The well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is usually quite right with his predictions about Apple products, and the latest one brings us back to an old forgotten: the iPhone SE, which seems to be back with a bang after all.
New iPhone SE in sight. In a series of messages a TwitterKuo explained how Apple has revived plans to develop and manufacture a new version of its “affordable” smartphone. According to the data that he has leaked, the change compared to previous generations will be very noticeable. It is curious, but this same analyst had ruled out that Apple was going to launch this mobile in 2024.
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[Update] Apple has restarted the iPhone SE 4 and will adopt an in-house 5G baseband chip. The significant decline in Qualcomm’s Apple orders in the foreseeable future is a foregone conclusion. https://t.co/0MeZDFnbzg— Ming-Chi Kuo (@mingchikuo) February 27, 2023
Goodbye to the legacy of the iPhone 8. The latest iPhone SE was released in 2020 and reused the design of the iPhone 8 and that 4.7-inch screen. According to Kuo, the new model will have a design similar to the current iPhone 14. It will highlight the 6.1-inch OLED screen which, yes, will have slightly thicker frames than those of the iPhone 14. Even so, the leap is of course amazing.
Apple 5G chip. Another novelty is the inclusion of the 5G modem manufactured by Apple that will have 5G connectivity, but only in the “sub-6 GHz” bands. The current iPhone SEs already have 5G connectivity, but they use the Qualcomm Snapdragon X57 chip, and here Apple would get rid of that dependency.
From goodbye to Intel to goodbye to Qualcomm. This move with the 5G modem seems to anticipate that move for future iPhones and iPads. Apple has spent years trying to control all (or almost all) of the hardware in its devices. It has already achieved this in its computers with the jump to Apple M chips and goodbye to Intel processors. Now it wants the same thing in mobile phones, which still depended on Qualcomm’s 5G chips, something that Apple has been trying to solve for some time.
Until 2024, nothing. Although there is no specific estimated release date, it is likely that the new iPhone SE will not launch until at least March 2024 according to MacRumors. This data is consistent with the pace followed by Apple in the previous models (2022, before 2020, the first in 2016).
Image: @iFinder_rus
