It’s only January and yet it already feels like it’s going to be a weird year for phones. Not in the sense someone’s going to release one that’s literally a vapour. Or another that constantly blasts that Blondie song at full volume, in an effort to simultaneously be ironic, retro cool and deeply annoying. No, I’m talking about how recent parps from the Apple rumour mill suggest the iPhone SE4 will impress in a manner that’ll make you stroke your chin and nod in a sagely manner. By contrast, the iPhone Air must surely have activated Apple’s OH NO NOT THE THIN THING AGAIN klaxon, forcing staff to grimly grit their teeth, power up their ANC AirPods, and try to ignore it.
First up: the SE. Unless the new one rocks up with a case made of jagged glass shards, and only has a single installed app called GO AWAY, YOU SMELL, we’re on to a good thing. Last I checked, the existing iPhone SE was something like 47 billion years old. It still features a Home button and bezels roughly the size of a small child’s forearm. It’s not cool. It’s just dated – with the exception of its A13 chip. Which lets the thing soldier on, running current apps, but wondering why it’s wearing the skin of an iPhone 7.
Back to the future
Most iPhone SE4 rumours point to Apple trying the same trick again. Only this time, the suggestion is that Apple is set to hollow out an iPhone 14 with a spoon, drop in an A18 chip with 8GB of RAM so the device can run Apple Intelligence (assuming its users don’t run from Apple Intelligence), and smugly beam at its new creation. Only no! Because the latest rumour claims this phone will instead get Dynamic Island rather than a notch. Which will make it look an awful lot like a properly modern iPhone, only for a much lower price. Fab.
Of course, Apple isn’t stupid. It won’t make it too much like an iPhone 16. There’s not much chance of the SE4 gaining an Action button and Camera Control. If it did, why would anyone buy an iPhone 16 for lots more money? But I do like the idea of Dynamic Island making it to Apple’s most affordable phone, bringing extra consistency to the line-up. That’s way better than a notch stinking up the place, making the SE4 look old the second you take it out of the box.
Put on air
If rumours are to be believed, the iPhone Air may well sit at the other extreme of the iPhone, being priced above even the iPhone Pro Max and therefore costing around eleventy billion bucks. Which is a lot. So what will you get in return for that? Not a lot. Or at least much less iPhone – in every sense.
Assuming we’re not experiencing a massive disinformation campaign by a maniacally laughing Tim Cook firing out emails at 5am, this new iPhone is set to be thinner than any iPhone that ever thinned. 5ish millimetres! Almost as skinny as an iPad Pro. But while that iPad retained all the clout of its predecessor, the iPhone will reportedly have to discard a decent camera system. And solid battery life. And a speaker.
Apple dredging up the thin thing yet again is more retro than anything that might happen to the SE. It’s a song we’ve heard so many times before. And it leads to compromises that make no sense on a phone. Worst of all, it’s a boring nothingness of blah. Perhaps that’s just how phones will be in 2025. Tom griped that “S stands for stagnant” with Samsung’s new yawnsome flagship. I wonder whether Apple’s should gain the prefix ‘Hot’ before Air.