iPhone SE 4 due in early 2025 with OLED and Apple Intelligence | Hacker News Reader

iPhone SE 4 due in early 2025 with OLED and Apple Intelligence

appleinsider.com

30 pointsznpy75 comments

I know a lot of people and even Apple seem to think of the SE as "low cost" option. But honestly for me its the size. No phone needs to be bigger than the SE. I get that the phone market is over and so Apple needs to make money with other services, streaming video, games etc and people who do that on their phone want bigger phones. But i just need something for calls/txt/music/ the occasionally maps or web search.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g0Mft1CQ7A

If i had for nickel for every person that chimed in saying "i just want a little phone" I could run a factory making SE clones and also pay for the lawyers Apple sends after me for at least ten years.

And you'll instant go bankrupt. The crowd claiming they only want small phones is just a loud minority, but a minority nonetheless, that doesn't generate the profits needed to maintain the economies of scale and margins the likes of Apple expects.

The mass market has spoken on the preference for large phones, massively outselling the small ones. It's not some conspiracy from Apple to kill small phones, they gave consumers small phones, but you weren't buying enough of them to show "line goes up" in the board room, so here we are.

MKBHD did a video on how weak consumer demand killed the small phone market.

I see this post every time the topic comes up. You’ve failed to recognize that apple makes shitty small phones and markets them to match. For example, the iphone 12 mini battery was a dog because despite owning the entire vertical they’ve failed to clamp down on software bloat. Just like every google engineer is running the latest workstation with a 38” monitor, every apple dev is clearly running the latest iphone and doesn’t give a rats whisker for performance on slightly older or less lucrative models.

> For example, the iphone 12 mini battery was a dog

That's kinda the defining feature of a small phone. In contrast, my 15 pro max can last over a week because it has a gigantic battery.

FWIW there are other manufacturers out there and some of them make small phones. Hardly anyone buys them

Who makes small phones?

I searched on GSMArena for phones that are not larger than the Pixel 4A introduced in 2022 or later. There's exactly one: the iPhone SE. Note people calling for small phones will usually say the Pixel 4A doesn't really count as a small phone.

https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2022&nHeightM...

That's fair, but I suspect there's a huge overlap between people who want small phones and people who don't upgrade their phone often. Doesn't make sense to release a new one often. If you go back to 2020, there are 9 options: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2020&nHeightM...

That's an average of 2 small phones per year which is about what I'd expect.

If you'll indulge me moving the goalposts just a little, everything but the iPhones and the Pixel are extremely low-end devices with 1 or 2 GB RAM and no more than 32 GB storage. They do have SD slots, but many apps can't be installed to SD cards on Android, and modern apps are pretty bloated. I don't think most people would find these phones acceptable.

I think there's probably room in the market for one company to make a decent midrange small phone. I don't think there's room for two because of exactly what you say: I'm in that market segment and I'm in no particular hurry to replace my Pixel 4A, at least as long as LineageOS supports it.

Oh wow I didn't realize those phones had 32G storage. Yeah that's unusably small and SD cards are unusably slow.

I guess there are 5/4=1.25 small phones per year. Fewer than I expected!

SD cards don't have to be slow, but I doubt ultra-budget phones support UHS-2. The bigger problem is that Android places a bunch of limits on apps installed on cards, so many apps don't allow installation to the card.

The numbers for the past four years don't tell the whole story. Apple and Google are the only companies that introduced smaller phones that anybody would actually want. Google hasn't made one since 2020. Apple, since 2021. There's no indication the next iPhone SE will be as small as previous models.

>so many apps don't allow installation to the card

Why is that a bad thing? When you see how unreliable SD cards are you wouldn't want apps installed on them either. SD cards are good only as a temporary storage medium, similarly to how you use a USB thumb drive, to carry data for point A to point B, that's it. You don't want them for long term storage of Important data like you use SSDs or HDDs. It's not just about the medium speed, it's about reliability.

Yes, I know, premium SD cards with industrial reliability exists, but let's be real, no Average Joe ever buys them and instead just buy the cheap counterfit value SD cards that are on sale at Amazon or AliExpress or in best case at Walmart.

I did not argue that it's a bad thing many apps can't be installed to an SD card, only that an SD slot isn't a sufficient mitigation for inadequate built-in storage because of it.

I'll make that argument now though. I don't want an operating system telling me I can't do things because it might not be a good idea. Show a warning when something might not go well, but my risk tolerance regarding instability and data loss are mine to decide, not Google's and not some app developer's.

