7 ms·

iPhone SE 4 due in early 2025 with OLED and Apple Intelligence

30 points by znpy 2y ago

Rinzler89 2y ago
>With it potentially costing less than $500, it could be a very low-cost way to get onto the generative AI bandwagon. How much for the one without generative AI?
- alephnerd 2y ago
  It's a local model. Just don't use like I presume you don't use Siri. Long term it will be a subscription model for certain features so it's opt-in.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    It was a play on the fact that consumers are tired of Gen-AI being shoved everywhere by big-corps as the "killer feature" which is a gimmick nobody asked for.
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      Speech-to-text is a great feature and is a machine inference application whether it fits under the "Generative AI" banner or not. The ergonomics of typing on your phone are and have always been bad. I switched to a Pixel because of its greatly superior dictation abilities compared to iOS. They probably do need to be in that feature race because they have been looking pretty shabby of late.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Be careful about straining your voice cords. Dictation is only fine if you’re using it sparingly.
        sincerely 2y ago
        Do you dictate differently than you normally talk? Or do you tell people who have conversations to be worried about their voice chords?
        jeffbee 2y ago
        This has to have been a wry joke, otherwise it's insane. Example of a non-strenuous dictation task: if I am driving, my Android will read my texts and allow me to reply by voice, a speech-to-text and text-to-speech task that is damned handy.
        Retric 2y ago
        Individual non strenuous tasks still add up, it’s the total amount per day that matters. If you’re just dictating on the drive to work then it’s no big deal, but just because X is fine doesn’t automatically mean 2 X is fine. Conversation between multiple people doesn’t involve one person speaking continuously for hours. As such you can spend a lot more hours per day dictating than is normal, that’s the risk not simply talking an extra 20 minutes per day.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Dictation is only fine if you’re using it sparingly Most correspondence throughout history was dictated.
        Retric 2y ago
        Conversation between people involves a lot of pauses and different people speaking. Dictation for a few hours is a lot more stressful than normal conversation and you’re also speaking in your normal life, it adds up.
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        I was talking specifically about Generativ AI, not text-to-speech or speech-to-text since I don't consider those to be generative AI in the Callovian sense that's pushed nowadays and I don't want to be all pedantic about it and start splitting hairs on what technically is and what isn't, just keeping the mainstream frame of what the device manufacturers claim to be gen-AI.
        alephnerd 2y ago
        > not text-to-speech or speech-to-text since I don't consider those to be generative AI Plenty of TTS, STT, Autocorrect, etc applications are now leveraging LLMs like LLAMA. Functionally, GenAI is just a reskin around "NLP" like Siri. > keeping the mainstream frame of what the device manufacturers claim to be gen-AI If you're leveraging an LLM, it's safe to call it a GenAI product
        halJordan 2y ago
        It's being shoved down your throat, but even with such a close view you have no idea what it is. And don't want to discuss it because that's "pedantic"?
        Rinzler89 2y ago
        Where did I say you can't discuss it? Feel free to discuss it if you want. Why do you need my permission? You'll just do it without me, since you seem to have a chip on your shoulder for no reason and I don't want to reward such attitudes. I just clarified the gen-AI meaning I used in the context of my comment which is also the context manufacturers are referring to, and not the scientific definitions the AI experts are thinking about since your average consumer has no idea about ML and transformers and all the inner working of what they call AI.
      - polishdude20 2y ago
