iPhone SE 4 is rumored to resemble iPhone 14
Ahead of the expected February 19, 2025 launch of the iPhone SE 4, there are signs that previous claims of it being renamed may be true.
In early January 2025, a seemingly unlikely leak claimed that the iPhone SE 4 would be renamed the iPhone 16E. It was chiefly considered doubtful because of the source of the leaks, but there was also that “iPhone SE’ has been a successful brand since 2016.
Now Bloomberg is backing up the claim of a rebrand, and doing so chiefly because of the phrasing Tim Cook used in his teaser tweet about a February 19 launch.
“Get ready to meet the newest member of the family,” was initially taken to mean the iPhone SE 4. The argument now is that the iPhone SE has been in the iPhone family for nine years, so this ought to be something genuinely new.
Then a rename wouldn’t make it a new device, but all of the rumors concerning the iPhone SE 4 do suggest that it is going to be a major update. Where the iPhone SE has previously used older technology, such as retaining the Home button, this looks to be different.
It’s going to be able to use Apple Intelligence, for one thing, which means it will have to have a fast enough processor and sufficient RAM. There have been rumors that the iPhone SE 4 will have a Dynamic Island, although that has been contradicted.
Overall, it’s expected that the iPhone SE 4 will physically resemble the iPhone 14 from 2022. Previous iPhone SE models have similarly been based on older designs.
However, it’s also been claimed that the iPhone SE 4 will even get an Action Button. That customizable button was introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro before being added across the whole iPhone 16 range.
If all of this is correct, then the iPhone SE 4 is looking to be significantly closer to the current iPhone range than before.
The key selling point of previous iPhone SE models has been that they are always the lowest cost iPhone available. If Apple manages to do that while still providing all of the rumored features, the iPhone SE 4 looks certain to be a hit.
It’s just debatable whether it’s going to be sufficiently different from previous models to warrant being rebranded. Then if it is called the iPhone 16E, there’s the question of whether that also means it will move to an annual update cycle and be followed by the iPhone 17E.
Apple does keep older iPhones on sale — at present it sells the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 alongside the iPhone 16 range. So an iPhone 16E, or similar name, could stay in the range for more than a year, but that seems to go against the implication of being a new part of the family.
So far there have been no rumors that would suggest an iPhone SE-like model for the forthcoming iPhone 17 range.
