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New iPhone SE With Apple-Designed 5G Modem Said to Launch in 2025
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Huawei is actually more expansive than iPhone since they went with the preimum market, and split their buget line into an independent company called Hounor, which focuses on EU and 3rd worlds markets.
I love iPhones and would never use an Android or HOS, but hardware-wise, Huawei flagship phones have the most advanced and most luxurious components. The design language is years ahead of iPhone Pro Max. Now, obviously, due to US sabotage, the baseband and the SoC are not longer cutting edge. They are still designing chips as if they are releasing new chips every year to maintain their chip design advancement, while waiting for domestic fabs to catch up.
I'd bet it'll be 2024. Sure, the rumor that they are going to test their new modem in an SE first is persistent. But OTOH, not having an at least moderately affordable, reasonably recent iPhone during an economic downturn seems like a wasted opportunity. I guess I'll have a miserable last year with my SE2020 if the rumor is true or have to buy a mini 2013 - but not at the current price of €800.
I guess, iphone SEs don't need that much preproduction time and they can use existing production lines, so they'll release it when they see the need for it.
I guess, iphone SEs don't need that much preproduction time and they can use existing production lines, so they'll release it when they see the need for it.
Can't wait to see the dumpster fire that is going to be. We all know how well Intel and its engineers were at creating modems. Can't wait for the Qualcomm versions to have to be throttled again to make the Apple chip stay competitive (and still be junk) *And before someone comes and says "BuT aPpLe SiLiCon" Modems and CPU's/GPUs are nothing alike, hence why Qualcomm has a stranglehold on modems.
First gen stuff can be scary, sure, but Apple has a pretty good reputation on the silicon side so far, and, let's not forget that Apple's cellular chipset business unit is born out of a $1b acquisition of an Intel business unit that itself was born from Infineon's business unit from a 2011 acquisition that successfully designed, built, and marketed modems used successfully in a broad range of products as a third party OEM product, so when you look at the "challenge" of taking that kind of hardware and inserting it into a HW/SW stack that is entirely vertically integrated, it is even lower risk and higher reward, so I don't think you have that much to worry/be salty about here: there are decades of experience something like 17,000+ patents that have been put to use in actual chips for decades in this business unit across now three owners.
Besides, there's a reason they're targeting this for a lower end device, because the IP and/or implementations for the higher end stuff (multiple PHYs, certain types of coding, etc) is basically wrapped up by Qualcomm, the kind of product this would end up in has proven products already out there.
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I will not be advising anyone to buy a device with the first-gen Apple 5G chip until it is proven. They can get there but it’s difficult to do, especially without a fat stack of patents.
I had Apple’s first chip, the A4, in the original iPad. It was not a great chip. For starters, 256MB of RAM was anemic for such a device. It couldn’t hold a tab for the life of it. Sometimes even reloading when filling out a simple web form and losing all the data. Best to wait until this new chip is proven, if not the second generation. Don’t be a beta tester!
I had Apple’s first chip, the A4, in the original iPad. It was not a great chip. For starters, 256MB of RAM was anemic for such a device. It couldn’t hold a tab for the life of it. Sometimes even reloading when filling out a simple web form and losing all the data. Best to wait until this new chip is proven, if not the second generation. Don’t be a beta tester!
I disagree that small phones necessarily have to be priced cheaply. There is a market for small flagships, but with current level of technology such phones are impossible without major compromises. 13 mini’s battery barely manages to reach “good” category. Fitting an extra camera and a pro grade screen is only possible by reducing the battery. I personally really want a 120hz screen, but choose 13 mini because the pro was too bulky. But were I buying in 2020 I would not go for the mini because the battery is too bad. I know quite a few 12/13 pro owners who agree that their phones are too bulky and would prefer something like a mini, but are not willing to compromise on camera/screen quality. Further mini improvement could’ve enticed them like mini 12 => 13 improvements enticed me. The problem for the mini is that Apple is not incentivised to cater for such people. Apple spent some resources to improve the mini and I ended up giving them £600 less. Even if it’s possible to take advantage of more power efficient processor/screen/modem and squeeze a pro grade screen in to a mini, there is no reason for Apple to ever do it. They will end up spending extra resources to sell something for $900 to people who would’ve given them $1000+ instead.
On the hand, the cheap phone market does not have a particular preference for small phones. Cheap android phones are huge. People for whom low price is very important are more willing to compromise on everything else, including size.
iPhone SE is about catering to the crowd that can’t or won’t spend a lot more than $400 on a new iPhone while making a killing in profit margins by updating a few components in an older iPhone.
It’s not about size, big or small, or any specific design or features.
It’s about offering a lower cost iPhone that’s comparable to the latest and greatest iPhones in a lot of ways, but at the same time very obviously not being as premium or high value that consumers would mistake it for a mid- or high end iPhone, or even just think that there no incentives to spend more.
Developing new components or exclusive designs for future SE models would add r&d costs and increase consumer end price and thus lead to an SE that’s too close in price to the midrange iPhone.
A 2024 or 2025 SE would most likely be a 6.1” 12/13/14 with a few updated internals but no Dynamic Island.
Midrange $799 iPhone 15 or 16 then jumps to smaller bezels, better brighter display with Dynamic Island.
Very simple.
It’s not about size, big or small, or any specific design or features.
It’s about offering a lower cost iPhone that’s comparable to the latest and greatest iPhones in a lot of ways, but at the same time very obviously not being as premium or high value that consumers would mistake it for a mid- or high end iPhone, or even just think that there no incentives to spend more.
