9to5Mac reports that the upcoming iPhone SE update, due next year, will sport Apple’s first 5G modem, as well as an A18 chip with 8GB of RAM. The article says the smartphone update will also have:
° The same 1170 x 2532 display resolution as the 6.1-inch iPhone 14;
° Flat sides and an OLED display with a notch at the top;
° The same 48MP wide camera and 12MP front camera as the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus (but no ultra-wide or telephoto lenses);
° FaceID added, replacing the Home button with TouchID on the current model.
Apple has been working on an in-house modem for years. In a July post on X (formerly Twitter), analyst Ming Chi-Kuo said Apple is accelerating its move away from reliance on Qualcomm.
He said that, in 2025, two new iPhone models will ditch Qualcomm’s 5G chips and adopt Apple’s in-house 5G chips: the iPhone SE 4 (first quarter of 2025) and an ultra-slim iPhone 17 (the third quarter of 2025).
Apple acquired Intel’s smartphone modem business in July 2019 and added 2,200 Intel engineers to its chipset operations globally.
