Back in early January, we heard that Apple supposedly killed the iPhone SE line. Now, less than two months later, we hear from the same source that it’s been revived.
Famed purveyor of Apple-related rumors and analysis Ming-Chi Kuo is back with a report today stating that the next iPhone SE will be built on the iPhone 14‘s chassis, with a same-size 6.1-inch OLED display. And thus this would be the first iPhone SE to go with OLED and not LCD. The panel may be manufactured by BOE.
iPhone 14
Furthermore, it will be the first iPhone to use Apple’s own in-house developed 5G baseband chip, supposedly to be made on a 4nm process and supporting only Sub6 5G, and not mmWave. The next iPhone SE will serve as the guinea pig for this chip – if there are any issues they’ll show up in the cheapest iPhone, not any of the much more lucrative expensive models.
Whether the iPhone 16 series in 2024 will use Apple’s 5G chip remains to be seen. For now, the main technical obstacles to be overcome are related to mmWave and satellite communications, which the chip would have to support in order to make it into the Pro iPhones.
Production for the next iPhone SE should start in the first half of 2024. Because of the slow switch away from Qualcomm modems, Qualcomm’s Apple business is expected to decline “significantly” in the next 2-3 years.