>but my risk tolerance regarding instability and data loss are mine to decide, not Google's and not some app developer's.

Then maybe iOS and Android phones are not for you. Maybe Linux phones fit you best.

In an ideal world, probably yes. In a world where proprietary apps for Android/iOS are increasingly hard to live without, I'll settle for Android with root (though some apps try to make that difficult).

>> For example, the iphone 12 mini battery was a dog

> That's kinda the defining feature of a small phone.

The two do not necessarily follow. If you made a phone that was small(er) in width and height, but slightly (1-2mm) bigger in depth, you could have a larger battery that was perhaps not "a dog".

The battery of the 12 mini may have been bad, but has nothing to do with software bloat. Both mini iPhones had the same processor as the non-minis.

> And you'll instant go bankrupt. The crowd claiming they only want small phones is just a loud minority, but a minority nonetheless

No.We are not a minority. There are plenty of people who would appreciate a 4 inch smartphone.

Here, Uniherz just released a kickstarted for 4.3 inch smartphone.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-max-th...

At the moment I'm looking at it ~$378,000 raised from the goal of ~$100,000.

Edit: no body is talking about business terms, that means people want I small phone.

>No.We are not a minority. There are plenty of people who would appreciate a 4 inch smartphone.

Such claims don't mean anything in business terms.

There are plenty of people who would appreciate an iphone that slaps your butt everytime it rings, why isn't Apple making one for them?

I too prefer smaller phones and I'd love my Librem 5 to be closer in size to my Nokia N900, but $378,000 is nothing. This campaign is just a marketing stunt.

They made this phone extremely thick, which I don't think is what most people looking for a small phone were hoping for.

really? everyone tells me that theyre fine with their current phone and they can do everything they need to do.

compared to years back when everyone was at least saying they were going to buy the new phone when it releases

go even further back tho it was i think im going to switch to iphone/samsung

go all the way back and be me: sup guys anyone have a ringtone? bluetooth me i just got this new samsung with 400 texts and free weekends. wanna see how fast i can text with T1

I bought an iPhone 15 Pro, used it for two days, returned it, and bought the best form factor 5G phone ever made: the iPhone 13 mini.

I’m not a market research expert, but I think Apple has largely missed the mark by positioning its smaller phones as budget options. There’s demand for a premium small phone. Maybe even make it a wee bit thicker to improve battery life, but it should be narrow and not too tall.

I also really enjoy my iPhone 13 Mini. I plan to hang onto it for as long as I can because I don’t see good replacement options all that frequently.

Same. I switched from Android (Sony xperia compact series) to a Mini 13 and while it took a while to get used to iOS its just great. A pity they discontinued it, I intend to keep it as long as in any way possible (i.e. until apps don‘t support the then final iOS anymore)

> even Apple seem to think of the SE as "low cost" option

Becuase it is an entry level model in developing countries.

Think of it like what a Tesla Model 3 is for EVs - it's in this weird middle ground between "luxury" and "functional".

The Android equivalent is a Samsung A15 or Huawei Nova, and in developing markets your smartphone is your primary computing device so brand prestige does matter.

I am a fan of the iPhone SE btw - I find it to be a good mix of functional and sleek, but the screen is too small to read books so I use a Pro Max.

Edit:

I can't reply, so

That's why I said

> this weird middle ground between "luxury" and "functional"

It's a mid tier model, but has a strong brand connotation outside the HN and Automotive Bubble as "Bougie".

Sure it's not a Porsche, but it's not a Corolla or a Hyundai.

None of the Tesla EVs are luxury cars, the S and X might be expensive but comparing them in terms of driver and occupant “luxury” to BMW, Mercedes or Porsche EV offerings at a similar price point is a bit laughable.

Having lived in a developing country for 5 years I saw very few SEs or minis. People there like big phones too. I’m talking from the poorest to the richest.

I wouldn't assume that the SE 4 will be as small as the SE 3. The SE line is built on recycled older generation iPhone tooling, and iPhones in general have trended larger, so as the SE line catches up to newer tooling it too will get larger. It already happened once between the SE 1 (iPhone 5S derivative) and SE 2/3 (iPhone 8 derivative).

If the SE 4 has an OLED screen then it might be derived from the iPhone X, since that was the first OLED iPhone. That would be a size increase from the SE 3.

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-SE,Apple...

the article supports this opinion, suggesting the new SE will be based on the iphone 14 chassis, which is larger than the current SE.

