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iPhone SE 2 (or iPhone 9?): This could be our first look

Shubham Agarwal
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Apple is expected to unveil a successor to the beloved iPhone SE sometime in the next couple of months. But you won’t have to wait until the launch for a preview as, courtesy of prolific leaker OnLeaks and iGeeksBlog, we may have today our first look at the iPhone SE 2 (or iPhone 9).

iPhone SE 2 renders
Image used with permission by copyright holder

OnLeaks has shared a series of renders that pretty much suggest the iPhone SE 2 will be an iPhone 8 with 2020 specs. That, unfortunately, means the iPhone SE 2 will have a dated design featuring thick bezels on the front — a far cry from the edge-to-edge screens we’re so used to today.

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There is some positive news, though. Apple seems to have replaced the iPhone 8’s glossy glass back with a frosted one similar to the latest iPhone 11 phones — possibly to enable wireless charging.

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Being a SE, of course, it will be compact and its dimensions will be largely identical to the iPhone 8. There will be a 4.7-inch 720p LCD display without any sort of notches. To cut costs, Apple has also skipped FaceID and instead, bundled a good-ol’ fingerprint sensor and home button on the iPhone SE 2.

The iPhone SE 2 will reportedly be powered by Apple’s flagship A13 Bionic chipset, which is the same one you’ll find on the iPhone 11 series. The battery won’t likely match the iPhone 11 for obvious reasons, although OnLeaks claims the iPhone SE 2 will be a tad thicker than the iPhone 8. The leak doesn’t say anything about how much RAM it will have but an earlier report said the iPhone SE 2 will have 3GB of RAM.

Like the iPhone 8, the iPhone SE 2 will only have a single camera on the back. While its specifics are still under wraps, it will come equipped with nearly all the machine learning camera tricks Apple has introduced in the past two years.

OnLeaks’ new renders fall in line with the predictions of Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who, a few weeks back, said the iPhone SE successor will look like an iPhone 8 but will be as fast as the iPhone 11.

If the rumors and leaks are any indication, the iPhone SE 2 is shaping up to be a compelling midrange phone and could be Apple’s ticket back into budget-conscious markets such as India where it has dramatically lost ground — especially at the $399 price tag Kuo claimed it will launch at. It’s slated to be officially announced sometime in March alongside a couple of new iPads.

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Shubham Agarwal
Shubham Agarwal
Journalist
Shubham Agarwal is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad, India. His work has previously appeared in Firstpost…
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