        About speech to text, are there models or apps that do speech to text but use a bit of AI to infer around the "umms and "uhhs" ? Like if I'm doing a stream of consciousness talk about something while I'm on a hike, there's loads of utterances that would be converted to stuff Id need to edit out if it was a blog post. Or better yet, have me be able to say "oh no, remove that last thing I said about the leprechauns."
      - yunohn 2y ago
        What part of TTS is "generative"? It can definitely use ML/AI, but I fail to see the generative component.
        jeffbee 2y ago
        It's probably pointless to quibble over the definition since the term is now completely unmoored from whatever term of art it originally resembled.
  - iamkonstantin 2y ago
    I don't get why one needs to give up Siri to skip on Apple Intelligence? Is Siri going away? Can aI use a model from an app, instead?
- systemtest 2y ago
  The one without AI will potentially cost less than €550
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    The A18 chip is most likely going to be used in the Apple SE 4. From a resource optimization perspective, their local model will mostly be offloaded onto the A18.
- beretguy 2y ago
  It does not matter for me because it will be bigger than 4 inches.
- iamkonstantin 2y ago
  I'm really surprised "with Apple Intelligence" is showing up so soon before "ai" has been proven as even remotely useful.
  - bhj 2y ago
    "Apple Intelligence" was named precisely to be a marketing differentiator from any supposed "non-useful AI". It's also a hedge, in a sense.
echelon_musk 2y ago
I'd like to see the 2025 keep the same form factor and button as the 2020 and the 2022. I've been close to upgrading my 2nd gen to a 3rd gen but I think I will hold off until the 4th gen is released. Even if the new model is too big for my taste, second hand 3rd gens should be a bit cheaper.
- Manfred 2y ago
  Unfortunately it's very likely the button will be gone in favor of Face ID and it's going to use the case design of a previous model so it will get bigger. It's going to suck to operate when wearing a helmet and glasses.
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    They could somewhat sidestep this problem if they did what some Android phones do and put a fingerprint sensor into the power button. Not that I think they will do that, but in a different world, they could.
    - al_borland 2y ago
      They did this on some of the iPads. Even with Face ID, I think having a power button sensor is nice for people who often have their face covered and want an alternative biometric auth method.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > but in a different world, they could. The issue is margins. That is an additional SKU to manage, and Apple is extremely ruthless in minimizing redundant components, as this was a major reason Apple had horrid margin in the 1990s. All manufacturers are moving away from buttons for that reason - from automotive to consumer electronics. The same money spent on a dedicated SKU for buttons can be spent on a better optimized OLED display to reduce lag.
      - fpoling 2y ago
        I am glad that Toyota is not one of those all automotive manufacturers. I have Yaris 2023 model and it has physical buttons for everything.
w-ll 2y ago
I know a lot of people and even Apple seem to think of the SE as "low cost" option. But honestly for me its the size. No phone needs to be bigger than the SE. I get that the phone market is over and so Apple needs to make money with other services, streaming video, games etc and people who do that on their phone want bigger phones. But i just need something for calls/txt/music/ the occasionally maps or web search. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g0Mft1CQ7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g0Mft1CQ7A
- halJordan 2y ago
  If i had for nickel for every person that chimed in saying "i just want a little phone" I could run a factory making SE clones and also pay for the lawyers Apple sends after me for at least ten years.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    And you'll instant go bankrupt. The crowd claiming they only want small phones is just a loud minority, but a minority nonetheless, that doesn't generate the profits needed to maintain the economies of scale and margins the likes of Apple expects. The mass market has spoken on the preference for large phones, massively outselling the small ones. It's not some conspiracy from Apple to kill small phones, they gave consumers small phones, but you weren't buying enough of them to show "line goes up" in the board room, so here we are. MKBHD did a video on how weak consumer demand killed the small phone market.
