I’m an iPhone SE fan — but I don’t like what I’m hearing about the iPhone SE 4

Apple reportedly has a new iPhone SE model in the works, with an eye toward shipping the phone early next year. However, given some of the changes being floated for the iPhone SE 4, I wonder whether this phone will really be made in the same spirit as its predecessors.

When Apple released the original iPhone SE back in 2016, it stood out from the flagship iPhones in two key ways — 1) it was small and 2) it was cheap. The first iPhone SE arrived at a time when Apple had started making bigger devices, though big in this case is a relative description. (The iPhone 6s Plus that had come out the previous fall offered a 5.5-inch display, which would be derided nowadays as hopelessly minuscule.) 

With a starting price of $399, the iPhone SE was $250 less than the iPhone 6s, even though it ran on the same A9 chipset.

Sizes and prices have gone up over the years — these days, the iPhone SE 2022 offers a 4.7-inch screen and a $429 starting price — but the basic principle of “small phone with a small price tag” remains the most distinctive thing about the cheapest iPhone in Apple’s lineup.

It’s been clear for some time that the iPhone’s days as a small phone lover’s go-to device are numbered. More than one iPhone SE 4 rumor tips the new model to ditch the aging iPhone 8-style design with its home button and big bottom bezel for an iPhone 14-style frame with a notched display. That would necessitate a bump up in screen size from 4.7 inches to 6.1 inches.

And that’s fine. Consumers have made it clear they want bigger screen phones, and even though this would be a big increase for the SE’s display, the thinner bezels on this model of iPhone means it would only be a third of an inch taller than the current iPhone SE and less than 0.2 inches wider. That’s hardly super-sizing things.

But now it sounds as if the iPhone SE 4’s price will increase as well. And that news is a lot harder to stomach.

Big new features, big new price?

To be fair, there’s nothing official about this rumored iPhone SE 4 price hike, just a report from a leaker named Revegnus1 with a decent though not spotless record of leaked phone info. Under this rumor, reported by PhoneArena, the iPhone SE 4 cost would jump to $499 when the phone arrives next year.

If you want to focus on the bright side, that’s just a $70 increase over what an iPhone SE currently costs. It would also match the price of the Google Pixel 8a and the OnePlus 12R, two of the best cheap phones under $500.

That Pixel 8a comparison would be particularly apt, as Google’s phone delivers several AI-powered features. That’s likely to be a major focus on the iPhone SE 4 as well, with Apple unlikely to release a new model in 2025 that doesn’t support the new Apple Intelligence features currently rolling out to its flagship devices.

To support Apple Intelligence, the iPhone SE 4 would need a fair amount of RAM and a new chipset. That would likely be the A18 silicon Apple just introduced with the iPhone 16 since the company has a habit of equipping SE models with the system-on-chip that debuted in its flagship from the preceding fall.

In a sense, that’s great news. You’ll be able to get top-line performance from a lower-cost iPhone, and you won’t miss out on Apple Intelligence, which figures to be a major focus for Apple and its hardware going forward. But the added horsepower also is likely one of the culprits behind that iPhone SE price increase, if it does in fact happen.

I say “one of the culprits” because the iPhone SE 4 has been tipped to receive other upgrades as well. It’s possible the new phone could get an OLED panel, replacing the LCD screen found on the current iPhone SE. It’s also possible that the lone 12MP main camera would make way for a 48MP sensor, similar to how Apple upgraded the main camera on the iPhone 15 last year.

The importance of price

All of those features will be welcome improvements, but nothing in life comes free. The likely result would be a more expensive iPhone SE. Now, for a lot of people, paying extra for the kind of improvements being discussed here would be a fair trade-off, but it would come at the expense of a rare opportunity for Apple to undercut the competition on price.

Think about it — the company known for charging consumers the so-called Apple Tax selling a midrange phone with Apple Intelligence capabilities and an improved camera that actually costs less than something Google makes. It may turn out that the Pixel 8a offers a better experience than the yet-to-be-announced iPhone SE 4 — certainly, Google enjoys a sizable lead in terms of AI features — but that would score Apple some serious PR points with the public.

We also need to remember that the iPhone SE has an audience outside of North America. Apple makes the SE to better compete in places like China and India where there are a lot of low-cost options for smartphone buyers. Pushing the iPhone SE 4 price upward is a step in the wrong direction to win over those markets.

And that leaves me, the one-time owner of an iPhone SE, in an odd position — hoping that rumors of improved hardware and features are true but that the logical price hike that might result from those improvements doesn’t happen. Nearly everything I’ve heard about next year’s iPhone SE sounds appealing; I just hope Apple doesn’t do it at the expense of one of the things that made the original iPhone SE so appealing in the first place.

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