owner of this 4-inch greatness (I admit, battery life was not the best), and today, Apple made the original iPhone SE officially obsolete.
When Apple proclaims a device obsolete, it means the company no longer provides hardware support (its own service and authorized service providers), nor does it supply official replacement parts. As such, repairing or servicing one becomes harder and requires using third-party repair shops and parts. If you have an iPhone SE that you want or need to service, you are now on your own in sourcing parts and repairing it.
Typically, Apple devices go obsolete seven years after their discontinuation. Originally announced in March 2016, the iPhone SE had been available for over two years until Apple eventually discontinued it in September 2018. Its replacement, the second-generation iPhone SE with a larger 4.7-inch display and the iPhone 8-like design, arrived nearly two years later, in April 2020.
The original iPhone SE was the last iPhone to have a four-inch display and the classic iPhone 5-like design. Despite the small size, it had a fully-fledged Apple A9 processor, 2GB of RAM, and from 16GB to 128GB of onboard memory. Thanks to having hardware that was on par with the flagship iPhone 6S, the iPhone SE received stellar support from Apple, lasting from the initial iOS 9 release all the way up to iOS 15. In fact, the last update for the iPhone SE was released just a couple of months ago, when Apple pushed iOS 15.8.5 with security patches.
In addition to the original iPhone SE, Apple added the second-generation iPad Pro 12.9-inch, Apple Watch Series 4 Hermes, Apple Watch Series 4 Nike, and Beats Pill 2.0 to the list of obsolete devices. RIP.