Rumors that Apple will soon launch the successor to their 2016 iPhone SE have been floating around for a while.
Now, more information has emerged that the iPhone SE 2 will enter mass production in January of 2020, with the launch date pushed further from early 2020 to March of 2020, MacRumors reported citing Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Of course, this is all speculation as Apple has not even confirmed the phone's existence itself, but Kuo has successfully predicted many of Apple's product launches including the recent Apple Watch Series 5 release.
Moreover, the previous SE was launched in the month of March, and Apple generally maintains the same timeline for its product updates.
The iPhone SE was quite a popular phone when it launched alongside the iPhone 6S, offering upgraded internals from the iPhone 5 but retaining the smaller display, instead of the much larger footprint of the 6S. This appealed to a large section of diehard Apple enthusiasts that disliked the company's move towards larger phones, and the phone's lower price helped increase unit sales. The phone was re-released in 2017 with larger storage capacities and continued to sell relatively well until in 2018 Apple discontinued the model with no successor in sight.
In January of 2019, the SE was out for sale again as a clearance item, and sold out within a day, proving that even with much larger, bezel-less phones in the market, there was still a consumer base for the smaller SE. Apple seems to have realized that too, if these rumors and reports are to believed, although Ming-Chi Kuo has stated that the newer model would be larger than the previous one, with the overall footprint and design of the iPhone 8. That is still significantly smaller than most new smartphones including Apple's massive iPhone 11 Pro, but the minor loss in portability might actually disappoint eager fans.
Possible specifications for the phone have been widely accepted as an A13 Bionic processor, 3GB of LPDDR4X RAM, a 4.7 inch LCD panel, and a single rear camera like the iPhone XR. Kuo has said that the 3D Touch sensor would not be present as it has already been removed from the iPhone 11 (review) lineup and that the phone would feature the older Touch ID fingerprint reader rather than Face ID. He has also previously mentioned that the phone might be offered in three color variants, space grey, silver, and red, with 64GB and 128GB options for storage.
The rumored retail price for the iPhone SE 2 is said to start at $399 (approx. Rs 28,300) making it the most affordable iPhone with the A13, and Apple might even discontinue the iPhone 8 following the release of this phone, leading to some people to believe that it might be called the iPhone 8S or the iPhone 9 instead.
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