Recent rumors from Bloomberg suggested Apple plans to update its iPad mini and finally give it the OLED display it has long deserved. As much as that sounds like an obvious upgrade, there’s a new wrinkle: Apple’s 8.3-inch tablet now has competition from the iPhone, of all places.
The A17 Pro iPad mini from 2024 is an excellent companion in a pint-sized package. It’s often my personal pick for a tablet that can easily take notes when I have little desk space to work with. But the $2,000 iPhone Duo with its 7.6-inch interior display is literally a marriage between Apple’s phones and its smaller tablets. The tech giant went as far as to show the pair of devices on a candle-lit dinner date together in a TikTok ad after Wednesday’s big Apple event. The eventual coitus between both devices is what apparently produced the Duo, and now the scion is fully capable of usurping its parent’s place.
Apple spent extra time with iOS 27 to make the Duo function closer to a tablet, especially in its multitasking capabilities. iPadOS 26 allowed you to have multiple apps on-screen at once, but that’s less useful on a smaller screen like the iPad mini. Apple took the dock you normally find on the bottom of iPhones and moved it to the right side, making it easier to operate a wider 1:1.4 aspect ratio screen with one hand opened or closed, something you can’t do with the iPad mini (even though the tablet supports 11 apps in its dock instead of four).
Apple even went as far as to grant Apple Pencil compatibility with the Duo on either the exterior or interior display. This functionality is limited to the Apple Pencil USB-C, not the more capable Apple Pencil Pro. However, the reality is a Pencil Pro’s haptic controls and height and pressure sensitivity are not as useful on a smaller screen. If you’re an artist or creator who can make use of those functions, you’re better off with a larger 11- or 13-inch iPad Air or iPad Pro.
The iPad mini also has a magnetic attachment point for its Apple Pencil, whereas the iPhone Duo doesn’t. The mini’s magnets were already relatively weak, which often defeats the purpose.
So with all this similar functionality, we have to ask: What can Apple do to differentiate its new phone from our poor forgotten tablet? It can’t just be price, especially when an iPad mini now costs $700 with cellular connectivity after recent price hikes.
The Duo is running on the latest A20 Pro processor, which is ostensibly plenty powerful for most mobile tasks. Here’s where Apple could actually differentiate its competing products. The next iPad mini could instead work with an M-series processor that’s already found inside the latest iPad Air and iPad Pro models. This smaller device would naturally need to run that chip at lower power, but it would be a major step up in performance over the Duo.
More than that, Apple needs to think about what versatility it can get from an 8.4-inch tablet. That’s too small to pack a standard Magic Keyboard, but why couldn’t we get innovative with something like a folding keyboard attachment? How about nesting an Apple Pencil inside the tiny tablet so we can avoid the whole question of magnets altogether? If the iPhone Duo proved anything, it’s that Apple’s willing to start innovating again. Let’s hope it manages to do something special with its oft-forgotten iPad.
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