Redesign = Apple Pencil 2, USB-C
No Redesign = Apple Pencil 1, Lightning connector
This seems obvious.
My gut feeling is there will not be a new iPad mini released next week and if there is it is going to be the same design with some updated internals.
I feel like there either isn't going to be an updated model or it will be a design refresh and that's based on the supply chain leakers. The only thing giving me pause is the notion that the mini has a lot more specific industrial use cases in the wild that would be less able to adapt to a changing redesign. Otherwise, it took four years to go from the iPad mini 4 to the fifth generation iPad mini and throughout that time it was looking pretty grim for the future of the iPad mini.
if they get rid of the bezels I'm a player! if not I will buy an air 4
Honestly, I have both the fourth generation iPad Air and the fifth generation iPad mini and the swipe up gesture is not as easy or consistent to use on the former as it is on the latter (as well as the FaceID equipped iPhones). Which is to say that for all the bezel and home button hate, the lack thereof isn't all it's cracked up to be.
A CAD leak for a device that's more than three years old at this point?
The fifth generation iPad mini is just over two years old and well under three. Unless you're talking about the iPad mini 4, which is just over five years old. Either way, if you're trying to leak Apple CAD files and you find a file that says "iPad mini" and is in the same location as the CAD files for other iPads, are you not going to grab it? I'm not saying it's not legitimate. Just that a CAD rendering of an iPad that is externally identical to the current one doesn't really tell us much, especially when in conflict with a number of reliable analysts and leakers.
The point regarding the R&D of the relocated TouchID is a good one - it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to do it for only one device, so they must be considering its application for others. The Mini and the Air have been paired together spec-wise in the past, so this could be very similar.
I will predict: release a Mini 6 in the style of the current Air, but keep the Mini 5 for sale alongside the base iPad.
I could see them continuing to sell the fifth generation mini alongside the sixth, if the sixth brings a massive redesign, but only for the industrial customers for whom a complete redesign would be too drastic of a change to adapt to overnight, assuming that theory has any validity to it. That and/or if the price of said sixth generation iPad mini went up the way the price of the third generation iPad Air went up for the fourth generation.
My scenario:
I love the mini, but:
I hit the home button when I rest my wrist on the screen while using the pen (Goodnotes) - which I use daily. If I'm writing by hand for a bit, I'll usually turn the device upside down so the home button is out of the way. So, I'm hoping for getting rid if the home button - ala iPad Air 4.
Bezels are comically large for the device. I'd love to see it look like an iPad Air 4... and to be honest, I'd rather see an OLED screen like phones/watches.
If none of that happens... I'm holding onto my mini 5.
Again, I own both the fifth generation mini and the fourth generation Air; home button totally aside, swiping up from the bottom to mimic previous home button functionality does not work as well on the Air. I'm usually better off using the five finger pinch gesture that dates back to iOS 5 and circa the first two generations of iPad (before there was mini, Pro, or Air). All that to say, that it's not as effective as it is on iPhones that use it and it makes me miss the home button, even at the nominal cost of bezels. Then again, I never understood people's hate of bezels.
I’m set on cellular this time (had considered ditching it as it didn’t get much use on the iPad 3) however after that, I don’t want to buy another before 5G comes up. I expect to be waiting until 2023 for the Mini.
Air 4 style would however be hard to resist so an underwhelming update would make things easier.
If the Mini goes Air 4 style I could see them keeping the Mini 5 for sale as another poster said, and reducing the price of that to take some of the criticism out of the Mini 6 price increase.
I have cellular on my fifth generation iPad mini. It's awesome. I don't find myself wishing I had 5G; LTE is plenty fast and it's not like I can really do unlimited amounts of downloading or streaming (without getting throttled to a slower connection speed) anyway. Having had cellular on multiple 9.7" iPads, I can definitely say that it makes way more sense on smaller iPads that are more likely to be taken places where Wi-Fi isn't accessible or open. I didn't find myself wanting to cart around my 9.7" iPads to as many places as my iPad mini. Plus the mini fits in my front pants pockets in ways that no other iPad will.
While I would love an update to my beloved mini, I seriously doubt it will happen this year. The current mini's performance is great and it also supports Apple Pencil (1). So what is the point of updating it now? It doesn't need a faster processor at the moment. I also doubt if apple would make a design change to the mini device just for the sake of a design change... So am not getting my hopes up. But if there is redesigned mini, would buy it immediately.
I don't understand the notion of "it doesn't need a faster processor at the moment". All Apple SoCs are only supported for a limited amount of time. The A12 really won't be an exception to that rule. An A14 on the iPad mini means it will last at least two more years before inevitably being rendered a paperweight. The fact that the A12 is decent today doesn't mean that there aren't people out there wanting to buy an iPad mini who won't want their iPad mini to last longer.
We rent these devices, whether we admit it or not, whether we end up surrendering or selling them or not. Eventually they become unusable.
