Apple launches iPad mini with A17 Pro chip built for Apple Intelligence

Launched its new generation of the iPad mini packed with AI features including writing tools and an improved Siri assistant, as the iPhone maker races to boost its devices with artificial intelligence capabilities.

The A17 Pro chip has a six-core central processing unit that boosts CPU performance by 30 per cent compared to the current-generation iPad minis. It is also the key to running Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI software. The A17 Pro is used in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models and replaces A15 Bionic in the previous-generation iPad mini.

New iPad mini unveiled

The new iPad mini is available in four finishes, including a new blue and purple, and features an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display. Its versatility and advanced capabilities will be supported with Apple Pencil Pro, making it even more productive and creative.

The new iPad mini features all-day battery life and iPadOS 18. Its range starts at $499 with 128GB — double the storage of the previous generation. It will be available in stores in the US from Wednesday, 23 October.

Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said: “There is no other device in the world like iPad mini, beloved for its combination of powerful performance and versatility in our most ultraportable design. iPad mini appeals to a wide range of users and has been built for Apple Intelligence, delivering intelligent new features that are powerful, personal, and private.

“With the powerful A17 Pro chip, faster connectivity, and support for Apple Pencil Pro, the new iPad mini delivers the full iPad experience in our most portable design at an incredible value.”

A17 Pro boosts graphics performance with a 5-core GPU, delivering a 25 per cent jump over the previous generation. It will be faster for users to edit photos, and capable of bringing true-to-life gaming with hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

Apple Intelligence

Integrated into iPadOS 18, Apple Intelligence harnesses the power of Apple silicon and Apple-built generative models to understand and create language and images, take action across apps, and draw from personal context to simplify and accelerate everyday tasks.

Private Cloud Compute offers the ability to flex and scale computational capacity between on-device processing and larger, server-based models that run on dedicated Apple silicon servers.

With Writing Tools, users can refine their words by rewriting, proofreading, and summarising text nearly everywhere they write, including Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps.

Siri will get a new design with a glowing light that wraps around the edge of the screen when active on iPad. With richer language-understanding capabilities, communicating with Siri is more natural and flexible. Siri can follow along when users stumble over their words, can maintain context from one request to the next, and now, users can type to it.

In Photos, the Memories feature now enables users to create the movies they want to see by simply typing a description. The new Clean Up tool can identify and remove distracting objects in the background of a photo.

Additional Apple Intelligence features like Image Playground, Image Wand, Genmoji and ChatGPT integration will be rolling out over the next several months.

Pricing starts at $499 (in US) for the Wi-Fi model, and $649 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Storage options are 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. Apple Pencil Pro is available for $129 in the US.