The current top-end iPad Pro features a Mini-LED backlit panel with excellent brightness and reasonable color accuracy. It comes with Dolby Vision HDR, and it’s probably one of the best displays on a tablet. In 2024, Apple could launch a new iPad Pro line with OLED displays. The rumors say Apple will use a flexible hybrid OLED for incredibly high brightness and even better contrast and color accuracy.
While we wait for Apple to launch the 2024 iPad line, there are several leaks about the company’s future endeavors with the iPads. Apple is apparently planning to launch a foldable iPad in the future, according to a Korean blog, The Elec.
Last year, Samsung’s display division and also LG’s division supplied samples of foldable display panels to Apple. The company is planning to launch a 7″ to 8″ foldable to replace the current 8″ iPad Mini. This isn’t greenlit for mass production yet, and the launch is not final. Apple might not consider it valuable to launch a foldable product if AR/ VR technology takes off. If further development is positive, Apple’s first foldable product will be an iPad. We don’t know any of the specs yet, but we can expect it to ship with Apple’s latest A-series chip at the time.
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However, there are some conflicting reports about this. The iPad Mini is a 500$ tablet, and it’s relatively affordable for the masses. People shopping for the iPad Mini and those shopping for a luxury foldable are two totally different target audiences. The latter market is obviously a much smaller number, and Apple will mostly not want to lose out on the audience for a smaller tablet. Apple is supposedly developing an OLED model of the iPad Mini as well.
In case Apple decides to launch the foldable iPads in 2026, only Samsung’s display division is capable of this project at such high numbers with Apple’s quality demands. LG will mostly start their supply a year later. After the foldable iPad Mini, Apple is also planning a 20″ foldable laptop, OLED MacBooks, and some other projects.
While the hardware is still very good on current iPads, software remains a key limiter. We’re not sure whether Apple will improve it this year. The rumored price of these new OLED iPad models is around 1500$. So, we expect it to ship with a much better operating system than iPadOS.
iPadOS is severely limiting the potential of the M2, and when charging 1500$, the standards must be higher than that. There are some leaks of Apple bringing a version of scaled-back macOS to iPads, but we have to see how that plays out.
