On Thursday, Apple confirmed that a new product will be unveiled on Wednesday, February 19. Both Apple's short teaser video and the latest rumors suggest that the fourth-generation iPhone SE will be announced on the day.
The smartphone is expected to be offered at a starting price of $499, which would make the device extremely competitive in terms of value for money since Apple is expected to install the latest Apple A18 ARM chip, a 6.1-inch OLED display with notch, a 12 MP selfie camera with support for Face ID, and a 48 MP main camera. However, Apple may try to make the base model less appealing to customers by limiting the storage space.
According to information from a Chinese online shop, the cheapest iPhone SE 4 has 8 GB of RAM, which should support Apple Intelligence, but only 64 GB of flash storage. This is the same as the cheaper iPhone SE 3 from 2022, but only half as much as the base model of the iPhone 16. In practice, this amount of storage is even smaller because, as Apple itself states, iOS 18 and the system apps require just under 17 GB of storage while Apple Intelligence eats up a further 7 GB.
This leaves just 40 GB for apps, music, photos and other user data. If Apple charges the same price for the storage upgrades as for the iPhone SE 3, the model with 128 GB of storage may cost $599 and the 256 GB variant $699. As usual, such leaks should be taken with a grain of salt; whether Apple will really slash the storage size of the base model so close to the launch will be revealed next week.