Ah, that'll show me for not reading the article properly. That would be even bigger than an iPhone X-based chassis.

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-SE,Apple...

Yeah, screw that... In that case if I need a new phone I'll be switching to Uniherz Jelly Max

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-max-th...

> I wouldn't assume that the SE 4 will be as small as the SE 3.

Wait, no... SE 3 is 4.7 inches big, that's too big. Original SE has 4 inch screen. That's what we are taking about here.

I'm sad Apple killed the iPhone Mini, a flagship phone in a small body. But in the end it ended up being so niche.

>With it potentially costing less than $500, it could be a very low-cost way to get onto the generative AI bandwagon.

How much for the one without generative AI?

It's a local model. Just don't use like I presume you don't use Siri.

Long term it will be a subscription model for certain features so it's opt-in.

It was a play on the fact that consumers are tired of Gen-AI being shoved everywhere by big-corps as the "killer feature" which is a gimmick nobody asked for.

Speech-to-text is a great feature and is a machine inference application whether it fits under the "Generative AI" banner or not. The ergonomics of typing on your phone are and have always been bad. I switched to a Pixel because of its greatly superior dictation abilities compared to iOS. They probably do need to be in that feature race because they have been looking pretty shabby of late.

Be careful about straining your voice cords. Dictation is only fine if you’re using it sparingly.

Do you dictate differently than you normally talk? Or do you tell people who have conversations to be worried about their voice chords?

This has to have been a wry joke, otherwise it's insane.

Example of a non-strenuous dictation task: if I am driving, my Android will read my texts and allow me to reply by voice, a speech-to-text and text-to-speech task that is damned handy.

Individual non strenuous tasks still add up, it’s the total amount per day that matters. If you’re just dictating on the drive to work then it’s no big deal, but just because X is fine doesn’t automatically mean 2 X is fine.

Conversation between multiple people doesn’t involve one person speaking continuously for hours. As such you can spend a lot more hours per day dictating than is normal, that’s the risk not simply talking an extra 20 minutes per day.

> Dictation is only fine if you’re using it sparingly

Most correspondence throughout history was dictated.

Conversation between people involves a lot of pauses and different people speaking.

Dictation for a few hours is a lot more stressful than normal conversation and you’re also speaking in your normal life, it adds up.

I was talking specifically about Generativ AI, not text-to-speech or speech-to-text since I don't consider those to be generative AI in the Callovian sense that's pushed nowadays and I don't want to be all pedantic about it and start splitting hairs on what technically is and what isn't, just keeping the mainstream frame of what the device manufacturers claim to be gen-AI.

> not text-to-speech or speech-to-text since I don't consider those to be generative AI

Plenty of TTS, STT, Autocorrect, etc applications are now leveraging LLMs like LLAMA.

Functionally, GenAI is just a reskin around "NLP" like Siri.

> keeping the mainstream frame of what the device manufacturers claim to be gen-AI

If you're leveraging an LLM, it's safe to call it a GenAI product

It's being shoved down your throat, but even with such a close view you have no idea what it is. And don't want to discuss it because that's "pedantic"?

Where did I say you can't discuss it? Feel free to discuss it if you want. Why do you need my permission? You'll just do it without me, since you seem to have a chip on your shoulder for no reason and I don't want to reward such attitudes.

I just clarified the gen-AI meaning I used in the context of my comment which is also the context manufacturers are referring to, and not the scientific definitions the AI experts are thinking about since your average consumer has no idea about ML and transformers and all the inner working of what they call AI.

About speech to text, are there models or apps that do speech to text but use a bit of AI to infer around the "umms and "uhhs" ?

Like if I'm doing a stream of consciousness talk about something while I'm on a hike, there's loads of utterances that would be converted to stuff Id need to edit out if it was a blog post.

Or better yet, have me be able to say "oh no, remove that last thing I said about the leprechauns."

What part of TTS is "generative"? It can definitely use ML/AI, but I fail to see the generative component.

It's probably pointless to quibble over the definition since the term is now completely unmoored from whatever term of art it originally resembled.

I don't get why one needs to give up Siri to skip on Apple Intelligence? Is Siri going away? Can aI use a model from an app, instead?

The one without AI will potentially cost less than €550

The A18 chip is most likely going to be used in the Apple SE 4.

From a resource optimization perspective, their local model will mostly be offloaded onto the A18.

It does not matter for me because it will be bigger than 4 inches.

I'm really surprised "with Apple Intelligence" is showing up so soon before "ai" has been proven as even remotely useful.