    - eep_social 2y ago
      I see this post every time the topic comes up. You’ve failed to recognize that apple makes shitty small phones and markets them to match. For example, the iphone 12 mini battery was a dog because despite owning the entire vertical they’ve failed to clamp down on software bloat. Just like every google engineer is running the latest workstation with a 38” monitor, every apple dev is clearly running the latest iphone and doesn’t give a rats whisker for performance on slightly older or less lucrative models.
yunohn 2y ago
It would be really ridiculous if they launch an SE model with AI, while everything except the iPhone 15 Pro/Max don't get AI.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  It'd be ridiculous if it was last year's SE model that got AI while last year's base 15 didn't. But next year's SE model? That's not too surprising. It'll probably be using comparable internals to last year's 15 Pro or something between last year's 15 (base) and 15 Pro. It'd be more ridiculous if they released a phone next year that didn't support their Apple Intelligence features that are getting rolled out starting this year.
  - yunohn 2y ago
    That's fair, and mostly aligns with the rumors that Apple Intelligence will be a subscription service. But it's just weird that there's so much fragmentation before launch - different levels of device and model support - somehow even the ChatGPT integration is gated too despite being literally an API call.
  - tgma 2y ago
    But that's always been true about SE. The processor in SE has always been the top of the line at the time it was introduced, exceeding the previous year's model. To alleviate the pressure on the mainstream model lines, they introduce it with a 6 months lag. This makes quite a bit of sense as the SE is supposed to last 3 years or so before it gets refreshed.
opan 2y ago
It'll have USB-C, right? I think the SE has only had Lightning previously.
- rvnx 2y ago
  Yes because it's required by the regulations in the European Union it's adapted worldwide
jtwaleson 2y ago
I’m still using the first gen SE and love the small form factor. It’s getting slow as websites get bloated but otherwise still works fine including NFC for payments. If the next gen SE is small like the 13 mini I might buy it. If not I’m sticking with this old beauty for as long as humanly possible.
- beretguy 2y ago
  Same here! 4 inch screen - no more, no less - is perfect. I expect it to last me until about early 2040s. The closest thing to SE 1 is this Unihertz Jelly Max with 4.3 inch screen. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-max-the-smallest-5g-smartphone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-max-th...
  - jtwaleson 2y ago
    I think the screen could be a bit bigger like the 13 mini, so smaller bezels. I’ve always used android until 2021 when my phone died and the only replacements I could find were HUGE. So then I picked my wife’s old SE from the drawer and replaced the battery.
- brewmarche 2y ago
  I also have a 1st gen SE still and I did not get the 13 mini because it didn’t come with Touch ID. But now it looks like Apple is never going to bring Touch ID back anyway.
KronisLV 2y ago
I have the iPhone SE 2022 as my daily driver now since the Android battery turned into a pillow. Honestly, it was a nice introduction into the ecosystem - still a device at a price point that I would have never bought unless I needed it for a project (since in general phones nowadays are ripped away from you faster than their hardware ages, at least if you want a system that actually gets security updates), but overall I'm satisfied with it. Except maybe with Apple in general, I feel like for the same project I should have gone for a MacBook that has more than 8 GB of RAM regardless of the exorbitant prices, because that thing replaced my previous netbook when I'm on the move and 8 GB just doesn't feel enough; even if I limit JetBrains IDEs and such to 1 GB of RAM each when doing light dev work, opening the front end and back end already eats into the total memory substantially, in addition to containers.

