The Biggest Reason the Next iPhone SE Is Going to Be an Upgrade

I'm a big fan of the iPhone SE. In a market where you can easily drop over $1,000 on an iPhone, there's an option that includes many (if not all) of the features most people want in an Apple phone, for a reasonable price. Sure, Apple makes some sacrifices that some of us can't live with-outmoded design, less impressive cameras, lower quality displays-but what does ship with the SE is usually plenty for the average customer.

iPhone SE 4 is going to be an upgrade

In fact, it looks like the upcoming iPhone SE is going to be more than enough: According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning on following the iPhone 16 line with a new iPhone SE that essentially refreshes the iPhone 14: Where the current iPhone SE looks like an iPhone 8, with large bezels, a Home Button, and a 750p LCD screen, the new SE would have a high-res, edge-to-edge OLED display with Face ID. While Gurman doesn't mention cameras, the iPhone 14 has two high-quality rear cameras, including one ultra-wide lens. If Apple is recycling this iPhone's design for the SE, it would make sense for these cameras to make it as well. (Maybe that means we'll finally get Night Mode on an iPhone SE, as well.)

But the larger story here isn't the iPhone SE's new cameras; it's AI-specifically, Apple Intelligence. Gurman says "you can also bet" Apple's upcoming suite of AI features will be supported on the upcoming iPhone SE, which is wild: Currently, Apple Intelligence is only available on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max with the A17 Pro chip. The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, which came out the same year, don't support it, because Apple used the iPhone 14 Pro's chip for these phones. You can buy a brand new iPhone 15 today, and by next year, Apple's "budget" iPhone will have AI features your phone can't run, from AI Siri upgrades to email drafting.

Cheap, but powerful

It isn't all that shocking, however, when you look at the SE's history. The one corner Apple usually doesn't cut for the SE is performance: Sure, the last SE recycled the same form factor and cameras from a smartphone that came out five years prior, but it included the company's most up-to-date iPhone chip, the A15 Bionic. If you didn't care about other premium features, you could snag an iPhone with the same power and performance for literally half the price of Apple's flagship.

That's likely what we'll see with next year's iPhone SE: Apple will "cut corners" with an iPhone design that will be a few years old at that point, but will probably use the A17 Bionic chip currently in the iPhone 15 Pro. (They could even use whatever chip they use for the iPhone 16 Pro, but if they continue the trend of using the previous-year's chip for the base-model iPhones, it would make more sense for them to do the same for the budget iPhone, as well.) Doing so would be easy marketing for Apple, too: Want an iPhone that can run Apple Intelligence? All of our new iPhones, including our cheapest option, can.

It'd be a bummer for anyone caught on the wrong side of that divide, specifically the iPhone 15. But generative AI is still pretty new, and it's not obvious any of these features are going to be particularly revolutionary. While it's never fun to be left out of what's new, Apple Intelligence might not be the reason to upgrade your incompatible iPhone, especially while Apple is still supporting your iPhone with non-AI features.

Apple will roll out the iPhone 16 lineup this fall and will wait to refresh the iPhone SE until the following year, likely sometime in the spring, so it will be some time before we see what the company decides to do.