The iPhone SE 4

Apple’s next-generation “iPhone SE 4” has been through such a cycle of on-again/off-again rumors in the past year that, at one time, we weren’t even sure a new budget iPhone was coming.

However, by late summer, those reports began to gel into something more substantial, but they also pegged the release date for the next iPhone SE model into 2025, quashing any hopes that we’d see it follow the somewhat established four-year cycle.

The iPhone SE began its life in early 2016 as a modestly upgraded version of the 2013 iPhone 5s. Apple followed that trend four years later with a 2020 iPhone SE that copied the iPhone 8 in nearly every way except the chip inside. A very minimal 2022 update appeared that seemed to have been released for the express purpose of adding 5G support, as very little else changed other than a bump to the then-current A15 chip.

That 2022 model was seen as an interim update, and many believed that the next real iPhone SE update would follow the established trend by showing up on schedule in 2024 and once again adopting the design of its 2.5-year-old predecessor — the iPhone 13, in this case — while adding a current chip like the A16.

However, with the iPhone SE 4 expected to arrive in 2025 instead, it looks like it will be based on the iPhone 14. That would still have it following a similar trend, albeit a year later. If the reports are accurate, though, it could adopt Face ID for the first time, effectively kicking Touch ID to the curb, at least as far as the iPhone is concerned. It will, of course, get a USB-C port and perhaps even the multi-purpose Action Button that’s exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro right now.