iPhone SE on display at an Apple store (Photo by Walid Berrazeg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty … [+]
Several details on Apple’s next iPhone are already clear, but one of the biggest decisions that will impact the smartphone’s design has been reported. Next year’s iPhone SE will ship without a home button.
Writing for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman discusses the upcoming iPhone SE. The current SE will be the last iPhone with the iconic button and its embedded TouchID sensor. Instead, the SE will follow the current iPhone trend and move to a full display with minimal bezels, backed up by the dynamic island cutout used to mask the selfie camera, FaceID, and other sensors.
2025’s iPhone SE will also be expected to run Apple’s generative AI software, the awkwardly backronymed Apple Intelligence. This means the SE will likely have to match the specs of at least the current iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, shipping with the latest A18 chipset and a minimum of 6 GB of RAM on board.
Given that the iPhone SE will be Apple’s sole representative in the competitive mid-range market, where even a few dollars more can make a difference to consumers, Apple will need to work hard to bring down the bill of materials or sacrifice some of the margins to stay competitive. No doubt Tim Cook and his team will be working out just how much of a premium the company can charge purely on the strength of the name… “surely they’ll spend more because it’s not a phone, it’s an iPhone?”
Apple is expected to launch the iPhone SE in March 2025, at which point the final wave of Apple Intelligence software may be available for the public to experience.