Apple rumored to be planning larger OLED iPad Pros for 2024

We last got an iPad Pro refresh in October 2022, when the premium 11-inch and 12.9-inch slates were updated with the Apple M2 processor. According to the rumor mill, those screens will be changing in 2024 when the next models are due to appear.

This comes from display analyst Ross Young, speaking to MacRumors. First, the display technology will apparently be changing from the IPS LCD LED (11-inch) and IPS LCD mini-LED (12.9-inch) of the current iPad Pros to OLED – just like the flagship iPhones.

That should mean even better screens in terms of contrast and darker blacks, though the panels attached to the current iPad Pro range are already impressive. We've been hearing rumors that Apple would switch to OLED on its iPads for some time now.

Changing sizes

There's also going to be a change in the display sizes, Young says. The 11-inch iPad Pro will become an 11.1-inch iPad Pro, while the 12.9-inch iPad Pro will become a 13-inch iPad Pro – not much of a difference then, but one that's worth noting.

It's possible that Apple is going to be able to shrink the bezels on these two premium iPads, so the overall dimensions of the slates would stay the same while the displays get slightly bigger. OLED panels can mean thinner and lighter devices as well.

Additionally, despite earlier leaks suggesting that Apple was working on a super-sized iPad Pro, that's apparently no longer on the way according to Young. It seems that for the next iteration at least, Apple is going to stick to the two sizes we've talked about.

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Analysis: making the iPad Pros more Pro

The iPad Pros have always been high-end luxury devices for those with big budgets who need as much power as possible: bear in mind that the entry-level iPad (yours for $449 / £499 / AU$749) does basically everything that the more expensive models do.

Once the switch to OLED is made, that will be another differentiator that will help to justify the high price of the iPad Pro models. Whether these slates will cost the same remains to be seen – but we're assuming that's what Apple is going to aim for.

The change in size is less interesting, though Apple clearly wants to keep a large iPad Pro in its range. As well as offering more screen space, it helps to give buyers a reason to consider one of the more expensive tablets rather than the iPad Air.

With these updated tablets apparently getting launched in 2024, it could be a quiet 2023 in terms of Apple tablets. That might give its competitors time to catch up, but it also means there should be a substantial performance boost when the new iPad Pros do appear.

• These are the best iPads you can buy right now

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The iPad mini 7 is rumored to be on the way – but might not arrive until 2024

What with the iPad mini 6 launching in September 2021, it would be reasonable to expect a follow-up appearing in September 2022 – but of course we haven't seen any such tablet, and the rumor is that we might not get one until early in 2024.

This comes courtesy of reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who reckons that the next small slate that Apple releases is going to start shipping by the end of 2023 or in the first half of 2024 (though it's not clear what that's dependent on).

Kuo goes on to say that the "main selling point" of the iPad mini 7 is going to be a new processor. The current model carries the A15 Bionic chipset that also appeared in the iPhone 13 series that Apple unveiled at the same time as the iPad mini 6.

Folding iPads

This iPad mini claim was actually preceded by another bit of crystal ball gazing by Kuo: he says that a foldable iPad is  "unlikely" to replace the iPad mini in 2025, a move that has been "previously predicted" in some quarters of the industry.

The analyst points out that a foldable iPad is going to cost substantially more than the iPad mini – the model on sale now goes for $449 / £479 / AU$749 and up – and that suggests that the future of the iPad mini is safe for the time being.

We've heard plenty of talk about a foldable iPhone in recent years, but less so about a foldable iPad. They might in fact be one and the same device: an iPhone-sized gadget when it's folded, and an iPad-sized tablet when the screen is opened out.

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Analysis: Apple evolves its product line

There's clearly one area where Apple lags behind Samsung at the moment: foldable devices. Apple doesn't have anything to match the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 or the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, and that's something of a problem.

Apple being Apple, it's not going to want to dive into the foldable device market until its sure that the technology has reached a satisfactory level – and we'd say that's definitely the case with the foldables on the market at the moment.

