It’s long been rumored that the next iPad mini will have an OLED display, a significant upgrade in display technology, as OLED provides brighter whites, deeper blacks, improved contrast ratios, and better efficiency. But that’s not the only upgrade coming to the 8th-generation iPad mini; according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, in his weekly Power On newsletter, the next iPad mini will deliver a “major processor leap.”
As you may know, the current iPad mini features the A17 Pro chip, which suggests we could see the A19 Pro or the A20 Pro chip. I’d be leaning more towards the latter, and here’s why.
Back in the September 2021 event, Apple not only introduced the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, but the company also introduced the iPad mini (6th generation). Although both the iPhone 13 Pro and the iPad mini 6 featured the same variant of the A15 chip with 5 GPU cores, the one on the iPad mini 6 was actually underclocked from 3.23 GHz to 2.92 GHz.
It wouldn’t be until three years later, in October 2024, that Apple updated the iPad mini again with the A17 Pro chip, which made its debut on the iPhone 15 Pro series introduced in September 2023. However, not all chips are created equal because the A17 Pro chip on the iPad mini 7 is actually a binned variant with 5 GPU cores (vs. 6 GPU cores on the iPhone 15 Pro).
The next iPad mini is expected to come out this October, one month after Apple is likely to debut the iPhone 18 Pro series and the “iPhone Ultra” foldable. Since the upcoming flagship smartphones are likely to feature the A20 Pro chip, I’m expecting the next iPad mini to feature the A20 Pro chip as well, but it will likely still be a binned variant, likely to keep costs down, and I’m sure Apple has had tons of those binned chips lying around when the company is currently mass-producing that chip ahead of the fall launch. This will also allow Apple to reserve its supply of binned A19 Pro chips for potentially the next-generation MacBook Neo whenever that comes out.
We’ll just have to wait and see, but with a larger OLED display, faster Apple silicon, a vibration-based speaker system, and improved water resistance, this is shaping up to be the “biggest” upgrade for the iPad mini yet.
