The smaller, 4-inch iPhone is coming.
In a lengthy profile on Apple's mobile-chip business in Bloomberg Businessweek Thursday, the authors confirmed several previous reports that Apple will release a smaller iPhone and an updated iPad in March:
In March, Apple intends to announce an updated iPad and smaller-screen iPhone featuring the latest A9x and A9 chips, according to a person familiar with the plans, who wasn’t authorized to comment publicly.
Those are all the details Bloomberg's writers gave, but after weeks of access to Apple's senior vice president in charge of chips, Johny Srouji, it's no stretch to believe the report.
So what can you expect from the new iPhone?
Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac cracked the story before anyone else. According to Gurman, the new iPhone will be called the iPhone 5se, which stands for "Special Edition." It'll have a 4-inch screen and look similar to the iPhone 5s, with some slight tweaks to the design like rounded edges.
The A9 processor is the same on in the iPhone 6s, which means the iPhone 5se will be about as powerful as Apple's flagship phone. It'll also have other features found in the 6s like Apple Pay, Live Photos, and voice-activated Siri, according to Gurman.
Details on the new iPad are a bit more scarce, but according to some leaks it sounds like it'll be an update to the 9.7-inch iPad Air 2. The so-called iPad Air 3 could have better speakers, a connector for a keyboard accessory, and work with the Apple Pencil stylus. (In short, it'll be a smaller version of the iPad Pro that launched last fall.)
Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 5se and iPad Air 3 at an event on March 15, according to Gurman and BuzzFeed's John Paczkowski.