With that in mind, a prediction of 2025 for the launch of something foldable by Apple – whether it's marketed as an iPhone or an iPad – looks about right. We suspect the first Apple foldable will run iPadOS, so a folding iPad seems more likely right now.

Meanwhile the iPad mini lives on, apparently – at least for the time being. It doesn't appear to be one of Apple's top priorities (with no product refresh this year), but we imagine that there are still plenty of people out there who prefer the smaller form factor.

• We can direct you to the best iPad for you

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Could 2023 finally be the year of the color Kindle?

Color ereaders aren't new, we've had a fair few come through from smaller players in the ereader market, particularly from Chinese company Onyx and Switzerland-based Ukrainian brand PocketBook. We've even tested a few here at TechRadar – such as the Onyx Boox Nova 3 Color and the PocketBook InkPad Color – but we've never really enjoyed how the colors looked on screen.

They look very washed out and unsaturated – and that's because of limitations in the screen tech that's been used so far. Most of the current color ereaders use E Ink Kaleido screens, which have the capability of displaying 4,096 colors at no more than 100ppi resolution. And the reason colors look faded is because of filters layered on the screen.

Those washed-out colors on an ereader should soon be a thing of the past, however, with E Ink letting loose its Gallery 3 screen tech (announced earlier in 2022) to be mass produced, and this promises to make reading digitally in color a far more pleasing experience – great news for fans of comics and graphic novels.

The E Ink Gallery 3 color screen tech can display over 50,000 colors – putting the Kaleido displays to shame – and at the usual 300ppi to match the monochrome screen. Importantly, the colors should look nice and bright thanks to a four-particle ink system for each pixel. The cyan, magenta, yellow and white pigments should allow for a much fuller color gamut.

And this screen is being mass produced for mainstream use, with PocketBook already announcing that its next ereader – the PocketBook Viva expected to hit shelves in March 2023 – will carry this new screen tech.

Viva la color

(Image credit: PocketBook)

When the PocketBook Viva becomes available in March 2023, it will likely be the first E Ink Gallery 3-toting color ereader in the market; it's definitely the first to be announced.

The Viva is going to be an 8-inch tablet, with a design identical to the rather good-looking PocketBook Era. And, like the Era, it will sport a built-in speaker as well. That's not what's got us excited about trying out the Viva; we're really keen to see how the colors pop on screen.

Typically, most ereader makers have their own proprietary frontlight tech being used on their devices. The Gallery 3 screen, however, comes with E Ink's own ComfortGaze frontlight technology built in, which promises to reduce the effects of blue light. According to E Ink, the new screen is capable of reducing blue light by up to 60% – this is important, as color ereaders don't sport adjustable light temperatures to avoid images and text appearing... well, jaundiced. 

Kindle the color-ereading future

PocketBook isn't the only brand to partner with E Ink on adopting the Gallery 3 screen. Onyx has also done so, but we're yet to hear about a color e-ink tablet using this new screen tech from the Chinese manufacturer. Other companies have also signed up – iFlyTek, Sharp and iReader just to name a few. When alternatives to the PocketBook Viva will be available, however, is anyone's guess.

Smaller ereader makers aside, we're yet to see the big players give customers a color option – so far, there's not a single color Kindle or Kobo. It's somewhat understandable that neither Amazon nor Kobo wanted to adopt the E Ink Kaleido screens and their predecessors, given the compromises.

With the availability of the E Ink Gallery 3 screen, though, we're hoping this will change and that the next e-ink device to join our best ereader round-up would be a color Kindle or Kobo. Here's hoping.

• Can't decide between a Kindle or a Kobo? Find out how the two systems differ.

