Back in 2016, Apple released the iPhone SE and brought refreshed specs in the chassis of the 2-year-old (at the time) iPhone 5s. Since that release, we’ve been hearing of the Se’s successor, the iPhone SE 2 which is finally coming in Q1 2020.
This news comes from noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has previously reported on Apple’s plans for a ‘mid-cycle’ handset release in March that walks in the shadow of the iPhone SE promising high specs and a low price. The iPhone SE 2 is expected to feature the design of the iPhone 8, which means the larger curved style will be used, rather than the tightly paced and small-screened iPhone 4 design which graced the original iPhone SE.
That suggests Apple will be able to reuse parts from the iPhone 8 while upgrading some of the internal components, like the processor and camera.
In a note to investors Sunday, Kuo shared that the second-gen iPhone SE is coming with the A13 Bionic chipset backed up by 3GB of RAM (matching the iPhone 11) and ship with either 64 GB or 128 GB of storage.
However, if you’ve noticed that’s 1 GB of RAM down from the iPhone 11’s 4 GB RAM, plus the handset misses out on the top tier of 256 GB of storage, which is something to attract you to the higher tiered iOS handsets.
Colour options will be Space Gray, Silver, and Red and it will start at a dollar under $400.
Kuo foresees the iPhone SE 2 to be quite popular given the low starting price of $399 and expects Apple to win over a lot of new users in the mid-range segment. The budget iPhone will also likely attract people who are still using the iPhone 6 and 6s, which he estimates are still being used by as many as 200 million people, even though those phones launched five years ago.
He said the new phone will be a “key growth driver” for Apple next year.
“iPhone 6 and 6s series are the best-selling iPhone series, and we estimate that around 170–200mn people are still using iPhone 6 and 6s series now. The iPhone 6 series users may have more urgent replacement demand for an upgraded model because iOS 13 doesn’t support iPhone 6 series.”
Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple analyst and phone leaker extraordinaire
As with the original SE at the time, the SE 2 appears to sport surprisingly powerful internals that basically matches the company’s flagships for performance. But considering that Apple instead seems to plan to cut costs with things like the display and cameras, the iPhone SE 2 could still be an excellent affordable option for iOS fans who don’t care too much about having the fanciest display, the loss of 3D Touch in the screen or triple cameras.