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He’s a 100% track record leaker but this whole SE saga has been confusing as hell.

Calling a 4.7” iPhone a “Plus” when we all know what “Plus” used to mean.

And calling the iPhone SE after this stopgap SE “SE3” when no iPhone SE was ever numbered. (the current second gen SE is just called “iPhone SE”, not SE2).

Puzzling.
It won’t be called SE3. He’s using less characters because it’s Twitter. He means the 3rd generation SE.
 
Isn’t the iPhone 13/12 Mini bigger than the iPhone SE anyway 5.4 vs 4.7? What I would do is use the iPhone Mini design/chassis but use LCD to keep cost down. They did it with XR. Or they could also do punch hole for the camera to keep cost down and use the power button for Touch ID like on the iPad Air. I think it would be a great compromise and bring some consistency to design language.

They could make the current iPhone SE dirt cheap at 199. Just to have an option at every conceivable price point. While the new SE I am suggesting takes the 399 slot and an iPhone 13 6.1 takes the 599 slot this fall.
There will never be a $200 iPhone.
 
My mom needs a new "iPhone Plus" since she's still holding on to her 6S Plus and could really need an upgrade. Please make it happen Apple. Face-ID iPhones are not an option for my parents sadly.
Unfortunately Apple has a habit of equating large with being "better" and more expensive, so for our older relatives who can't see well they end up wasting money on tech they can't use.
 
I dunno maybe they'll rehash the iPhone X design instead of the aging iPhone 7/8 one.

I mean it makes sense especially if the iPhone 14 has a different notch/cutout/whatever.
I would love for them to rehash the X 5.8” chassis, but just don’t see it happening as the SE is based on the most refined version of a previous gen chassis (5S and 8), so in this case it would be the 11 Pro which has stainless steel frame, frosted glass back etc which are expensive materials. They could of course replace this with a aluminium frame, normal glass back and LCD screen though, but this may require re-tooling.

For me personally, as long as any future SE iphone is less than 6” screen size and has Touch ID, ideally no notch (im fine with bezels) then i will buy it.
 
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Seems like the bezels on this 5.7-inch SE are deliberately thick to avoid cannibalizing iPhone 14 sales. Shouldn’t be too bad though - about the thickness of the notch all around the display. It would make the most sense to use the XR/11 chassis.
 
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Ok I think I’ve figured this out.

The iPhone SE 2022 (4.7”) is meant to be the last iPhone for Home Button aficionados. It won’t be discontinued next year once Apple releases the iPhone SE Plus (5.7”) alongside the now 1-year-old iPhone SE 2022.

Being the last of its kind, it’s getting a “swan song” update with 5G and A15. That’s the model Home Button lovers will have to hang to until it’s discontinued a couple of years down the line.

Whereas the 2023 iPhone SE Plus will be the first notch-based iPhone SE.

If you look at it this way, it makes sense for them to be spaced only 12-13 months apart. They’re different products and they need room to breathe (attention, coverage, etc.).

So the iPhone line-up in spring 2023 could look something like this
- iPhone 14 and 14 Max
- iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max
- iPhone SE 2022
- iPhone SE Plus 2023
- the usual assortment of previous years iPhones to fill the various price tiers

(and yes I’m assuming the “Plus” moniker is flying around Apple campus but some leakers like Young himself are mistakenly associating it to the 2022 iPhone SE whereas actually it’s meant for the 2023 notch-based iPhone SE; by the way I vaguely remember a Gurman column from 1-1.5 years ago where he correctly called the future borderless larger-display SE “Plus”, but I may be wrong)
 
The iPhone X is actually a 5.85" Screen with the same 458ppi. Which makes the 5.7 screen on a LCD screen a lot more suspicious, the XR with 6.1" LCD form factor makes much more sense. So I am willing to bet Ross will backtrack on this. Unless it is an OLED, which Ross doesn't say.