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The all-new iPad Pro crashes to a record-low price – and arrives before Christmas

If you're searching for a stellar iPad deal that also arrives in time Christmas, we've just spotted Apple's all-new iPad Pro down to a new-low price at Amazon. For a limited time, you can get the 11-inch iPad Pro on sale for $719.99 when you apply the additional $9 discount at checkout. That's a total saving of $80, and $10 less than Black Friday's recent deal. (Not in the US? Scroll down to see the best iPad deals where you are.)

Apple's 2022 iPad Pro features an 11-inch Liquid Retina display and Apple's powerful M2 chipset, which delivers laptop-like speed, exceptional graphics, and all-day battery life. The tablet also includes a 12MP Wide camera, 10MP Ultra Wide back camera, and Face ID for secure authentication.

Today's offer is the lowest price we've ever seen for the iPad Pro, and if you're ordering it today as a gift it'll arrive in time for Christmas – although obviously that's less likely to be the case as we get closer to December 25.

If you're looking to shop for more holiday bargains, you can see our Christmas sales roundup with deals from Walmart, Best Buy, and more.

Today's best iPad deal

 iPad Pro 11 2022 (128GB): was $799 now $719.99 at Amazon
Apple's 2022 iPad Pro is getting a massive $80 discount when you apply the $9 coupon at checkout, which brings the 11-inch tablet down to a record-low price of $719.99. The Pro line sits at the top of Apple's tablet pile, and discounts are few and far between, especially on the latest 2022 model, so this is a deal that's not to be missed. Arrives before ChristmasView Deal

• See more of today's best holiday deals at Amazon

More iPad deals

You can see more of the best cheap iPad deals and if you're interested in Amazon devices you can see the best cheap Amazon Fire tablet deals.

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Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU spotted with new Raptor Lake CPU in gaming laptop

Nvidia’s RTX 4090 laptop GPU has been spotted in an HP Omen gaming notebook, along with a raft of other Lovelace mobile graphics cards, plus these portables are all powered by an imminent new Raptor Lake mobile CPU.

This leak comes from @momomo_us on Twitter (as VideoCardz flagged), who spotted the HP Omen machines listed on a European retailer’s website, but given that this is an unknown retail outlet, we need to be particularly careful around these rumored specs provided via product listings.

pic.twitter.com/wGR7TFy4plDecember 11, 2022

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The retailer lists six variations of the incoming HP Omen 17 which are all powered by Intel’s Core i7-13700HX CPU – a mobile part expected to be revealed at CES – and they all have Nvidia Lovelace GPUs.

The top-end model runs with the RTX 4090 laptop graphics card which is listed with 16GB of VRAM (no other specs are provided here, by the way, just the memory configuration).

We also see two Omen 17 laptops with an RTX 4080 (equipped with 12GB VRAM), one machine with an RTX 4070 (8GB), and another pair with the RTX 4060 (also 8GB).

The prices are in Lei, Romanian currency – so we can assume this is a Romanian retailer, naturally – and the top HP Omen with RTX 4090 is going for 18,881 Lei. That converts to roughly $4,000 / £3,300 / AU$6,000, but take that with even more seasoning than the rest of this leak (which is to say a whole lot).

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Analysis: A beast of a laptop flagship?

If this leak proves to be correct, then we are apparently looking at an RTX 4060 all the way through to an RTX 4090 for laptop GPUs, which are about to be revealed at CES (along with Intel’s new Raptor Lake mobile offerings, as mentioned). There is also an RTX 4050 rumored, and this could be coming too, in theory, just not in an HP Omen (the RTX 4050 was actually spotted in leaked benchmarks for a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro laptop).

What’s also interesting here is that the rumor mill has been rather unsure of what the top-end model will be for Lovelace mobile, and to see that it could be an RTX 4090 primes us to expect a suitably beefy laptop GPU which really pushes frame rates for gaming on the move. (Remember, the Ampere generation topped out at the RTX 3080 Ti for notebooks; there was no 3090 for laptops).

