A new report has two so-called iPhone 9 models arriving this year

iPhone 8 (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

The rumored iPhone SE 2 could be called iPhone 9.
There might actually be two, rather than just one.
But the report isn't particularly solid.

I'll start this by saying that this report comes courtesy of DigiTimes, an outlet that I have previously called "reliably unreliable." So keep that in mind as you read on. But make sure you do read on. Because there might be some meat on these bones after all.

According to the report Apple's long-rumored iPhone SE 2 will instead be called iPhone 9, something we've heard before. That isn't the interesting part here. What caught our eye (via 9to5Mac) was the fact DigiTimes thinks that we'll get two iPhone 9 models this year. Rather than just the one.

The site appears to be basing that on supply chain sources – Chipbond Technology in particular. The company makes display driver chips for LCD screens and it says it's received orders for two different screen sizes. Hence the reason you're reading this today.

There could be a couple of things in play here. The first is that it could just be that Apple is getting its iPhone 9 screens from two different suppliers with slightly different driver chips needed. That's a scenario 9to5Mac suggested and it makes tons of sense. But there's an alternative scenario that might also work.

Is it possible that the previous iPhone SE 2 naming has thrown us all off, and all we're really seeing here is a replacement for iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus? An iPhone 9 lineup replacing iPhone 8 would fill Apple's budget needs. And we've already heard that the so-called iPhone SE 2/iPhone 9 won't have a small screen. It's also said to look like iPhone 8 with new, improved innards. As our very own Rene Ritchie would say, this makes the kind of sense that just....does.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.