The next anticipated iteration of Apple’s most budget-friendly iPhone SE has been heavily rumored for a few years, and Mark Gurman now reiterates that we will see the debut of the SE 4 early next year. Additionally, Gurman expects updated iPad Air models to be released around the same timeframe.
To recap, the iPhone SE 4’s design will be based on the iPhone 14 with a notch instead of the Dynamic Island. It’s going to have a plethora of major improvements that we’ve been asking for a budget-oriented smartphone from Apple, including:
- 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR (OLED) Display
- Face ID
- USB-C port for charging
- single rear 48MP camera
- A18 chip with 8GB of RAM, which will support
- Apple Intelligence
Apple introduced the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro models last month with the A18 and A18 Pro chips, respectively, so introducing an updated iPhone SE with even more modern features several months later will avoid cannibalization of the flagship models.
For the iPad Air, Gurman expects “internal improvements” for those tablets, but he didn’t go into further detail on which specs Apple will bring to the table. The only two things I see that Apple bringing to the Air lineup are the M3 chip and the LED flash as Apple tends to recycle its older chips from other discontinued models and both the iPad mini and iPad Pro have had the LED flash on the back side for years. Excluding the base iPad, the iPad Air is the only model without an LED flash. A few weeks back, Ross Young reported that display panel shipments for a 10.9-inch iPad model would start this month, so that report may corroborate with Gurman’s report. Maybe we’ll see at least an updated 11-inch iPad Air with a brighter display that can go up to 600 nits to match the maximum brightness that the larger 13-inch iPad offers. The current 11-inch Air can go up to 500 nits.
The iPad Air was last updated back in May with both an 11-inch and 13-inch model. Having another update about a year after would be something we didn’t expect as Apple usually updates the iPad Air every 1.5 years. The last update to those tablets features these key features:
- M2 chip
- Bluetooth 5.3
- Wi-Fi 6E
- landscape front-facing camera
- support for Apple Pencil Pro
Additionally, Gurman expects an updated version of the Magic Keyboard for both sizes of the iPad Air, which may borrow some features from the redesigned Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro (M4), including a function row.
The Magic Keyboard for iPad Air is the only model in that lineup that lacks a function row, so bringing that to that model will bring back feature parity again.
Furthermore, we’ll likely see updates to both products around March or April 2025. Apple did a spring event back in March 2022 where it introduced the iPhone SE 3 and iPad Air (M1). The future of those products looks to be very promising.
