Will Apple Dub It’s Next SE Model the ‘iPhone 16E’?
It hasn’t taken long for the first Apple rumor of 2025 to appear, but this one sounds like enough of a doozy that we had to check our calendars to confirm they still said “January” and not “April.”
While it’s almost a given by now that a successor to the iPhone SE is slated to arrive in the first few months of the year, a pair of leakers with dubious track records have suggested that Apple wants to do something different with the branding for this version.
Perhaps based on a belief that Apple may want to drop the “SE” moniker as it moves to a more modern design, Fixed Focus Digital and Majin Bu have both come up with the idea that it will be called the “iPhone 16E.”
The two don’t appear to be directly corroborating, but the information likely comes from the same source. Fixed Focus Digital posted the information on Weibo on December 13, while Majin Bu added their thoughts yesterday on X, citing their own source.
The leakers didn’t add anything else we haven’t heard for months, just the usual stuff about the new iPhone SE being based on the iPhone 14, featuring an OLED display, Face ID, and more. Those things are common knowledge by now, so there’s nothing new here, and it says nothing about the reliability of the sources.
Neither has a particularly great track record, so we’d be inclined to take this one with a hefty dose of salt, even if it didn’t sound completely bonkers.
In early 2024, Majin Bu predicted the new iPhone SE would have the Dynamic Island and be closer to the design of the iPhone 16. That idea seemed reasonable at the time due to the gradual phasing out of the notch on the rest of the iPhone lineup; however, more reliable sources have since confirmed that Apple is sticking with the notch. Majin Bu still insists that the new iPhone SE will have an Action button, even though that’s also been debunked by other sources.
By all reports, the iPhone SE 4 is expected to follow the design of the iPhone 14 very closely, in much the same way the 2020 and 2022 iPhone SE models mirrored the iPhone 8. That’s not to say that there won’t be some differences, as it’s expected to have a single camera. Some have suggested this could result in a similar look to the iPhone 16 around the back, adopting the same camera bump but with one lens instead of two. However, that’s simply a matter of using a different back cover.
The notion of an Action button, an iPhone 16-like camera array, and the same A18 chip used in the current lineup may lead to a belief that Apple would change the branding to bill this as a lighter version of the iPhone 16. Still, there are several reasons this rumor doesn’t hold water.
Firstly, the iPhone SE has an established brand. People know what it means, and they know what they’re getting. Some have suggested that “SE” might be synonymous with having a front home button, but that only applies if Apple were going to keep the 2022 model around (it won’t) or release another iPhone in that style (even less likely). When the new iPhone SE debuts in a few months, it will mark the end of the classic iPhone design in the same way we’ve already seen with Apple’s latest iPads.
Secondly, while we can see a very slight possibility Apple could opt for a different name to highlight the new design, “iPhone 16E” or anything with the number 16 in it makes no sense for an iPhone that’s likely to be on the market for the next four years. “iPhone SE” has a sort of timelessness to it; putting a number on it will make it seem ancient when the iPhone 19 or iPhone 20 arrives down the road. Calling it an “iPhone 16E” is even more unusual when considering that it will look more like an iPhone 14 than an iPhone 16.
The only way we could see this happening is if Apple plans to give the new iPhone SE an annual upgrade cycle, with new “E” models following the mainstream ones every year and using the current design so that they actually look like part of the family. An iPhone 16 with a single camera could justifiably be called an “iPhone 16E,” but an iPhone with a 2.5-year-old design doesn’t warrant the same numbering as Apple’s flagships and would weaken the overall brand of the iPhone 16.
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