Developing new components or exclusive designs for future SE models would add r&d costs and increase consumer end price and thus lead to an SE that’s too close in price to the midrange iPhone.
A 2024 or 2025 SE would most likely be a 6.1” 12/13/14 with a few updated internals but no Dynamic Island.
Midrange $799 iPhone 15 or 16 then jumps to smaller bezels, better brighter display with Dynamic Island.
Very simple.
Some people don't want a bigger screen. I would pay $100 more for a smaller screen. I don't want a huge, heavy phone with me on hikes, bike rides, etc. I also value being able to use a phone one handed.
We will only know what the next iteration of the iPhone SE will be when Apple releases it. For me, I think the current iPhone SE is very limited by its screen size, large bezels and the battery life. My kids have a 2020 iPhone SE and I have an iPhone 13. The size difference between these two devices is very minor. The battery life of the 2020 iPhone SE is very poor. I understand the current generation SE has improved it. However, the extra screen real estate and battery life available by moving to an iPhone XR/iPhone 11 design would offer a huge incentive to upgrade. Apple could stick with the very good LCD screen of the iPhone 11 and have a compelling entry level iPhone model that is cheaper to repair than an OLED screen.
I'm a little concerned, because Intel's broadband and cellular chipsets have been such utter garbage. (They both use similar technologies as part of their operation.)
Intel's Puma chipset for cable modems had all kinds of problems that they weren't even able to fully solve with firmware updates. They were junk and users were told to avoid them in favor of Broadcom chipsets.
Intel's cellular modems also had performance issues compared to Qualcomm's.
Sometimes companies are just REALLY GOOD at something, and it's better to keep using chipsets from those companies than to try to re-invent the wheel in house, or re-invent a wheel someone else invented in-house, poorly.
Apple Silicon CPUs are different story; they've been cutting their own SoCs since 2010 and Apple Silicon are just beefier versions of the existing A-series chips that have been perfected for a long time now.
They're putting them into the lowest end phones for a reason, because they perform exactly as well (bad?) as Qualcomm's low end offerings currently do.
No, Intel tech is not a premium market chipset, Qualcomm has that market pretty heavily cinched up practically and in terms of IP at the moment, but this is about the lowest end application on the iPhone handset spectrum in terms of cellular PHY and is just every bit as good (bad) as Qualcomm's offering.
Intel or Qualcomm silicon on the baseband/modem, it doesn't matter, the consumer that is buying the iPhone SE or equivalent is not expecting (nor is paying for) premium performance.
No, Intel tech is not a premium market chipset, Qualcomm has that market pretty heavily cinched up practically and in terms of IP at the moment, but this is about the lowest end application on the iPhone handset spectrum in terms of cellular PHY and is just every bit as good (bad) as Qualcomm's offering.
Intel or Qualcomm silicon on the baseband/modem, it doesn't matter, the consumer that is buying the iPhone SE or equivalent is not expecting (nor is paying for) premium performance.
Looking forward to the first device powered by Apple designed 5G modem.
Since the OP was hoping they would use the mini shell for this new SE, it would be “priced cheaply”, or as cheaply as Apple gets. And it would actually make the most sense, as the SE has always been a smaller phone, as even the SE3 has an only slightly larger physical body than the mini, while the actual screen is much smaller than that of the mini. Having personally gone from an SE to a mini last year, the mini is the closest form factor to the SE lineup, and if they ditch the home button form factor for the SE, the mini would fit most logically with the traditional SE form factor.
As for why it could appeal to Apple: the smaller screen and materials should cost less, and they don’t actually want the SE to be the most appealing form factor, as they don’t want to cannibalize higher model sales; they just want an entry level model that will attract customers that wouldn’t otherwise buy an iPhone. Those SE customers aren’t thinking “for $100 more I can get a bigger screen”, as that wouldn’t be the case for the SE.
So 87% isn’t mass-market? 🤔
Apple will happily sell as many devices as anyone will buy, as long as Apple can get the margin it expects. They are actually pretty good at business, despite what you might have read in these forums.
It is still around though. It's in the lineup, it's being produced and sold and it has the same chip as the mainstream iphone 14 (minus a GPU-core.. though thermally it probably made no sense to update it with a fully enabled chip).
I don't think you can jump to a "Tim Cook axed it because brilliant CEO" explanation at this point. It's way too early. It reads like you just hate the mini.
It could in fact be so that a refreshed Mini falls exactly in line with what Tim Cook's Apple usually does. Again looking at the iPad Mini it seems to be a thing Apple now does, move a less popular device to a more infrequent hardware update shedule but still keeping it around.
I use my 13PM one handed all the time. No, I don't have large hands, just average-sized. I remember how minuscule in comparison my 12 Pro felt after using the 13PM for just a day. I'm pretty sure that pretty much anyone could easily adapt to the non-max (6.1") size if they really wanted to. Yes, it might seem "huge" at first if you're coming from a Mini, but it really isn't once you get used to it.
If you remember Steve Jobs' dictum, an iPhone that doesn't fit in your jeans is just oversized Android garbage. Besides, what if I don't want to take pics of the firmament or make movies to upload to a harvesting data platform, why the f*** I need to discard a masterpiece like this for the latest model? I'm glad that Tim Cook makes the shareholders happy, but for me, he's not Steve Jobs.
You have no idea how lucky you will feel to have the very best modem, Qualcomm, when the Apple/Intel modem’s reduced range and poorer reception are revealed.
Wow, the last iPhone SE was released in 2022, and now people have to wait until 2025 for a new one? If that turns out to be true, it's not surprising. Tim Cook doesn't give a damn about low-income people.