Apple Unveils OLED iPad mini With A20 Pro Chip, From $699
The 8.5-inch tablet is 5.4 mm thick, with preorders starting October 28 and availability from November 6.
Photo: Amada44 / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Apple announced a new iPad mini on Monday, October 26, with an OLED display and its A20 Pro chip, according to TechCrunch. The Wi-Fi model costs $699 and the Wi-Fi plus cellular model costs $849. Preorders open on October 28 and the tablet reaches customers on November 6.
Display and design
The 8.5-inch screen is a Super Retina XDR OLED panel with pixel-level lighting control. Apple lists the following figures:
- Peak brightness up to 1,200 nits, more than twice the previous generation.
- Full-screen brightness of 600 nits for SDR and HDR content.
- A 2 million to 1 contrast ratio and wide P3 color.
- An optional nano-texture finish to reduce glare, previously offered on the iPad Pro.
The device is 5.4 mm thick and thinner and lighter than its predecessor, and comes in two colors.
Chip and features
The A20 Pro has a six-core CPU that Apple says delivers up to 60% faster multithreaded performance. Its seven-core GPU includes a Neural Accelerator in each core, and Apple claims up to 4.5 times faster AI performance than the previous iPad mini. These are Apple's own figures and have not been independently tested.
Other additions include:
- a 12-megapixel Center Stage front camera;
- an "Acoustic Display" that integrates woofers into the screen for deeper bass and higher volume;
- faster wireless and cellular connectivity and fast charging.
The iPad mini will ship with the next generation of Apple Intelligence and Siri AI.
Context
The launch comes two days before Apple's "Pro and Tell" event on Wednesday, which this site previously covered in the context of reports about new MacBook Pro models. It follows the October 13 event at which Apple introduced its HomeView smart display. TechCrunch's report did not list storage capacities or the names of the colors.