30 points by znpy 2y ago

>With it potentially costing less than $500, it could be a very low-cost way to get onto the generative AI bandwagon. How much for the one without generative AI?

alephnerd 2y ago
It's a local model. Just don't use like I presume you don't use Siri. Long term it will be a subscription model for certain features so it's opt-in.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  It was a play on the fact that consumers are tired of Gen-AI being shoved everywhere by big-corps as the "killer feature" which is a gimmick nobody asked for.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    Speech-to-text is a great feature and is a machine inference application whether it fits under the "Generative AI" banner or not. The ergonomics of typing on your phone are and have always been bad. I switched to a Pixel because of its greatly superior dictation abilities compared to iOS. They probably do need to be in that feature race because they have been looking pretty shabby of late.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Be careful about straining your voice cords. Dictation is only fine if you’re using it sparingly.
      - sincerely 2y ago
        Do you dictate differently than you normally talk? Or do you tell people who have conversations to be worried about their voice chords?
        jeffbee 2y ago
        This has to have been a wry joke, otherwise it's insane. Example of a non-strenuous dictation task: if I am driving, my Android will read my texts and allow me to reply by voice, a speech-to-text and text-to-speech task that is damned handy.
        Retric 2y ago
        Individual non strenuous tasks still add up, it’s the total amount per day that matters. If you’re just dictating on the drive to work then it’s no big deal, but just because X is fine doesn’t automatically mean 2 X is fine. Conversation between multiple people doesn’t involve one person speaking continuously for hours. As such you can spend a lot more hours per day dictating than is normal, that’s the risk not simply talking an extra 20 minutes per day.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Dictation is only fine if you’re using it sparingly Most correspondence throughout history was dictated.
        Retric 2y ago
        Conversation between people involves a lot of pauses and different people speaking. Dictation for a few hours is a lot more stressful than normal conversation and you’re also speaking in your normal life, it adds up.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      I was talking specifically about Generativ AI, not text-to-speech or speech-to-text since I don't consider those to be generative AI in the Callovian sense that's pushed nowadays and I don't want to be all pedantic about it and start splitting hairs on what technically is and what isn't, just keeping the mainstream frame of what the device manufacturers claim to be gen-AI.
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        > not text-to-speech or speech-to-text since I don't consider those to be generative AI Plenty of TTS, STT, Autocorrect, etc applications are now leveraging LLMs like LLAMA. Functionally, GenAI is just a reskin around "NLP" like Siri. > keeping the mainstream frame of what the device manufacturers claim to be gen-AI If you're leveraging an LLM, it's safe to call it a GenAI product
      - halJordan 2y ago
        It's being shoved down your throat, but even with such a close view you have no idea what it is. And don't want to discuss it because that's "pedantic"?
        Rinzler89 2y ago
        Where did I say you can't discuss it? Feel free to discuss it if you want. Why do you need my permission? You'll just do it without me, since you seem to have a chip on your shoulder for no reason and I don't want to reward such attitudes. I just clarified the gen-AI meaning I used in the context of my comment which is also the context manufacturers are referring to, and not the scientific definitions the AI experts are thinking about since your average consumer has no idea about ML and transformers and all the inner working of what they call AI.
    - polishdude20 2y ago
      About speech to text, are there models or apps that do speech to text but use a bit of AI to infer around the "umms and "uhhs" ? Like if I'm doing a stream of consciousness talk about something while I'm on a hike, there's loads of utterances that would be converted to stuff Id need to edit out if it was a blog post. Or better yet, have me be able to say "oh no, remove that last thing I said about the leprechauns."
    - yunohn 2y ago
      What part of TTS is "generative"? It can definitely use ML/AI, but I fail to see the generative component.
      - jeffbee 2y ago
        It's probably pointless to quibble over the definition since the term is now completely unmoored from whatever term of art it originally resembled.
- iamkonstantin 2y ago
  I don't get why one needs to give up Siri to skip on Apple Intelligence? Is Siri going away? Can aI use a model from an app, instead?
systemtest 2y ago
The one without AI will potentially cost less than €550
- alephnerd 2y ago
  The A18 chip is most likely going to be used in the Apple SE 4. From a resource optimization perspective, their local model will mostly be offloaded onto the A18.
beretguy 2y ago
It does not matter for me because it will be bigger than 4 inches.
iamkonstantin 2y ago
I'm really surprised "with Apple Intelligence" is showing up so soon before "ai" has been proven as even remotely useful.
- bhj 2y ago
  "Apple Intelligence" was named precisely to be a marketing differentiator from any supposed "non-useful AI". It's also a hedge, in a sense.

echelon_musk 2y ago

I'd like to see the 2025 keep the same form factor and button as the 2020 and the 2022. I've been close to upgrading my 2nd gen to a 3rd gen but I think I will hold off until the 4th gen is released. Even if the new model is too big for my taste, second hand 3rd gens should be a bit cheaper.

Manfred 2y ago
Unfortunately it's very likely the button will be gone in favor of Face ID and it's going to use the case design of a previous model so it will get bigger. It's going to suck to operate when wearing a helmet and glasses.
- Etheryte 2y ago
  They could somewhat sidestep this problem if they did what some Android phones do and put a fingerprint sensor into the power button. Not that I think they will do that, but in a different world, they could.
  - al_borland 2y ago
    They did this on some of the iPads. Even with Face ID, I think having a power button sensor is nice for people who often have their face covered and want an alternative biometric auth method.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > but in a different world, they could. The issue is margins. That is an additional SKU to manage, and Apple is extremely ruthless in minimizing redundant components, as this was a major reason Apple had horrid margin in the 1990s. All manufacturers are moving away from buttons for that reason - from automotive to consumer electronics. The same money spent on a dedicated SKU for buttons can be spent on a better optimized OLED display to reduce lag.
    - fpoling 2y ago
      I am glad that Toyota is not one of those all automotive manufacturers. I have Yaris 2023 model and it has physical buttons for everything.