"Apple Intelligence" was named precisely to be a marketing differentiator from any supposed "non-useful AI". It's also a hedge, in a sense.

I’m still using the first gen SE and love the small form factor. It’s getting slow as websites get bloated but otherwise still works fine including NFC for payments.

If the next gen SE is small like the 13 mini I might buy it. If not I’m sticking with this old beauty for as long as humanly possible.

Same here! 4 inch screen - no more, no less - is perfect. I expect it to last me until about early 2040s. The closest thing to SE 1 is this Unihertz Jelly Max with 4.3 inch screen.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-max-th...

I think the screen could be a bit bigger like the 13 mini, so smaller bezels. I’ve always used android until 2021 when my phone died and the only replacements I could find were HUGE. So then I picked my wife’s old SE from the drawer and replaced the battery.

I also have a 1st gen SE still and I did not get the 13 mini because it didn’t come with Touch ID. But now it looks like Apple is never going to bring Touch ID back anyway.

I have the iPhone SE 2022 as my daily driver now since the Android battery turned into a pillow. Honestly, it was a nice introduction into the ecosystem - still a device at a price point that I would have never bought unless I needed it for a project (since in general phones nowadays are ripped away from you faster than their hardware ages, at least if you want a system that actually gets security updates), but overall I'm satisfied with it.

Except maybe with Apple in general, I feel like for the same project I should have gone for a MacBook that has more than 8 GB of RAM regardless of the exorbitant prices, because that thing replaced my previous netbook when I'm on the move and 8 GB just doesn't feel enough; even if I limit JetBrains IDEs and such to 1 GB of RAM each when doing light dev work, opening the front end and back end already eats into the total memory substantially, in addition to containers.

I'd like to see the 2025 keep the same form factor and button as the 2020 and the 2022.

I've been close to upgrading my 2nd gen to a 3rd gen but I think I will hold off until the 4th gen is released. Even if the new model is too big for my taste, second hand 3rd gens should be a bit cheaper.

Unfortunately it's very likely the button will be gone in favor of Face ID and it's going to use the case design of a previous model so it will get bigger. It's going to suck to operate when wearing a helmet and glasses.

They could somewhat sidestep this problem if they did what some Android phones do and put a fingerprint sensor into the power button. Not that I think they will do that, but in a different world, they could.

They did this on some of the iPads. Even with Face ID, I think having a power button sensor is nice for people who often have their face covered and want an alternative biometric auth method.

> but in a different world, they could.

The issue is margins.

That is an additional SKU to manage, and Apple is extremely ruthless in minimizing redundant components, as this was a major reason Apple had horrid margin in the 1990s.

All manufacturers are moving away from buttons for that reason - from automotive to consumer electronics.

The same money spent on a dedicated SKU for buttons can be spent on a better optimized OLED display to reduce lag.

I am glad that Toyota is not one of those all automotive manufacturers. I have Yaris 2023 model and it has physical buttons for everything.

I doubt the button and the separate form factor are going to stick around. Right now they need a separate manufacturing pipeline only for the low-end phone, moving everything onto their unified platform probably makes a lot of financial sense, especially at Apple scale.

Or perhaps at Apple scale, you can make more money with two manufacturing pipelines rather than one. Because of country issues, it seems to me if anything they need to run more than one manufacturing track anyway.

It'll have USB-C, right? I think the SE has only had Lightning previously.

Yes because it's required by the regulations in the European Union it's adapted worldwide

It would be really ridiculous if they launch an SE model with AI, while everything except the iPhone 15 Pro/Max don't get AI.

It'd be ridiculous if it was last year's SE model that got AI while last year's base 15 didn't. But next year's SE model? That's not too surprising. It'll probably be using comparable internals to last year's 15 Pro or something between last year's 15 (base) and 15 Pro.

It'd be more ridiculous if they released a phone next year that didn't support their Apple Intelligence features that are getting rolled out starting this year.

That's fair, and mostly aligns with the rumors that Apple Intelligence will be a subscription service. But it's just weird that there's so much fragmentation before launch - different levels of device and model support - somehow even the ChatGPT integration is gated too despite being literally an API call.

But that's always been true about SE. The processor in SE has always been the top of the line at the time it was introduced, exceeding the previous year's model.

To alleviate the pressure on the mainstream model lines, they introduce it with a 6 months lag.

This makes quite a bit of sense as the SE is supposed to last 3 years or so before it gets refreshed.

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