iPad Air and iPhone SE 5G rumored for March 8 release… but is something hidden?

(Image credit: Apple)

published 8 February 2022

The iPhone SE 5G and 2022 iPad Air have both gone into production and will be announced at Apple's Spring Event. That's according to Japanese blog Mac Otakara, confirming what multiple rumours have already told us. Both devices are getting speed bumps to A15 processors and 5G radios (except for the Wi-Fi only iPad, of course) and the iPad will also get a 12MP ultra-wide front camera.

Which is all very interesting, but Apple could have put all of that in a press release and saved them a great deal of time and effort – and in fact, Apple often does just that for minor updates. Is there One More Thing coming in March?

More than a feeling

I'm not just basing this on feeling meh about the two products. They're good upgrades. But they're not big upgrades, and by comparison I'm looking at last year's slate for the Spring Event. It brought us the M1 24-inch iMac, the M1 iPad Pro, an updated Apple TV and the long-delayed debut of AirTags.

Think of it like a kid's birthday party. Last year Apple took us go-karting, took us to laser quest and took us to a pizza restaurant and gave us all goody bags. This year it sounds like it's going to grudgingly take a few of us to a McDonalds on the bad side of town and tell us the McFlurry machines are out of order.

I think there's more: after all, this is the company who used to love dropping "one more thing" at keynotes. My money's on one of the four Macs scheduled to launch in 2022: a more powerful 24-inch iMac, the much-wanted 27-inch iMac, the iMac Pro or perhaps a more powerful Mac mini. I hope I'm right: it'd be a shame if the Spring Event's biggest news turned out to be rather snooze-worthy.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).