Apparatus and methods are provided to reorder PDCP SDUs. In one novel aspect, a timer-based PDCP reordering process is triggered upon detecting a PDCP gap existing condition, which indicates an SN gap between the PDCP SDUs of two parallel RLC entities larger than zero. The PDCP gap-closing condition is detected when the last-delivered SDU COUNT number plus one equals to the next-expected SDU COUNT number. In one embodiment, all the stored PDCP SDUs with consecutive COUNT numbers starting from the received SDU COUNT number are delivered upon detecting the PDCP gap-closing condition. In another novel aspect, a reordering timer is started upon detecting the PDCP gap condition. In one embodiment, the expiration of the reordering timer triggers the delivery of SDUs to upper layers. In one embodiment, the UE is configured with dual connectivity and the reordering SDU COUNT numbers and the reordering timers are associated with different connectivity configured.