iPhone SE 4 launch reportedly pushed back a week

Late last week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed that the long-awaited iPhone SE 4 — the first cheap Apple handset since 2022’s third-generation iPhone SE — could arrive this week. While Powerbeats Pro 2 arrived as he predicted, it appears that we may be waiting a little longer, but there could still be a few other Apple announcements to bide the time.

In a new post on X, Gurman wrote that while the arrival of the new budget iPhone is “still imminent”, a launch this week isn’t a certainty. Instead, he writes that it “should be announced by next week, when the company is holding product briefings.”

The timing of these product briefings is important. Apple doesn’t tend to pre-brief news outlets about its announcements, so any scheduled events will likely be after the handset has already been revealed — likely between pre-orders and the release date. Given Monday is President’s Day in the U.S., Tuesday or Wednesday seems the likely best day to force-refresh the Apple website, if you’re in the market for a new handset.

Look out for Vision Pro news first

But it sounds like we’ll have other Apple news before then. After updating followers on the iPhone SE 4 latest, Gurman wrote that the company will be a “smaller announcement” tomorrow — today, by the time you’re reading this. He doesn’t elaborate on what this might be, so perhaps brace yourself for something minor or software-related.

Gurman then goes on to say that we can expect a Vision Pro-related announcement on Friday. Apple’s reps for the headset are apparently “reaching out to press” about an upcoming announcement, but again it’s hard to know how big a reveal this will be.

While a cheaper version has been tipped for some time, we should expect something smaller than that for a Friday website update. A price cut is probably wishful thinking, so it’s likely a software update, or maybe just wider availability. Apple has been phasing the rollout of its $3,499 headset, starting in the U.S. before opening up to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore last summer. Most recently, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates joined the list in October, and Taiwan was added in December. But that still leaves huge swathes of the world where you can’t buy it.

Finally, Gurman makes a one-line reference to a new laptop. The M4 MacBook Air, he writes, is due “within weeks”, which is something he again mentioned last week, noting that stocks of the existing models were “dwindling”. Beyond the enhanced power the M4 chipset brings, we’re not expecting any other major changes to the MacBook Air's design, with the displays analyst Ross Young stating last September that the laptop would persist with 13- and 15-inch variants.

Gurman has previously said not to expect an event — live or pre-recorded — to go with the launch of the iPhone 4 SE, and it would be surprising if any of these other announcements were big enough to warrant their own either. So be sure to keep an eye on Tom’s Guide for news and analysis of whatever Apple has up its sleeve.