Apple has unveiled the latest iPad mini, now equipped with the powerful A17 Pro chip and featuring Apple Intelligence™, a context-aware personal assistant designed to enhance user productivity while safeguarding privacy. This updated iPad mini maintains its ultraportable design and is available in four attractive finishes, including new blue and purple options, all paired with an impressive 8.3-inch Liquid Retina® display.
The A17 Pro chip significantly boosts performance, offering faster CPU and GPU capabilities along with a Neural Engine that is twice as fast as the previous generation. Supporting Apple Pencil Pro™, the new iPad mini enhances both productivity and creativity. Its 12MP wide rear camera includes Smart HDR 4, which improves dynamic range for natural-looking photos and utilizes machine learning to scan and detect documents directly within the Camera app.
With all-day battery life and the latest iPadOS® 18, the iPad mini introduces exciting new features and improved power efficiency. Starting at $499 for 128GB of storage, which is double the capacity of the previous model, the device is available for pre-order now, with shipping commencing on October 23.
The A17 Pro chip represents a significant upgrade over the A15 Bionic in the earlier iPad mini, providing a 30% increase in CPU performance through its 6-core setup, which includes two performance cores and four efficiency cores. Graphics performance also receives a notable enhancement with a 5-core GPU, delivering 25% faster graphics than the previous model. The A17 Pro chip unlocks a wide range of new applications, from professional-grade software used by designers and doctors to immersive AR experiences. Additionally, the iPad mini offers enhanced gaming performance with 4x faster hardware-accelerated ray tracing, supporting features such as Dynamic Caching and hardware-accelerated mesh shading for smooth and detailed graphics.
Apple Intelligence, powered by the A17 Pro chip and integrated into iPadOS 18, significantly enhances the user experience by offering context-aware suggestions and actions across various applications. Many of these advanced capabilities are processed directly on-device to ensure user privacy, while Apple’s Private Cloud Compute system manages more intensive tasks using dedicated servers. This balance allows users to perform everyday tasks faster and more intuitively while retaining control over their data.
The first set of Apple Intelligence features will be rolled out this month with iPadOS 18.1, available in U.S. English through a free software update. These features will be supported on iPads equipped with the A17 Pro or M1 chips and later models. Apple Intelligence introduces a suite of tools designed to simplify everyday tasks and enhance the overall user experience.
One standout feature is Writing Tools, which enables users to refine their text through functionalities like rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing across applications such as Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party platforms. This feature provides intuitive ways to improve written content in various contexts.
Siri® has also undergone significant upgrades. It is now more deeply integrated into the system, featuring a new interface that includes a glowing light around the edge of the screen when activated. Siri’s language understanding capabilities have been enhanced, making interactions more natural and flexible, even when users fumble over their words. It can maintain context across multiple queries and now includes a “type to Siri” feature for added versatility. Additionally, Siri can provide detailed information about iPad features and other Apple devices, further enhancing user support.
In the Photos app, the Memories feature allows users to create personalized movies simply by typing a description. The Clean Up tool enables users to remove distracting elements from the background of photos without affecting the main subject, streamlining the editing process.
Additional Apple Intelligence features are slated for release in the coming months. Image Playground will allow users to create playful visuals quickly, while the Image Wand, a new tool in the Apple Pencil® palette, will transform rough sketches into polished images. Users will also have the ability to create custom Genmoji™ emojis based on text descriptions or photos of friends and family, taking emoji creativity to new heights.
Siri is expected to evolve further, drawing on personal context to provide more tailored responses and actions. It will gain onscreen awareness, allowing it to interact with users’ content and perform hundreds of new actions across Apple and third-party apps, enhancing the overall functionality of the iPad experience.
iPadOS 18 will integrate ChatGPT, enabling users to access its extensive knowledge base and capabilities directly through Siri and Writing Tools. This integration allows for seamless use of ChatGPT’s document- and image-understanding features without the need to switch between applications. To prioritize user privacy, measures are in place to obscure users’ IP addresses, and OpenAI will not store requests. Users can access ChatGPT for free without needing to create an account, although those who opt to connect their accounts will be subject to ChatGPT’s data policies.
