14 DAY TRIAL // The demise of the iPhone mini turned the iPhone SE into the only option when it comes to a smaller iPhone, but as it turns out, this wouldn’t be the case much longer.
This is because Apple is also planning an upgrade for the iPhone SE, which will finally move away from the iPhone 8-based design when the next generation goes live.
Apple watcher Jon Prosser says Apple will almost certainly use the iPhone XR to build the next iPhone SE, meaning that the device would finally abandon the old iPhone look for a more modern approach.
This also means that Apple will give up on Touch ID and instead go for Face ID, though people familiar with the matter have reported on several occasions that the company was developing a fingerprint sensor integrated into the side button.
Stepping away from the iPhone 8-inspired look makes sense for Apple, especially as the company has already built two generations of the iPhone SE based on this old model. The original iPhone SE used the iPhone 5S look (the model that was launched in 2013).
Needless to say, Apple has never commented on these reports, so anything could change in the meantime, especially as we’re still very far away from the moment the iPhone SE 4 would go live. This is projected to happen in 2024, according to several sources.
In the meantime, Apple is slowly but surely migrating to larger iPhones, so once the iPhone SE switches to the iPhone XR, customers would no longer have any option when it comes to smaller smartphones. The iPhone XR would remain the smallest iPhone in the entire lineup, but otherwise, the smallest they could go is the standard iPhone or the iPhone Pro, both of which use 6.1-inch displays.