Apple's tiny iPad mini gets a bigger OLED screen and water resistance for the first time

Credit: Apple Published Oct 26, 2026, 9:28 AM EDT Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto. Over the past 15 years, he's written thousands of articles. Patrick has also interviewed dozens of tech industry executives and covered GDC, E3, Gamescom, WWDC, Apple keynotes, Samsung Unpacked events and more. Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. Sign in to your XDA account This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.Just like rumors last week hinted at, Apple's redesigned iPad mini has arrived just ahead of its "Pro and tell" event on Wednesday October 28th. The refreshed pint-sized tablet features a larger 8.5-inch OLED display, the A20 Pro chip, better cameras, and for the first time in the iPad mini line, water and dust resistance. The redesigned pint-sized tablet also features an overall thinner and lighter design. On the display front, the new 8.5-inch OLED display features 2x higher peak brightness compared to the last-generation iPad mini, alongside a nano-texture display option, similar to recent iPad Pro releases. The previous generation iPad mini featured an 8.3-inch LCD screen. With this in mind, the larger OLED panel should feature improved blacks and whites, alongside more vibrant colors. At the same time, it's possible that the tablet could feature worse battery life given OLED consumes more power, though this could be offset by the efficiency improvements in the A20 Pro. Regarding the A20 Pro specifically, Apple says that the chip "supercharges Ai with Neural Accelerators in each GPU core," alongside a "Dual 16-core Neural engine). The tiny tablet's camera has been upgraded to a 12-megapixel Center Stage shooter that sits on its landscape edge. Apple says that the new iPad mini is available to pre-order on Wednesday, October 28th starting at $700, with availability launching on November 6th. More to come...