iPhone 6 SE with iPhone 7 this year

Apple could launch a 4-inch iPhone 6 SE along with the iPhone 7 this year

While news about the iPhone 7 will only increase in number as we near the official launch in September, there’s something new hitting the rumour mill these days, and those would be leaks of an iPhone 6 SE. It was just yesterday that some images of its packaging materials surfaced online and now have a live image of a Geekbench result on the smartphone as well

The Geekbench result, that came from a person in China who claims to have got some time with the handset, shows the phone’s bezels and reveals nothing else. Even though the older images (shown below) of the packaging have revealed that its design would be similar to that of the iPhone 6 and 6s models. What is interesting are the benchmarks, that show some impressive scores.
The iPhone 6 SE shows a single core score of 3042 and multi-core score of 5210. And these are impressive, considering that the currently available Apple iPhone 6s scores 2,542 in the single core test and 4,427 points in the multi-core benchmark.
Shocked? You should be. While the world was waiting for an Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the Cupertino giant may end up surprising fans this year with the launch of a third iPhone in the form of a smaller 6 SE.

As you may have also noticed, the name kind of gives it away that this could be a follow up of the iPhone SE that was launched on March earlier this year. While the iPhone SE looked like a clone of the iPhone 5, it did pack in some upgraded hardware. What was was not so impressive was its price tag and the fact that the base model was a 16GB unit priced at Rs 39,000, which was (and still is) pretty steep for an older looking smartphone. What was also not available on the iPhone SE was 3D Touch, another layer of interaction that was not all that important in iOS 9, but is a big deal with the upcoming iOS 10 firmware update.
My best guess goes with 3D Touch now growing into a necessity, which will find upgraders for the “affordable” iPhone 6 SE. This would complete the line up with an affordable iPhone (by Apple’s standards), a flagship iPhone and Pro-verison of the iPhone. If the smartphone you see in the images above does not feature 3D Touch, it would simply be an unnecessary upgrade that would not find any buyers despite the slightly low price compared to the 6s.