Sadly, we don’t get any specs other than the memory loadouts, although that hasn’t stopped whispers about the possibility of the RTX 4090 being a laptop graphics card that might match the power of the desktop RTX 3090, even (or at least come close to it). A previous leak pointed to the 4090 mobile using the AD103 chip (AD102 is just too much for the confines of a notebook chassis) with a TGP of up to 175W (but in fairness, that rumor is another sketchy one that we need to remain more skeptical than usual around).

There’s still plenty of doubt in the air, then, as to how Lovelace laptop GPUs will really shape up, but at least we should find out in less than a month now. At CES, we’re fully expecting to see some power-packed gaming laptops that use Intel’s Raptor Lake mobile processors in combination with RTX 4000 graphics cards.

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Future MacBook Pros could ditch the keyboard in favor of a big foldable screen

Apple is working on a 20-inch foldable display, one that could be the shape of a future MacBook Pro to come.

This is going by a report from Korean site The Elec (spotted by MacRumors) which asserts that industry sources reckon Apple has just kicked off development of the display, so we’re still in the very early stages of the project apparently. The initial prototype is based on a 20.25-inch OLED display from an unspecified South Korean supplier.

As The Elec points out, that puts it in the laptop-sized category, as when folded it would give the user a 15.3-inch screen, which would be well-suited to a MacBook Pro (it’d be 20.25 inches fully unfolded).

Don’t be thinking you might see this innovation anytime soon, though. According to the report, the target for production of such a 20-inch foldable is 2026 to 2027, so it’s still half a decade away from being realized. If Apple doesn’t abandon the idea during prototyping and testing, of course, which is the fate of a good number of potential pieces of hardware.

As the report also makes clear, it’s likely Apple would want to adopt OLED displays (rather than LCD) on MacBooks and iPads before this foldable arrives. The Elec believes 2025 will be the year that a MacBook Pro will arrive equipped with an OLED display, and that’ll be preceded by iPads with OLED in 2024 as has been previously rumored.

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Analysis: You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em…

For the uninitiated, a foldable laptop is one that is actually just a giant display that folds down the middle - like the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED we saw at IFA earlier this year. In other words, the keyboard section is omitted to double the size of the screen – and the display can then facilitate some kind of virtual keyboard for use as a laptop. But the screen can also be laid flat as one big display, or used as a full 20-inch monitor at a desk with a mouse and keyboard, adding a good deal of flexibility to the device.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a foldable MacBook, either, and the rumor mill was talking about this possibility early in 2022. Indeed, that previous speculation was based on Apple mulling a 20-inch screen for this MacBook, with the arrival date pinned at either 2026 or 2027.

So this latest report mirrors that exactly and lends further weight to it, but as always, we should be very skeptical about anything piped over the grapevine. Even if this is true right now, Apple may well shelve the project at some point in the future, particularly given the very long development timeframe which is floated here.

Five years is absolutely ages in the tech world, but then again, the theoretical launch being that far in the future might be a good thing – at least in terms of the mechanical side of a huge folding screen getting worked out in a better fashion. We’ve always been cautious around foldables, and certainly seamless foldables which aren’t just two screens (with a very thin bezel between), but given a good amount of time for tech advances to take hold, maybe Apple could produce a really slick and well-designed foldable MacBook Pro. (Let’s just try not to think about past innovations which haven’t panned out so well, like, say, the butterfly keyboard).

The broader question might be – do we even want a foldable MacBook Pro? Here at TechRadar we’ve argued in the past that this seems a rather daft idea for various reasons, not the least of which is that any virtual keyboard is going to be a very much inferior typing experience to a physical deck. Then again, maybe haptics will advance a long way in half a decade, but this all seems like something of a longshot in terms of the rumor being realized.

Still, you never know, and with this speculation now popping up twice this year, perhaps the foldable MacBook Pro really is a concept Apple is seriously evaluating for the future.

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Apple to allow Mac and iPhone owners in Europe to repair their own devices

Apple has announced the expansion of its Self Service Repair scheme to Europe, including the UK.