w-ll 2y ago

I know a lot of people and even Apple seem to think of the SE as "low cost" option. But honestly for me its the size. No phone needs to be bigger than the SE. I get that the phone market is over and so Apple needs to make money with other services, streaming video, games etc and people who do that on their phone want bigger phones. But i just need something for calls/txt/music/ the occasionally maps or web search. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g0Mft1CQ7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g0Mft1CQ7A

halJordan 2y ago
If i had for nickel for every person that chimed in saying "i just want a little phone" I could run a factory making SE clones and also pay for the lawyers Apple sends after me for at least ten years.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  And you'll instant go bankrupt. The crowd claiming they only want small phones is just a loud minority, but a minority nonetheless, that doesn't generate the profits needed to maintain the economies of scale and margins the likes of Apple expects. The mass market has spoken on the preference for large phones, massively outselling the small ones. It's not some conspiracy from Apple to kill small phones, they gave consumers small phones, but you weren't buying enough of them to show "line goes up" in the board room, so here we are. MKBHD did a video on how weak consumer demand killed the small phone market.
  - eep_social 2y ago
    I see this post every time the topic comes up. You’ve failed to recognize that apple makes shitty small phones and markets them to match. For example, the iphone 12 mini battery was a dog because despite owning the entire vertical they’ve failed to clamp down on software bloat. Just like every google engineer is running the latest workstation with a 38” monitor, every apple dev is clearly running the latest iphone and doesn’t give a rats whisker for performance on slightly older or less lucrative models.

yunohn 2y ago

It would be really ridiculous if they launch an SE model with AI, while everything except the iPhone 15 Pro/Max don't get AI.

Jtsummers 2y ago
It'd be ridiculous if it was last year's SE model that got AI while last year's base 15 didn't. But next year's SE model? That's not too surprising. It'll probably be using comparable internals to last year's 15 Pro or something between last year's 15 (base) and 15 Pro. It'd be more ridiculous if they released a phone next year that didn't support their Apple Intelligence features that are getting rolled out starting this year.
- yunohn 2y ago
  That's fair, and mostly aligns with the rumors that Apple Intelligence will be a subscription service. But it's just weird that there's so much fragmentation before launch - different levels of device and model support - somehow even the ChatGPT integration is gated too despite being literally an API call.
- tgma 2y ago
  But that's always been true about SE. The processor in SE has always been the top of the line at the time it was introduced, exceeding the previous year's model. To alleviate the pressure on the mainstream model lines, they introduce it with a 6 months lag. This makes quite a bit of sense as the SE is supposed to last 3 years or so before it gets refreshed.

opan 2y ago

It'll have USB-C, right? I think the SE has only had Lightning previously.

rvnx 2y ago
Yes because it's required by the regulations in the European Union it's adapted worldwide

jtwaleson 2y ago

I’m still using the first gen SE and love the small form factor. It’s getting slow as websites get bloated but otherwise still works fine including NFC for payments. If the next gen SE is small like the 13 mini I might buy it. If not I’m sticking with this old beauty for as long as humanly possible.

beretguy 2y ago
Same here! 4 inch screen - no more, no less - is perfect. I expect it to last me until about early 2040s. The closest thing to SE 1 is this Unihertz Jelly Max with 4.3 inch screen. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-max-the-smallest-5g-smartphone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-max-th...
- jtwaleson 2y ago
  I think the screen could be a bit bigger like the 13 mini, so smaller bezels. I’ve always used android until 2021 when my phone died and the only replacements I could find were HUGE. So then I picked my wife’s old SE from the drawer and replaced the battery.
brewmarche 2y ago
I also have a 1st gen SE still and I did not get the 13 mini because it didn’t come with Touch ID. But now it looks like Apple is never going to bring Touch ID back anyway.

KronisLV 2y ago

I have the iPhone SE 2022 as my daily driver now since the Android battery turned into a pillow. Honestly, it was a nice introduction into the ecosystem - still a device at a price point that I would have never bought unless I needed it for a project (since in general phones nowadays are ripped away from you faster than their hardware ages, at least if you want a system that actually gets security updates), but overall I'm satisfied with it. Except maybe with Apple in general, I feel like for the same project I should have gone for a MacBook that has more than 8 GB of RAM regardless of the exorbitant prices, because that thing replaced my previous netbook when I'm on the move and 8 GB just doesn't feel enough; even if I limit JetBrains IDEs and such to 1 GB of RAM each when doing light dev work, opening the front end and back end already eats into the total memory substantially, in addition to containers.