The iPhone SE May Live on for Another Year

Iphone Se Leszek Kobusinski Shutterstock Credit: Leszek Kobusinski / Shutterstock
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As much as the industry was moving in the direction of larger smartphones six years ago, not everybody welcomed Apple’s decision to make the switch away from its much more pocketable four-inch designs with open arms, and there’s little doubt that Apple’s 2016 iPhone SE still has something of a cult following. After all, it was the last iPhone that Apple ever made in a more diminutive size, boasting the performance specs of the then-current iPhone 6s in a package that was basically identical to the much-loved iPhone 5s that had come two years before.

Rumours have circulated for the past couple of years that the smaller iPhone SE would be making a comeback, but the early rumours were often contradictory, with some suggesting a straight upgrade of the original design, others indicating that Apple would adopt the newer iPhone design but retain the smaller four-inch size, while some pointed to an ‘iPhone XE’ as the possible successor, adopting iPhone X style edge-to-edge display and Face ID features.

After much confusion, however, things began to take shape last fall, with reports that Apple would be adopting the iPhone 8 design for its new low-cost model — which may even end up being called the ‘iPhone 9’ — dashing any hopes that iPhone SE fans may have been holding onto for a faster and more capable four-inch model.

Not the End of the Road Yet

Fortunately, however, if you’re an iPhone SE fan who is still holding onto the older model, while you won’t get all of the new powerful features of Apple’s latest iPhones, it looks like the four-inch model will still be able to remain current and relevant for at least a little while longer.

Although we heard rumours last spring that iOS 13 would drop support for the iPhone SE, that didn’t actually happen, with only the 2013 iPhone 5s and 2014 iPhone 6 falling off the list. While it didn’t really make much sense to us that Apple would drop support for the iPhone SE while leaving the iPhone 6s on the list, one suggested explanation was that the company simply wanted to leave the four-inch screen size behind.

The good news, of course, is that this didn’t happen, and when iOS 13 was released, iPhone SE users were able to upgrade and stay current with the rest of Apple’s more modern iPhone lineup. Now if a recent rumour is true, it looks that will continue into 2021 with the release of iOS 14.

According to French site iPhoneSoft (Google Translate), Apple will not be dropping support for any older iPhone models in iOS 14, which means that the iPhone SE will continue to be supported.

iPhoneSoft cites a “developer friend at Apple” as its source for this information, and to be fair it isn’t really that much of a stretch; iOS 12 also continued to support all previous devices, as did iOS 9, although both of these were largely considered to be “maintenance releases” that added relatively few new features, choosing instead to focus on improving performance and fixing bugs.

Considering that the release of iOS 13 has been a bit of a mess, it stands to reason that it may be time for Apple to return to that strategy with iOS 14, in which case it seems very likely that Apple will not only continue to support older iPhone models, but may even give them a performance boost — something that also happened in both iOS 9 and iOS 12.

So while it doesn’t look like we’ll ever see another phone like the iPhone SE, at least there’s a good chance that iOS 14 will breathe some new life into it, along with offering a whole slew of other expected improvements. Plus, there also appears to be a 5.4-inch iPhone on the horizon, which when you factor in an edge-to-edge display, might actually come in fairly close to the iPhone SE in size.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]

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