The Self Service Repair program has only been available in the US thus far (since April 2022), and it allows owners of Apple Macs and iPhones to order relevant parts to repair their device themselves (plus instructions, and necessary tools to complete the job).

As The Guardian reports, Apple now offers this scheme in the following European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

You can’t repair any device though, and only certain models of iPhone and Mac (contemporary devices from 2020 onwards) are eligible for a self-repair job.

That includes iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 models (and the iPhone SE 3) plus the MacBook Air M1 (2020), MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020), and MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch (2021).

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Analysis: DIY Mac or iPhone repairs certainly aren’t for everyone

While that’s a limited selection of devices open to the scheme, it’s the same as in the US, so European citizens are getting the exact same offering, it’s just that they’ve had to wait longer to benefit from it.

The scheme also includes other useful touches, like being able to rent a toolkit to perform a repair, rather than buy the tools (some of which are pricey). And it’s obviously good to see this ability expanded beyond the borders of the States (though it was promised to arrive elsewhere by the end of 2022, so Apple has cut it quite fine for delivery in that respect).

What’s also worth noting is that engaging in repairing your own Mac or iPhone is not a matter you should take lightly. While full instructions are provided along with parts and tools as mentioned, only those comfortable with, say, building their own PC from scratch (at the very least) should be even mulling over cracking open a MacBook to start fiddling about with the innards. For slightly less clued-up owners, this could be a dangerous route that leads to making things worse, not better.

For most folks realistically, self-repair is not the best option, and they should use the normal channels to fix Mac or iPhone problems (getting Apple to do it, or an authorized service provider for repairs).

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Apple finally stumps up cash for MacBook customers hit by butterfly keyboard problems

Do you own a MacBook with a butterfly keyboard which required a repair? Well, you might be able to claim some money as part of a settlement to a lawsuit on behalf of affected parties, with a judge in California now having granted preliminary approval to that settlement.

Apple has had a number of controversies around its hardware (often labeled as ‘this-gate’ or ‘that-gate’), and one of those was the MacBook models that ran with the butterfly keyboard prone to flaws and indeed having to be replaced.

As spotted by Macworld, the settlement for $50 million made by Apple – and initially agreed back in July – allows for $33 million to be distributed among MacBook Pro owners who have suffered at the hands of this issue, with sums of up to $395 payable to those individuals who have a claim. (Much of the rest of the money went in fees to the attorneys, as you might expect).

To be eligible as a claimant you must own a MacBook bought between 2015 and 2019 – a model with said butterfly keyboard, of course, and that includes the vanilla MacBook, MacBook Air, and most MacBook Pro variants. Furthermore, the laptop must have been purchased in the US, in one of these states: California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington.

As mentioned, the maximum compensation is $395 which will be given to those who needed to have multiple keyboards replaced. Folks who replaced only one keyboard will receive $125, and for those who had to replace keycaps, they’ll be in line for a payment of $50.

Analysis: Keyboard replacement was a thorny issue

It’s good to see Apple (finally) coming forth with compensation on this matter, but note that the company did not admit any wrongdoing in settling this class action lawsuit. Doubtless Apple just wants to draw a line under this episode and move on.

Part of the reason why this issue was so frustrating is because replacing the keyboard was far from a trivial matter, and involved yanking out other bits of the MacBook too. Indeed, the entire upper-case assembly of the laptop had to be replaced, meaning the chassis, keyboard and battery; the whole lot.

Needless to say, that was a pricey operation, but Apple did instigate a Keyboard Service Program to replace any affected keyboards free of charge (with multiple replacements possible – and those folks are the ones who’ll get the biggest payout here, as noted). Incidentally, the web page for that Keyboard Service Program contains the full list of affected MacBook models.

The butterfly keyboard did go through several revisions, but all of these keyboard decks remained problematic in one respect or another – even if they were improvements on earlier incarnations – so Apple eventually abandoned the design from 2020 onwards, thankfully.

Via Creative Bloq

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