A day before the iPhone 16e hits store shelves, the rumor mill is already churning about whether Apple will debut an iPhone 17e in 2026.
The iPhone SE that the new iPhone 16e replaces was only updated three times in nine years. But beginning with Tim Cook's tweet welcoming the iPhone 16e as the newest member of the iPhone family, there's been an idea that Apple may update this new model annually.
That suggestion has now been strengthened by two separate sources that say there will be an iPhone 17e released in February 2026. However, neither source has details and only one seems to have real grounds for the claim.
Leaker "Fixed Focus Digital" has now claimed (in translation) on Chinese social media site Weibo to have evidence. He or she says that "a new project code has been seen, which is suspected to be the iPhone 17e."
Beyond it being perhaps in a Chinese regulatory filing, there's no indication yet where this project code has been seen. It's also very early for any February 2026 product to be listed anywhere, unless the source is actually a confidential listing within Apple.
At the same time, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), says in a new blog post that it expects Apple to announce an iPhone 17e "around this time next year." It reports no sources for this, however, and appears to expect a new model because Google has previously launched similarly named Pixel phones mid-cycle.
Note that CIRP has a poor reputation for citing its sources, and generally for making statistical claims without sufficient detail for them to be measured or verified.
In contrast, Fixed Focus Digital appears to have no more than an average track record for leaks. But it was one of the first, and ultimately also one of the very few, to correctly report that Apple would name its iPhone SE replacement as the iPhone 16e.