The updated iPad mini enhances productivity on the go with improved wireless and wired connectivity. With support for Wi-Fi 6E, the device offers up to twice the performance of its predecessor, allowing users to download files, stream movies, and play online games more efficiently. For users opting for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model, 5G connectivity ensures quick access to files, seamless communication, and rapid data backups. The cellular models are equipped with eSIM technology, enabling users to digitally transfer their existing plans and store multiple cellular plans on a single device, eliminating the need for a physical SIM card. This technology supports wireless data plans in over 190 countries and regions worldwide. The USB-C port, now twice as fast as the previous generation, delivers data transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, making the import of large files such as photos and videos quicker and more efficient.
The iPad mini’s portability is further enhanced by its advanced camera capabilities, which support mobile workflows. The 12MP wide back camera captures high-quality photos, and with Smart HDR 4, these images exhibit increased detail and vibrancy. Utilizing AI through the 16-core Neural Engine, the iPad mini can automatically detect documents within the Camera app, while the new True Tone® flash effectively eliminates shadows in scanned documents. The 12MP Ultra Wide front camera, designed in portrait orientation, features Center Stage™, ensuring users remain in focus during video calls or recordings.
The Apple Pencil Pro significantly expands the creative potential of the iPad mini, transforming it into a portable sketchbook ideal for artists and designers. This advanced stylus can sense pressure, allowing users to quickly access a tool palette for seamless adjustments, such as switching tools, line weights, or colors, which facilitates smooth creative workflows. Equipped with a custom haptic engine, the Apple Pencil Pro provides tactile feedback during use, enhancing precision control. Users can also rotate the Apple Pencil Pro to change the orientation of brush and pen tools, closely simulating the experience of working with traditional pen and paper. Additionally, with hover support, users can preview tool orientations before making a mark, further streamlining the creative process. The Apple Pencil Pro pairs, charges, and is stored via a new magnetic interface on the iPad mini, and it also supports Find My® for easy tracking.
For those engaged in note-taking, sketching, and various general tasks, the iPad mini also supports the Apple Pencil (USB-C), providing an affordable and versatile tool for everyday use.
iPadOS 18 introduces a range of new features designed to enhance the overall iPad experience, offering greater versatility and intelligence. The operating system integrates advanced frameworks like Core ML®, enabling developers to leverage the Neural Engine for powerful on-device AI features.
One notable addition is the Calculator app, optimized for use with the Apple Pencil. This app includes basic and scientific calculators, a history function, and unit conversions. Users can now write mathematical expressions using the Apple Pencil or type them, and the app will solve them instantly. The Math Notes feature enables users to create variables, solve equations, and generate graphs, with these notes accessible in the Notes app where all math functionalities can be applied to standard notes.
The Notes app has also undergone significant improvements with Smart Script, which enhances the editing of handwritten text. Users can easily add spaces, insert typed text into their handwriting, and have their handwriting automatically refined for better legibility. As users write with the Apple Pencil, their text becomes smoother and more readable in real time.
iPadOS 18 further introduces Audio Recording and Transcription, capturing audio from lectures or conversations while syncing it with a searchable transcript. This feature allows users to quickly locate specific moments in a recording, thereby enhancing productivity and organization.
Customization reaches new heights with iPadOS 18. Users can personalize their Home Screen by placing app icons and widgets anywhere they choose, adjusting their size, and applying dark or tinted effects. The redesigned Control Center now offers quicker access to frequently used controls and includes new options for organizing third-party app controls, making the overall user experience more intuitive and efficient.
The Photos app receives its largest update yet in iPadOS 18, featuring a more intuitive layout that fully utilizes the iPad’s larger screen. This update simplifies the browsing experience by allowing users to explore photos by theme, eliminating the need to sort images into albums and streamlining photo management.
In the Messages app, users can now express themselves with exciting new animated text effects and redesigned Tapbacks. Additionally, the ability to schedule messages for later delivery adds flexibility to communication, making conversations more dynamic. These enhancements, along with improved AI capabilities, position iPadOS 18 as a comprehensive update that significantly elevates the iPad’s functionality across various tasks.
Pre-orders for the new iPad mini are available starting today, October 15, through apple.com/store and the Apple Store® app in 29 countries and regions, including the U.S. The device will start arriving for customers and will be available at Apple Store locations and through Apple Authorized Resellers beginning Wednesday, October 23.
The new iPad mini offers four attractive color options: blue, purple, starlight, and space gray. Pricing starts at $499 (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi model and $649 (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. The base configuration now includes 128GB of storage—double that of the previous generation—with additional options available in 256GB and 512GB configurations.
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