The original iPhone SE was a great release, and the first iPhone I’ve shown up to buy on “opening day”.

What made it great? It was the latest and greatest iPhone available, packed into a 4" screen. The 6S had been released just six months previously, and now you had the exact same phone with a perfect hand-sized screen (recall the neat images showing how un/reachable the 6 Plus was, or this cold take at Forbes wondering if the iPhone 5 would be too tall).

But that was it. Your only sacrifices were no 3D Touch and that your selfie cam was the equivalent of an iPhone 5S. You had the 6S’ main camera & processor, and the old iPhone 5 body meant plenty of space for the battery powering the much less hungry smaller screen.

The SE was a great phone. The best buy in iPhone yet.

The SE 2 might not be so good.

There’s one recent rumor of the SE making a comeback this September. I’m not sure I buy it.

Gui Rambo of 9to5Mac has uncovered a reference to an unreleased ‘iPhone xx’ in Apple’s development app. [XCode] While we don’t expect Apple to release an iPhone 20 or iPhone double X this year, the ‘iPhone xx’ identifier may be a placeholder for a forthcoming model with a different marketing name.

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Other details shared by Rambo upon inspection include the processor associated with ‘iPhone xx’ being the A10. That’s the same chip used in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Apple is expected to unveil three new iPhones next month — a 5.8-inch OLED, 6.1-inch LCD, and 6.5-inch OLED — but including an A10 chip and not an A12 even in the mid-sized budget-priced model is not expected.

I’ve also read that it’s supposed to have the same resolution as a 7, with some folks speculating that perhaps it’s an “iPhone 7c” equivalent – a more inexpensively made 7 to round out the bottom of the iPhone line.

My guess is somebody was adding a new phone to an internal build of XCode and, as all new code seems to be born, copy and pasted existing code, here the iPhone 7 entry, to start. Then this build was accidentally released before they'd updated the listing to whatever phone they meant to be adding.

But let’s pretend it’s true, and that there’s a 4-inch ”iPhone 7" on the way in September.

It’s sad, isn’t it? Instead of the A12 six months later, it’s the A10 a year and a half late.

Labels: apple, iphone, rumor