Rumors of an OLED iPad mini started popping up last year and according to a new leak from Digital Chat Station, the company is currently testing a Samsung-made panel for the new model.
Spotted by MacRumors, the Weibo-based leaker says Apple is evaluating an 8-inch OLED panel from Samsung, but they don’t know what the refresh rate is yet. The LCD display on the iPad mini 7 is 60Hz but it could make sense to expect something higher this time around. The leaker, along with other sources, expects the iPad mini to launch in 2026.
It’s no surprise that the panel is made by Samsung — it’s one of the biggest OLED panel manufacturers out there — but there is differing information on the exact size of the panel. While this leak says 8 inches, a report from December claimed 8.5 inches.
Since the iPad mini isn’t a high-end model like the iPad Pro, it might also have a slightly different kind of OLED panel. iPad Pros use Tandem OLED technology — which means the display actually uses two OLED panels instead of one. Since OLED displays emit light from each pixel rather than relying on a backlight, using two layers means we can get double the brightness and better color accuracy without pushing individual pixels to their limits, which encourages burn-in.
Unsurprisingly, using two OLED panels is more expensive than just using one, which is why the iPad mini might use a single-stack OLED panel. The upside is that this will help the mini stay at a lower price, but it will probably also mean that the display will be dimmer and might not have higher-end features like ProMotion. This is the technology behind the Always On feature, achieved by reducing the refresh rate to as low as 1Hz while the mostly static Always On screen is displayed.
As we know from how good MacBook Pro displays look, OLED displays aren’t automatically better than LCDs — the line is still a bit blurred. Hopefully, a more budget OLED panel on an iPad mini would still be a step up from the previous LCD.
