iPhone SE 4 tipped for earlier than expected launch date

The good news about the iPhone SE 4 keeps on coming. Yesterday we reported that Apple's best budget iPhone is getting significant display and camera upgrades, and now today a new report suggests that the phone could launch sooner than expected.

The report, in trade site The Information, says that Apple is planning to ramp up production for the new iPhone in October 2024. That of course is after Apple's likely iPhone 17 launch event in September, and the report speculates that the launch of the iPhone SE 4 could then be in January 2025. If true that's considerably earlier than expected: previous reports had indicated a spring 2025 launch rather than a January one.

Will the iPhone SE 4 launch date be in January 2025?

It's certainly possible, not least because it would steal some of Samsung's thunder: January is when Samsung usually announces its latest Galaxy S series phones, and a higher-spec but still affordable iPhone SE could be a good spoiler for the Samsung Galaxy S25 launch that month.

There are some reasons to suspect that The Information's launch date is optimistic, however. The first is that January is Chinese new year, so production tends to be lower that month; putting the SE into production in late 2024 would enable Apple to hit a spring launch date irrespective of that. And all of the previous iPhone SE models were announced and launched in the spring.

The rumour mill seems convinced that the iPhone SE 4 will have a significant display upgrade, taking the current panel from 4.7 inches to just over 6 inches and swapping it for an OLED, the first time that display technology has been in an SE. The phone is also believed to have the A18 processor in order to run Apple's AI tools, and to have a single 48MP camera.