Apples upcoming iPad mini might be a lot pricier than the last one

Apple's upcoming iPad mini will be a major upgrade, but will come with an equally major price increase.

This is according to a new report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who claims that the 2026 iPad mini will cost close to $799, up two hundred bucks from the $599 starting price of the previous model.

The new device will reportedly be the first iPad mini to come with an OLED display, and it will also be equipped with Apple's new A20 Pro chip, a new speaker system, and a horizontally-placed FaceTime camera.

At $799, the iPad mini might still be good value, but it would be significantly pricier than the $449 iPad and even the $749 iPad Air (assuming, of course, that those devices remain at those price points, which isn't certain given the memory supply crunch that's driving gadget prices up).

Given the imminent advent of Apple's first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, we'd hoped that the iPad mini/iPhone combo would be a cheap alternative to the Duo's $1,999 starting price. Carrying two devices around instead of one elegant foldable is not the same thing, but you do get similar functionality for less money, at the expense of some practicality. But the new iPad mini pricing, if accurate, sours that deal quite a bit.

The new iPad mini is likely to launch in late October, alongside the company's first-ever touchscreen MacBooks as well as a new iMac computer.

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