Apple’s new iPhone line-up pricing leaves no room a tiny 4-inch “iPhone SE 2.”
William Gallagher for AppleInsider:
If Apple brought out a new 4-inch iPhone SE, you might buy one. If you want a smaller iPhone, you really want it… Passion for that small size, compact iPhone is so great that it’s probably the entire reason we keep hearing wishful rumors about it coming back. However, it’s probably not so great that it represents a market Apple thinks is worth addressing.
If you want a small phone, Apple is surely comparing the old SE with the current iPhone 8 and concluding that there isn’t much in the difference. And Apple is right. There is the issue of weight, where the iPhone 8 is around 2oz heavier than the iPod touch, and there is the screen which is 4.7-inches instead of 4. Otherwise, though, the iPhone 8, for all that it appears bigger than an iPhone SE, isn’t that much different at all.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s has a great price range covered now with the new iPhone family:
X-class, Home button-free iPhones:
• iPhone 11 Pro Max: $1099-$1449
• iPhone 11 Pro: $999-$1349
• iPhone 11: $649-$849
• iPhone XR: $549-$649
Older Home button iPhones:
• iPhone 8 Plus: $549-$599
• iPhone 8: $449-$499
The height of iPhone 8 is 5.45-inches vs. 4.87 inches for iPhone SE, width of 2.65-inches vs. 2.31 inches, depth of 0.29 inches vs. 0.30.
So, the iPhone SE replacement is naturally a 4.7-inch iPhone 8 starting at just $449.
I would hope next year Apple expands the iPhone 11/12 line with a phone with a 5″ display in a body just slightly smaller than the 4.7″ iPhone 8. That seems like a good successor to the iPhone SE.
iPhone 12 5.1″, 6.1″
iPhone 12 Pro 5.8″, 6.5″ (Drop the stupid Max branding.)
gloss over the size difference all you want, but the 6/7/8 form factor is dramatically different than the SE. SE fans don’t like the 8 and newer form factors, period. There is no phone in the lineup I would buy now. As for price….I guess we’ll find out the mix of SE price fans versus SE form factor fans…..
Right. If people like big phones, fine. I supported them back when the IPhone 5 was the standard size and they wanted something bigger. I find it troubling that they don’t support the small-phone fans now, but they are welcome to their opinion.
They aren’t welcome to lie. Claiming that the iPhone 8 and SE “aren’t all that different in size” is a lie. I have a 6s and I hate the size. I don’t have the choice of replacing it with a smaller iPhone and I hate that. I am increasingly angry with people who tell me that I am too stupid to realize that something that feels damn near the size of an iPad mini is just as easy for me to use for my purposes—not theirs—as an SE was.
If Apple and its competitors don’t want to serve this market segment, fine. Just don’t insult our intelligence by telling us that there isn’t a difference.
iPhone 8 and iPhone SE also feel very different in weight. I liked the lightness of the iPhone SE in my pocket.
Sadly the market seems to want big screen phones. It doesn’t help that phone manufactures are focusing so much on big sized phones to the point where it’s actually hard to get a compact smart phone.
As I said below, I couldn’t go back to a 4″ display but I do want an iPhone that’s slightly smaller and lighter than a 4.7″ iPhone 8.
As a long time iPhone SE fan who was forced to eventually get a 4.7″ iPhone 8 I can honestly say I could never go back to a 4″ display but I definitely want a slightly smaller body size than the 4.7″ iPhone 8.
I think that’s where an edge to edge display design comes in. It will allow us iPhone SE fans to have bigger displays but in a more compact and manageable sized iPhone than what Apple is currently offering.
I’ll be waiting: my actual SE will do the job for a good while ahead till Apple pulls out a nice small pocket sized device.
Not so fast… iPod touch 6th gen (A8) July 2015. iPhone SE (A9) March 2016. iPod touch does not exist without an iPhone model with shared design. And at that time, there WAS an iPhone with “close enough” 4.7-inch screen (6S), but Apple STILL released new iPhone SE with 4-inch screen.
So now… iPod touch 7th gen (A10) released May 2019. iPhone “SE2” in early 2020 with A10 (like brand new iPad) or A12 (like recent iPad mini and Air)? Why not? It would be less surprising than a brand new 2019 iPod touch model that no one expected. And that iPod touch would not exist at all, unless it shared its design with concurrent or planned iPhone model. AND the perfect price point is $399, just below cheapest iPhone 8.
Sorry, I call BS. An 8 is the same size as a 6. I had a 6, and hated it because it was WAY too big to operate with one hand, and so bought an SE. It’s not about “inexpensive”. It’s not about “cheap”. It’s about operating it with 1 hand. The XR is even bigger. I’m holding onto my SE until it basically won’t function any more — or until Apple figures out that FORM FACTOR MATTERS.
Holding on to your SE won’t be an option much longer. The iPhone 6 is incompatible with iOS 13, but the SE is still supported somehow. I can’t imagine it will work well under 13 or at all under 14. All apps on the App Store will have to be rewritten or recompiled with the iOS 13 SDK before April 2020. One has to assume that similar requirements will be imposed for 14 et seq. When iOS apps were backed up locally in iTunes, you could keep prior versions of software if you wanted to skip an upgrade, but now they are downloaded from the store when you restore from a backup. If a compatible version of the app is no longer available in the App Store, it just goes away. Once an app loses backwards compatibility with the iOS version you are using, you can (possibly) keep the copy actually on your device, but if it gets deleted for any reason, it can’t be replaced.
phones should be of iphone SE size , not sure how people handling these big 6 and 7 inches display bricks in their pockets , if you want big screen go for tablets , smartphones should be restricted to size of less than 5.5 inch display size ,