The iPhone SE 4 is now due to arrive next week

After Apple announced Powerbeats Pro last night, it slowly became clear that the iPhone SE 4 was not on the list of the company’s announcements for this week.

On 6 February, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested that the new phone would be released “next week”, so between 10-14 February. However, it seems very unlikely that the device will launch between now and Friday.

Instead, Gurman now suggests that Apple will unveil the new iPhone next week in a series of different product briefings. Instead, the “smaller announcement” is likely to have been a new Apple Health study.

Halyna Kubiv

February is a rather unusual month for hardware announcements. Apple prefers March or April to present devices that don’t fit in with WWDC or the iPhone keynote.

The next iPhone SE is a different story. The manufacturer has exhausted the time frame of the EU directive for the common charging port to the end and had to withdraw the iPhone 14 and 2022 iPhone SE from sale in the EU because they were still equipped with the Lightning connector.

This means that Apple does not have an entry-level offering for price-conscious customers in its second-largest market. In addition, the iPhone SE 3 is quite outdated as a smartphone; the design comes from the iPhone 8, which in turn goes back to the iPhone 6S and was launched in 2015. The SE 3 is equipped with the A15 Bionic, a processor from 2021 that was initially only used in the iPhone 13.

The iPhone SE is also the last “current” smartphone from Apple that does not support Apple Intelligence.

However, with the iPad Mini A17 Pro last year, it became clear that the company is committed to raising all its devices to the level of Apple Intelligence. In short, with every week that passes without the new iPhone SE, Apple loses pure money.

This is precisely why the company would release the new device at an unusual time in February and not wait until March, and Gurman could be proved right next week after all.