The wait for a new iPad mini is nearly over. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, a next-generation model should be announced and launched in the coming weeks. This will end a long, three-year wait for a fresh iPad mini. Gurman says the seventh-generation iPad mini 7 could ship on Friday, November 1, after an announcement toward the end of this month.
Little is known about the new iPad mini, although we can probably make some educated guesses. The device will most likely feature an Apple M2 chip, the same one found in the iPad Air (2024). The new tablet could also come with a 12MP ultrawide camera in landscape orientation, provide support for the Apple Pencil Pro, and bring various other improvements.
The iPad mini 7 almost certainly won’t be the only new Apple product announced sometime this month. Gurman also expects the company to announce new Macs with variances of the M4 chip installed. These should include new versions of the MacBook Pro, iMac mini, and iMac mini.
Apple’s plans to update the regular iPad, which was last updated in 2022, were not mentioned in Gurman’s latest article.
Apple’s iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 updates are expected to launch before the end of October. Therefore, it’s probably safe to assume the iPad mini 7 will ship with iPadOS 18.1. The first parts of Apple Intelligence are set to launch in iOS 18.1, including Writing Tools, a suite of AI-driven features that perform tasks like summarization, proofreading, and style adjustment. Other Apple Intelligence components will arrive later, in the coming months.