Liquid Glass on the iPhone SE is amazing

Apple recently unveiled their next major iteration of their core platforms during their annual Worldwide Developers Conference last Monday and with that comes iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, tvOS 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26. Apple made a bold, “once-in-a-decade” move this year and overhauled the design language of their major platforms, defining the next decade of user interface design for Apple products – and I absolutely love it.

Featuring an at-the-time massive 4.7-inch Retina HD display, the second and third generation iPhone SE share the same decade-old design as the iPhone 6 – a phone that came out back in 2014. My current iPhone, the second-generation iPhone SE, is the oldest compatible model capable of running iOS 26. It sports the capable Apple A13 chip from the iPhone 11 series and 3 gigabytes of RAM. It’s definitely not the latest and greatest, but it offers around 90% of the modern iPhone experience in a dated, but tested design, and, more importantly, at a compelling price. Naturally, you’d have to wonder – how does Liquid Glass and iOS 26 feel on the iPhone SE 2?

Apple’s last major design overhaul was back in 2013 with the release of iOS 7. Back then, Apple embraced a flat, colorful, and translucent look that harmonized well with the boxy hardware of yesteryear’s iPhones. The Helvetica typeface felt modern and elegant, and the then-newly redesigned icons felt playful and vibrant. This design defined the user experience on every Apple device for twelve years and worked. It felt familiar, but unmistakably iPhone. Elements of iOS 7 are still present in iOS 26’s app icons. Most of them are redrawn to recreate that Liquid Glass effect, but they’re still familiar and recognizable.

Fast-forward to 2025, Apple unveils Liquid Glass during WWDC 2025. Designed to be harmonious with the rounded displays of today’s iPhones and iPads, it surprisingly works well on the boxy 16:9 display of the iPhone SE. The elements take up slightly more space since they are larger now, but the way these UI elements feel when you interact with them gives you a sense of satisfaction you just can’t explain. The animations are light, fluid, and bouncy. iOS used to feel bland with simple animations, but Apple perfected them over twelve years with each new iOS update. Small details like the scrolling text on Apple Music for long titles easing in slowly after each cycle make the user interface feel polished, despite being on beta software.

The new Dynamic Clock on iOS 26 made with Liquid Glass. (Image credit: Andrew Sacriz/androidist)

While the design on Day 1 isn’t perfect yet, with lots of people on X complaining about how Steve Jobs would “fire the whole department” if he saw this, I genuinely feel like Apple is on to something here. I’m excited to see this new design optimized in later betas, but for now, this is perfectly usable, although a bit choppy. I don’t think I can complain about lag too much either, since I’m running the update on dated hardware anyway. For what it’s worth, though, it’s perfectly fine for a first beta – the new design feels relatively smooth despite how complicated it is to render with all the stuff like reflections and distortion going on. I’m obsessed with all the new animations, and I wholeheartedly believe that animations are core to the Apple experience – or to any tech experience, for that matter. Good animations signal to me that the people behind these experiences pay attention to the finer details and truly care about how every small tap and swipe feels. I think it’s a well-known fact at this point that no other brand does animations like Apple.

Although the update sounds promising, a beta is still a beta. If you do plan on installing this on your phone, it might feel a bit more sluggish than usual, mainly because the phone needs to reindex everything and put everything into place first. But after that first 24-48 hours, it starts feeling normal again. Still, I wouldn’t recommend installing this on your primary phone just yet and highly recommend you wait for the public beta instead. I use multiple phones on the daily, so it’s not really that big of a deal for me if something happens to my phone while I’m beta testing. I can’t talk about how the update feels on more modern and powerful iPhones, but I imagine it would feel a bit smoother than on my SE. Please do install at your own risk and back up anything important – just in case.

(Update, June 27, 2025): iOS 26 Developer Beta 2 came out this week and I've been daily driving it on the iPhone SE. It's a lot snappier than Beta 1 and the performance is comparable to 18.5. However, this update introduces some visual glitches that should hopefully be resolved in later betas. One of these is the misaligned dock, which also seems to affect newer devices according to other testers on X. Stuff like "Hey Siri" still don't work on this patch either, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for these. Compared to Beta 1 though, this build is much more stable. Not perfect, but definitely more usable. Still, please err on the side of caution when updating and always keep a backup just in case.