Now You SE It, Now You Still Don’t: Did the iPhone SE 4 Just Leak?

The iPhone SE has always occupied a sort of unenviable position as Apple’s littlest child. The younger kid brother your neighbor friend had that always wanted to tag along but who couldn’t keep up.

There’s nothing wrong with the smaller, more affordable iPhone as a mid-priced alternative to the pricey, pricier, and priciest full-sized iPhones, but Apple tends to go through cycles of receiving all kinds of flak for not offering an iPhone sized for smaller hands, and then coming out with one (an SE) that sells disappointingly.

We’re onto the fourth iteration of the SE, which is expected later this year, and the leaks are starting to roll in. If the 10-second video and accompanying photographs, shared by Majin Bu, actually show what it claims to show, then we’ve got our first look at Apple’s upcoming iPhone SE 4. And it’s lacking one majorly anticipated feature: the dynamic island.

an island of doubt

Apple’s dynamic island is a sweet piece of technology. It replaces the notch in the center top of the iPhone’s screen. There’s still a blacked-out, horizontal oval without pixels, behind which sits the hardware for FaceID and the front-facing camera, but it’s much smaller than the old-style notch that used to hide that gadgetry.

The trick is in how the dynamic island utilizes that space. It blocks off space surrounding that blacked-out space, turning it into a longer pill-shaped that, because there are pixels in this part of the screen, can display relevant data to an app actively being used in the background.

Waiting for an Uber? It’ll show you your ride’s details in that little area of the screen, no matter which app you’re in, or even if you’re tooling around on the home screen or in the settings. Have a timer set? It’ll keep a countdown of the time left.

Listening to Spotify? It’ll show your song details. Just tap it to take to you the relevant app. Many more apps utilize the dynamic island.

And if you don’t want to look at it, a horizontal swipe across it shrinks it back down and removes the dynamic elements. I use it all the time on my iPhone 15 Pro, though. It may have been my favorite upgrade from my iPhone 13 Pro. Yeah, even more than the move to a USB-C connection. It’s that sweet.

Veteran Apple tipster Evan Blass stated a week ago (reported by 9to5Mac) that the iPhone SE 4 would have the dynamic island, though, alongside images that (faintly) show a dynamic island on an SE-sized iPhone. Who to believe?

The SE range of iPhones has always been the last in line to receive the best goodies as they take a few generations to trickle down from the mainstream iPhone range. It’d be somewhat surprising to see the dynamic island make it to the SE 4 three years after it debuted on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max in September 2022.

It’d be a bummer—an understandable one, though—if Bu’s leaks are correct and the SE 4 soldiers on with the same old notch instead. Apple wouldn’t want to cannibalize sales of its own iPhone 17 (including the ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air), and maintaining the dynamic island as a separate treat for those who spring for a full-sized iPhone is one way to keep people thirsty for the more expensive models.

Apple tends to unveil its annual iPhone refresh every September, with the phones going on sale later that month. We have many more months before Apple deems us all worthy enough for an official peek. Until then, we’ll just have to stay adrift on a sea of doubt, in hopes of one day soon sighting a(n dynamic) island.