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The iPhone SE 4 might get a 48-megapixel main camera at the rear, according to a supply chain report from ET News.
South Korea’s LG Innotek will supposedly provide both that 48MP sensor as well as a 12MP front camera system with a TrueDepth sensor for Face ID.
If accurate, the new hardware would give iPhone SE 4 the largest camera upgrade in the budget phone’s eight-year history. Every SE model until now has had a 12MP main camera. While initially competitive, that has become more of a limitation as the rest of the lineup has moved to using 48MP sensors for at least the primary cam.
A 48MP rear camera would not only provide sharper ordinary photos but allow for a “lossless” 2X digital zoom that crops in for a 12MP image. You still wouldn’t get the telephoto or ultrawide photography that requires dedicated lenses, but this might make the SE 4 more appealing if you still care about picture quality.
The new phone is believed to be shipping in early 2025, most likely in March as with past models. The existing SE currently starts at a $429 price.
The iPhone SE 4 camera upgrade adds to much-improved specs
Should the iPhone SE 4 get a new camera, it’ll complement an expected redesign that will help the device catch up after years of using an iPhone 8-derived chassis.
The SE is poised to switch from an old 4.7-inch LCD to the 6.1-inch OLED found in the iPhone 13 and 14. It might use a notch for the front camera rather than the Dynamic Island cutout from the iPhone 14 Pro onward, but it could still get a USB-C port and the customizable Action Button introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro.
As with other iPhone SE models, performance could be the main draw. Apple Intelligence needs much more computing power than the current SE’s A15 Bionic chip and 4GB of RAM can deliver, so the fourth-generation model might leap to an A18 with 8GB of memory. That’s what’s found in the regular iPhone 16.
This could be vital to improving Apple’s competitiveness in the mid-range phone space. The present-day SE sometimes lags behind similarly-priced Android rivals like Samsung’s Galaxy A35 5G, Google’s Pixel 8a, the Nothing Phone 2a Plus, and a raft of Chinese phones from affordable sub-brands like Poco and Realme.
Some of those competitors will still have larger screens or a wider variety of included cameras. However, Apple will likely have a much faster chip as well as better core photography and longer software support.
