Back in early January, we heard that Apple was allegedly killing off the iPhone SE line. Now, less than two months later, we hear from the same source that it has been revived.
Famed purveyor of Apple-related rumors and analysis Ming-Chi Kuo is back with a report today that says the next iPhone SE will be built on the iPhone 14’s chassis with a similarly sized 6.1-inch OLED screen. And thus, this would be the first iPhone SE to go with OLED and not LCD. The panel can be manufactured by BOE.
iPhone 14
Furthermore, it will be the first iPhone to use Apple’s own proprietary 5G baseband chip, which is said to be made on a 4nm process and only supports Sub6 5G, and not mmWave. The next iPhone SE will serve as a guinea pig for this chip – if there are problems, they will 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 is still unknown. So far, the main technical hurdles to overcome are related to mmWave and satellite communications, which the chip would have to support to make it into Pro iPhones.
Production of the next iPhone SE should start in the first half of 2024. Due to the slow shift away from Qualcomm modems, Qualcomm’s Apple business is expected to decline “significantly” in the next 2-3 years.
