The next iPhone SE could be a great midrange phone

We could argue all day about the merits of iOS versus Android, but there’s one thing the Android ecosystem offers that you definitely won’t find from Apple right now: a decent midrange phone.

By “decent,” I mean something I can enthusiastically recommend. Not “Eh, if it’s literally your only option, then it’s fine,” which is how I’ve caveated my recommendations of the iPhone SE over the past couple of years. Remember the SE? Apple released the first version in 2016, putting a then-current A9 chip into an older body design for $399 compared to $649 for the iPhone 6S. I still have mine, and it rules.

Two generations later, and the SE is still Apple’s most affordable iPhone, now starting at $429. For that price, you get a well-built phone with good dust and water resistance, a good camera as long as there’s enough light, and wireless charging. Not bad on the face of it, but it’s the things you have to put up with that make it very hard to recommend.

The screen is cramped, its LCD panel is dated, and the bezels are just massive. There’s only 64GB of storage at the base configuration, and the camera’s image quality falls apart in low light because there’s no night mode. Imagine selling a phone in 2024 with no night mode! In 2020, these concessions were acceptable, especially since that second-gen SE started at $399. But when the third-gen SE launched in 2022, with a price bump and relatively few substantial updates, it already felt like it was well behind the times.

Since then, midrange Android phones have only gotten better. The Google Pixel 8A is a straight-up banger. For $499, it comes with the same IP67 rating for dust and water resistance as the 2022 iPhone SE, plus a modern OLED screen, an excellent camera, 128GB of storage, and seven years of OS updates. Samsung has offered a couple of good midrange phones over the past few years, too, though its most recent Galaxy A55 skipped the US. But you can buy a Galaxy A35 for $399 and get plenty of bells and whistles, like an OLED screen and an IP67 rating. It all makes the 2022 SE look pretty shabby in comparison.

There’s hope, though; rumors of a fourth-gen iPhone SE, arriving in 2025, look promising. It might get an OLED screen, a modern design with slimmer bezels, and enough processing power and RAM to run Apple Intelligence. Factor in a bump in base storage — come on, you can’t sell a phone with just 64GB of storage in 2025 — and even if the price jumps up to $499, the iPhone SE starts looking like a decent option. Even if we don’t get everything rumored for the 2025 SE, an updated design and a base storage bump would go a long way.

Truthfully, there’s a lot of fat Apple could trim from the iPhone 16 to make a pared-down midrange phone that still delivers the stuff you want from an iPhone. You can — and Apple probably will — omit the Action Button, the camera control, and the Dynamic Island. The SE will probably stick with one rear camera, making the secondary ultrawide on the iPhone 16 an upgrade feature. Some people simply don’t care about all that extra stuff; I know this because I’m married to such a person.

A midrange phone built with spare parts Apple had laying around may not sound that exciting, but I think it could be a really big deal. Analyst firm CIRP estimates that, in the US, the average selling price of an iPhone in September 2024 was $1,018. No doubt many of those were subsidized through carrier deals and financing. But the preference for more expensive models might also reflect the lack of choice on the low end, where people might have more flexibility in how they pay.

When every option is too expensive to buy out of pocket, why not take the carrier deal for the 16 Pro? Once you’re paying $20 per month for a new phone, why not pay an extra $4 per month and get the fancier model? You can see how sales start skewing to the more expensive phones.

The thing that gives me the most hope that Apple will actually give us an SE that’s worth a damn is the new Mac Mini. My colleague Chris Welch reviewed this year’s M4-powered Mini and calls it “the best value in Apple’s entire Mac lineup.”

Apple made the Mini a highly appealing, highly functional basic desktop computer by taking the guts of a modern MacBook and removing the screen, keyboard, trackpad, battery, and speakers. It’s the definition of “everything you need, nothing you don’t.”

It starts at $599, and this time around, Apple upgraded the base configuration to include 16GB of RAM. That entry-level model feels like a viable starter option in a way that the previous base-model Mac Mini didn’t, simply by offering more memory for the same price.

Apple also finally redesigned the Mini’s case, rather than using the same design left over from the Intel days, which makes it feel like a purpose-built machine, not an afterthought. It’s the kind of device that the iPhone lineup has been sorely missing for the past few years, and I sincerely hope that Apple will apply that same formula to the SE in 2025.