I suppose it’s telling that the most interesting and surprising thing about the just-announced 7th-generation iPad mini is the processor Apple put inside.
For fans of the iPad mini who were hoping that after three years there would be some substantial upgrades, this announcement is undoubtedly disappointing. This is absolutely a minor upgrade, with some (disappointing) color changes, slight improvements to Wi-Fi and HDR, added support for Apple Pencil Pro, and not a lot more—except for the big one.
The big one is that it’s using an A17 Pro processor, the same one found in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro, and that means it’s the first iPad mini to be compatible with Apple Intelligence.
The surprise is that they’re using that A17 Pro processor, rather than the A18 found in the new iPhone 16. The A17 Pro was the first chip built on TSMC’s first-generation 3nm chip process, which was a milestone in chip design—but also, as it turns out, a dead end. TSMC shifted to a newer, more efficient second-generation process, and that’s what Apple is using in its 2024-vintage processors: the M4, A18, A18 Pro. The forthcoming M4 Pro and M4 Ultra processors will be on that process, too.
Based on various reports, it seems like Apple’s goal is to turn over its entire Mac product line to the M4, so they can leave the old process (used on the M3 as well as the A17 Pro) behind. And yet… here’s a new product that uses a chip on the old process that everyone is trying to drop like a hot rock? What?
That’s why my guess is that the new iPad mini is using this chip for non-technical reasons. Here are the possible explanations:
- Apple ended up with excess A17 Pro chips after discontinuing the 15 Pro
- These are all just binned versions (with five GPU cores instead of six) that didn’t make the cut for the iPhone and were sitting around to be repurposed in another product
- Apple has a contract with TSMC that includes enough capacity for them to continue building this chip until that deal runs out
- The design of the iPad mini predated the arrival of the A18 chip generation
- Apple didn’t want to divert any of a presumably limited quantity of fresh A18 chips to the iPad mini when it had iPhone 16s to build
Regardless, I feel like there are a few nuggets of good news for iPad mini fans here. First, the new iPad mini does support Apple Intelligence, and the A17 Pro is quite a bit faster (25 percent in single core, 40 percent in multicore) than the A15 Bionic overall.
Second, while it’s certainly possible that Apple has stockpiled enough five-GPU A17 Pro chips to make three years’ worth of iPad minis, this model feels more like a holding action that gets the iPad mini onto Apple Intelligence… while also using up some amount of chip excess. If I had to predict when we’ll see a next-next-generation iPad mini, I think I’d guess that it will probably be sooner than three years from now.
But for people like my pal Sparky who really want an iPad mini pro, this release is understandably deflating. Apple continues to view the iPad mini as an iPad air-class device in a smaller case, and the high-end features seem likely to remain out of reach for quite some time.
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