Fans of Apple’s relatively inexpensiveiPhone SElook set for a bad time over the next couple of years. While there have been conflicting reports about when the budget iPhone would get a refresh and what it would look like, the latest line suggests that there might not even be one at all.We’d seen various leaks over the last few months with the iPhone SE at one point thought tohave been cancelled. Then we were told to expect a refresh that wouldfeature a design similarto that of theiPhone 14, complete with a 6.1-inch OLED display. Now, things are less clear with supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claiming that the phone everyone thought was an iPhone SE, isn’t. And what’s more, it isn’t even an iPhone that will ever be sold.
iPhone SE confusion
The latest situation in what is quite the saga came after Kuo tweeted to say that the iPhone SE 4 that he believed to be in the works is actually a device that Apple built just to test its in-house 5G modem. That device is essentially an iPhone 14 but with Qualcomm’s modem stripped out and Apple’s plugged in. It isn’t an iPhone SE at all and it’s never going to go on sale.
“I previously predicted that the iPhone SE 4 would be a derivative model of the iPhone 14,” Kuo said in atweet. “However, my latest research indicates that this derivative model will likely be an engineering prototype for Apple in-house 5G baseband chip technology and mass production validation, and there are no plans for mass production and sales.”
Kuo later tweeted to say that the iPhone SE isn’t currently part of Apple’s plans for 2024 or 2025.
If that’s the case we won’t see a new iPhone SE for a couple of years at best, but at worst the phone has been canceled altogether as was rumoured earlier in 2023.
If that’s the case it remains to be seen what Apple will do at the budget end of its lineup. But with the iPhone 15 series of devices set to be announced in September 2023, we could learn more then.
