New rumor matches Apple roadmap: iPad mini 7 to arrive in 2026 with OLED display

The recent Apple roadmap we showed you about a week and a half ago made it pretty clear. The next iPad mini, the seventh-generation model, will not arrive later this year or even next year as we all thought. The roadmap said as clearly as could be that an 8.4-inch iPad mini would arrive in 2026 and would feature an OLED screen. So we really shouldn't be too surprised to see a report out of Korea from Naver (via Wccftech) that says Samsung has started development of an OLED panel in the 8-inch range that would be used for the seventh-gen iPad mini.

The report even included a quote from an "industry insider" who said, "I understand that Samsung Display began developing samples for the OLED iPad mini last month at Apple’s request. After developing initial samples in the first half of this year, we will be able to enter the development stage for mass production within the year." While using an OLED panel for the next iPhone mini model sounds promising, the display probably won't use the tandem OLED tech that Apple employed on the recently released iPad Pro (2024) tablets.

Using two layers of OLED makes the iPad Pro (2024) display much brighter, and also gives it additional durability. However, it also is very expensive to use such displays and while Apple could get away with a price hike for its top-of-the-line tablets, that approach doesn't seem like such a great idea for the iPad mini. Apple raised the price of the lowest-priced 13-inch iPad Pro (2024) by $200 to $1,299 in order to cover some of the additional costs to produce the OLED display. The tech giant doesn't have as much room to maneuver on the iPad mini.

The sixth-gen iPad mini was released in 2021 and the pricing started at $499 for a model with 64GB of storage. It's likely that if Apple does switch to OLED for the seventh-gen version, it also starts the basic model with more storage. This will give Apple the opportunity to recoup some of the cost of switching displays by mixing a price hike in with additional storage capacity for the lowest-priced unit.