Everything we think we know about the next iPhone SE
Apple is expected to announce a new iPhone SE as early as next week, and it could mark a major shakeup to the company’s affordable iPhone, adding in Face ID and killing off the classic home button. We have a pretty good idea of what’s coming after months of leaks and rumors, so here’s everything we expect to see next week.
There won’t be a home button…
The biggest change is that Apple is upending the iPhone SE’s design, after leaving it broadly unchanged since the series’ inception in 2016. The 2022 SE is the last iPhone still using a home button, with a thick bezel around the top and bottom of the screen. But rumors say Apple will now ditch the button, slim the bezel, and add Face ID.
The result will be a phone that looks like the iPhone 14 from the front. Like that phone, it’s expected to place its Face ID sensors in a notch, rather than using the less obtrusive Dynamic Island design that was introduced in the 14 Pro and has been used in every iPhone since then. Apple can’t resist keeping its SE series just a little behind the times.
We’ve seen the notched design in a video shared by the leaker Majin Bu, which shows them handling what is likely a non-functional dummy unit, used by case manufacturers to design and test their accessories.
…but there will be an Action button
Bu’s video suggests that the SE 4 will include a customizable Action button, but not the Camera Control introduced on the iPhone 16.
Like other SE models it appears to stick to a single rear camera. One leaked spec list suggests that the SE will use a 48 megapixel sensor on the rear, with a 12 megapixel selfie camera on the front, but this is an area where there have been few reports so far.
It’s not going to be a small phone
The redesign will allow the 2025 SE to have a larger screen than the 4.7-inch panel used by the 2022 model. It’s expected to instead use a 6.1-inch display, the same size as the standard iPhone 16, and will also upgrade to OLED.
The bigger screen means the phone as a whole will be larger than any previous iPhone SE, and there will no longer be any iPhone smaller than the standard model. If we assume the new phone will have similar dimensions to the iPhone 16 then it could be 9mm taller than the 2022 SE, and weigh about 25g more.
Lightning is out, USB-C is in
It’s pretty much certain that the phone will have a USB-C port rather than Lightning, allowing it to once again be sold in the EU. The previous SE model was discontinued in EU markets along with every other iPhone using a Lightning port.
It’ll be one of the most powerful iPhones around
On the inside, Bloomberg reports that the phone will use the same A18 chip as the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro models. That’s the same approach Apple has used for its last two SE phones, which have paired the latest silicon with more dated designs. The A18 is expected to be combined with an increase to 8GB of RAM, the minimum required to run Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI tools that provide notification summaries and other functionality, and are now enabled by default. That would all make it more powerful than 2023’s iPhone 15.
It will even beat this year’s iPhone 17 series to feature Apple’s first in-house 5G modem, replacing the Qualcomm components that iPhones have used in the past. Apple has been developing its own modems for over half a decade, but Bloomberg warns that the first iteration is a “downgrade” from the modem in the latest flagship iPhones, and won’t support mmWave 5G, only sub-6 — though that was true of the last iPhone SE too.
It’s coming real soon
While previous rumors have pointed to a launch in March or April, Bloomberg reports that Apple will announce the phone next week, though doesn’t expect it to go on sale until later in the month. It predicts a price of “roughly $500,” higher than the 2022 model’s starting price of $429. That may be offset by a default storage spec of 128GB, meaning there would no longer be any 64GB iPhone on the market.
There’s also a possibility that it won’t be called the iPhone SE after all. Two leakers have predicted that it will instead be called the iPhone 16E, though since the SE name has popped up more often we think that’s still more likely.
If Bloomberg is right, we don’t have long to wait to find out for sure. The SE would be the first of several big iPhone launches this year, with Apple tipped to reveal a slimmer iPhone 17 Air as well as “major updates” to the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro.