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The IS iPhone SE 4 lives…maybe. In a recent Twitter thread, renowned Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the tech giant has resumed development on the iPhone SE 4 – two months after canceling it.
The reason the project was undertaken in the first place, according to Kuo’s post on Medium (opens in a new tab), because Apple wanted its mid-range device to be its first in-house 5G baseband chip so the company wouldn’t have to rely on Qualcomm. However, the hardware was “not up to par with Qualcomm’s (tech)” so the thing was pulled back in early January. But now it seems Apple has a solution (opens in a new tab). Instead of making everything from scratch, it is now reported to be a modified version of the iPhone SE 4 6.1-inch iPhone 14.
Kuo claims that the device will be equipped with the aforementioned “baseband chip produced by a 4nm process”; however, it will only support sub-6GHz 5G and not the faster mmWave spectrum, just like the previous model. The biggest change as Kuo points out is that the phone will have an “OLED display” instead of LCD. Ross Og (opens in a new tab), another reputable industry analyst, claiming that Chinese manufacturer BOE Technology will supply the screen. Mass production will begin, assuming development goes smoothly, sometime in the first half of 2024.
Apple’s plans for the future
The rest of the Twitter thread points to Apple’s future efforts. He goes on to say that it is still up in the air whether or not the inevitable iPhone 16 line will use the new chipset. Apparently, the company is dealing with some “technical obstacles (related to) mmWave and satellite communications.” But if he pulls it off, Kuo predicts that the gulf between Apple and Qualcomm will widen as the latter’s hardware will no longer be needed. He even says that if mass production goes well, we could see iPads and Apple Watches ditching Qualcomm chipsets in favor of the original band only.
And that is almost all that can be removed from the thread as it relates directly to the iPhone SE 4 or Apple plans. It is not known how many of the features of the iPhone 14, such as Emergency SOS via Satellite, or hardware will be present on the upcoming phone. Price is still a mystery. For comparison, the iPhone SE 3 launched back in March 2022 with a starting price of $429 in the United States.
If you’re in the market for a new phone, be sure to check out TechRadar’s latest round up of the Best iPhone deals before the end of the month.