If you look at the lineup in 2022, once iPhone 14 release and iPhone 11 dropped from the official line up, and an iPhone SE coming march with 5G. Apple will have fully transition their lineup to support 5G. This is crucial to carrier in pushing 5G froward. That is a replacement cycle of ~200M iPhone per year capable to use 5G. And 2023 will be the year to refarm more spectrum for 5G usage.

And iPhone SE has been the odd one out in terms of Aspect Ratio. If you have an iPhone XR with 5G and Better Spec in 2023 as iPhone SE+, it make sense for the iPhone SE to switch to mini form factor in 2024.
 
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Since Apple will be eliminating the iPhone Mini this year. I really hope it really adopts the iPhone Mini design factor. Many people will appreciate this.
Start getting friends to write to Apple. I am guessing (but it’s only a guess) that iPhone mini sales haven’t been very good for the last couple of years. Or someone at Apple really doesn’t like branching the phones down to include a small form factor version, for whatever reason.
 
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So much cloak & dagger. All the holdouts want is a modern LCD plus phone. I.E. gut the iPhone 8 Plus and put in a new motherboard with new SOC and 6GB of RAM and be done with it.
That’s all the holdouts want.

But no….

Apple has to think deeply about it for 7 years to make a phone slightly different but not really much better.
 
I think this adds credence to my theory that they will be keeping around the 2020 SE at a lower price, either $249 or $299.
So The lineup will be:
Se (Second generation): $249-299
SE+5G: $399
Or, The other option, and the one I’m slightly more afraid of them doing, is completely discontinuing the 11 that’s currently at $499, and adding the SE+5G there, and leaving the current SE at 399.
This has benefits for Apple, like the fact that every phone in their lineup except for the cheapest SE would be 5G, but also that means the current SE would get no price cut.
So that means the lineup would be:
SE: $399
SE+5G: $499
12 Mini: $599
12: $699
13 Mini: $699
13: $799
13 Pro: $999
13 Pro Max: $1099
Because it’s Apple, I fully expect them to go with the second option, but I would much prefer them go with the first option, lowering the SE by $100-$150, and putting the SE+5G at that $399 Price point.
 
Interesting, if we consider that none of the SE iPhones released so far had any chassis design differences from their predecessors, so SE 2016 was a boosted iPhone 5S and SE 2020 “inherited” iPhone 8 body. So far SE has been a “reuse & recycle” model, keeping R&D and production costs to a minimum. Yet so far no 5.7” iPhone was ever made by Apple. What gives? ??‍♂️
 
If you look at the lineup in 2022, once iPhone 14 release and iPhone 11 dropped from the official line up, and an iPhone SE coming march with 5G. Apple will have fully transition their lineup to support 5G. This is crucial to carrier in pushing 5G froward. That is a replacement cycle of ~200M iPhone per year capable to use 5G.
actually the more I think about it, I think the new SE+5G will replace the 11 at $499, and the current SE will remain at $399.
So the entire lineup will be 5G, except for their cheapest phone.
So:
SE: $399
SE+5G: $499
And then the 12 mini and up obviously all have 5G already
 
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Oh no. Apple is one of the few companies (out of two to be exact) that, in addition to ridiculous huge shovels, has displays of a normal humanoid size.
 
No electrical engineer here so take everything I say with a grain of salt... But I would imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to add an all screen design to the current body. Only physical internal layout changes I would think would be the placement of the front speaker and camera which should be fairly easy given the 8's internal design. The display itself would be completely separate of the body and all new which means it would be designed to fit the body, not the other way around.
I follow your thought process - it could theoretically work. The other issue, though, is the size of the phone. The SE is actually quite a bit smaller than the X:

SE: 138.4mm x 67.3mm
X: 143.6mm x 70.9mm


Could they squeeze a 5.7" screen onto a phone that would have over 6mm less diagonal space than one with 5.8" screen? The difference between those screen sizes is only 2.5mm. So, it would mean shrinking the bezels down to essentially nothing. Perhaps technically possible, but you need some bezel so that your fingers don't inadvertently interact with the edges of the screen when the phone is in your hand. This seems like it would present a big challenge, and therefore is perhaps not the most likely route, especially for a $399 phone.
 
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