Japanese site Mac Otakara, which has a relatively decent track record when it comes to Apple rumours, claims sources inform them the upcoming ‘iPad mini 4’ will debut with hardware from the iPad Air 2, making it essentially a smaller version of the latter:
According to the industry, there is a high possibility that the iPad mini 4 that is rumored to be announced with the iPad Pro is a smaller version of a iPad Air 2.
Compared to iPad Air the height and width of a iPad Air 2 are the same and the thickness is 6.1mm. Similar to this, the iPad mini 4 compared to iPad mini 3 is said to have the same height and width and a thickness of 6.1mm.
Back in March, the site reported the next-gen iPad mini would utilize the A8 CPU found in iPhone 6 models, plus gain support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi. With this latest report, an iPad mini 4 with iPad Air 2 internals would be an upgrade to the latter’s slightly faster A8X CPU.
If rumours nail it, we could see Apple’s tablet line-up consist of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, iPad Air 3 and iPad mini 4. One could assume this would mean the iPad Air and iPad mini 2 would be dropped from the line up to make way for these newer models, leaving the iPad mini 3 as the lone A7-powered tablet.
