What is the Name of the Newest iPhone?

Leave it to the tech world over to stir itself up over what the name of Apple’s newest iPhone is. Months before the phone was revealed in October 2020, writers wrote of the coming iPhone’s new specs that had been leaked, but of the name they knew nothing for sure, even though they were using iPhone 12 as a placeholder over the summer.

The newest iPhone is called the iPhone 12, with these four models:

• iPhone 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 12 Pro
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 Mini

Each model of the new iPhone 12 has different variations on the main improvements of the A14 chip and 5G cellular. The variations revolve around the camera and the screen size.

And yet one of the biggest mysteries leading up to the iPhone 12’s release was what it would be named. A supposed leak on Apple’s website even led some to believe it would be named the iPhone SE. Ironically it did end up being an iPhone model released on April 24, 2020, expanding the company’s small phone market. But not the iPhone 12.

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The Name of the Newest iPhone

The name of the newest iPhone was leaked sometime in early summer of 2020 and revealed to be the iPhone 12. The iPhone 12, it was discovered and later confirmed at the product’s reveal, has 4 models, as opposed to the usual three. This appears to have been based on the designations of the iPhone 11.

These models all come with the A14 chip and 5G cellular, but they vary in terms of their screen size and the kind of camera they have. You can see the variations of the newest iPhone models in the table below, listed according to their names:

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Buildup to the iPhone 12 Name

As far back as April 2020, a leak on Apple’s website listed products for an iPhone SE, long after the old iPhone SE had ceased production. This led to the belief that the newest iPhone would be named SE, even though that name had been used before.

One writer claimed that there was precedent for such a twist, given the name iPad Air being used twice in the Apple naming lexicon. Prior to that the naming questions revolved around what the new iPhone would actually be named. Another number? An older number?

Even by this time many specs of the iPhone 12 had been leaked and discussed, such as chip size, camera type, etc. The one thing that seemed to be the exclusive secretive property of Apple was the phone’s name.

While Apple has a hard earned reputation for innovation (and deservedly so) the amount of talk over names, names, names, can make you wonder if Apple is charging into new horizons with their tech or just riding on the laurels of their marketing schemes. Possibly both, but that remains to be seen.

What is in a Name?

Apparently a lot. While iPhones are popularly thought of in terms of their numbers, they have had a couple different kinds of names over the years since the line’s first release in 2007. They have followed a mostly sequential order but that order has occasionally been broken up with other names.

For example:

• iPhone SE (for two generations several years apart)
• iPhone 3GS (not then used sequentially)
• iPhone X (even though this references “10” many thought it was “x”)

And so on. Looking at a sequential list of the names, it is hard to tell if they mean something or not. Why S? Why SE? Why Pro? And so forth. Do they stand for something or are they just made up whimsically. As it turns out both answers are sort of true. But it depends on who you ask.

The Meaning of iPhone 12 Name

What does iPhone 12 mean, to say nothing of Mini, Pro and Max? iPhone names have followed a mostly sequential pattern ever since the iPhone 4. The first iPhone was just “iPhone” while the next couple of models started with “3.” As it turns out 3G apparently referenced the cellular technology while “S” (as in 3GS) stood for speed.

It wasn’t until after iPhone 4 that the names appeared to relate to the model’s sequential release. Along the way “S” came to be “special” as in “special edition” and then came to be associated with “X” for the iPhone X (ten), possibly meaning “special” or possibly “Super Retina.”

This shows how the meaning of iPhone names can be somewhat elusive, which possibly is why it is so interesting in the tech world. And According to Apple’s Vice President of Marketing, Phil Schiller, the letters mean nothing at all. But pertinent to the iPhone 12 is how iPhone 11 was named.

It began the trend of using Pro and Pro Max to designate the high end models of the iPhone 11. Now the iPhone 12 has added to this nomenclature with the iPhone 12 Mini. The new line up seems to designate both screen size and financial commitment with the iPhone 12 Mini being the smallest of both and the iPhone 12 Pro Max being the largest.

Why the Inclusion of a Model Named iPhone 12 Mini?

So while the iPhone 12 seems to have gotten its naming style from the iPhone 11 in terms of sequence and models, it has expanded into the small phone world with iPhone Mini. With a screen size of 5.4 inches it seems both the younger sibling of the other iPhone 12s and the older sibling of the iPhone SE.

As mentioned before, the iPhone SE was speculated to be the new name for the phone we now call the iPhone 12. It turns out to have been the name of another new model of iPhone, just not the iPhone 12. The iPhone SE was released with a small screen size of 4.7 inches

Who can say what “SE” means now, but it does seem clear that “Mini” seems clearly to denote that the iPhone 12 Mini is the small version of the iPhone 12 and part of the small phone market that the SE occupies as well.

With a more powerful A14 chip, the iPhone 12 Mini firms up what Apple has done well with iPhones over the years, making them small and highly functional. The trend of smart devices has been toward larger, but the aptly named iPhone 12 Mini will still appeal to Apple users who believe that bigger is not always better.

Conclusion

With so much talk in the tech world in mid-2020 about what the name of the new iPhone would be (and the fact that it was even a secret at all) you cannot help but wonder if this was a product of boredom in the pandemic lockdown in much of America or was it tech writers fishing for news while Apple’s reputation for innovation wanes.

If Apple is getting less innovative as the years go by, the broadening of its models may at least hold onto their market if not actually answer the question. Nevertheless with the sequentially named iPhone 12 and its following of the new precedent of model designations, the iPhone 12 has staked yet another claim in the cellphone market.