The iPad Mini: A Companion Device to Your iPhone 13?

As I've been using the new iPad Mini, I couldn't help but think about its potential as a companion device to my iPhone 13. The miniaturized screen is perfect for certain tasks, such as browsing the web, checking emails, or watching videos on the go. However, when it comes to content consumption, like reading e-books or watching movies, I find myself wanting something bigger.

This brings me to one of my ideas for a potential future iteration of the iPad Mini: waterproofing. Apple has never officially assigned an IP rating to any of their iPads, which is surprising given the size and portability of these devices. With the new iPad Mini being so small and portable, it's not uncommon to find myself in situations where I'd like to have a bit of peace of mind that my device won't get damaged if it gets wet or exposed to water. Having an official IP rating would give me that reassurance, and I think many users would appreciate the added protection.

Another idea I have for the iPad Mini is a smaller, more portable version of the Magic Keyboard case. While the idea might seem daft at first - what's small enough to fit on this tiny screen? - there's something appealing about having a miniature keyboard that you can use for tasks like typing emails or taking notes. Of course, technically, you could simply connect any Bluetooth keyboard to your iPad Mini, but there's something nice about having a dedicated, built-in keyboard case. It would be a premium feature, no doubt, but it would also give users the option to have a reliable and convenient way to type on their device.

Now, let's talk about price. One thing that's become clear is that the iPad Mini is not going to be the cheapest option in Apple's lineup. However, with the 128GB model starting at $479, it's clear that the company has set a premium price point for this device. Adding a mid-tier option, perhaps with a lower capacity like 64GB, would make the iPad Mini more accessible to a wider range of users.

That said, I do think the current price is a bit steep, especially considering the iPhone 13 starts at $599 and has similar specs to this device (minus the miniaturized screen, of course). If Apple takes off £100 from the starting price, that would put it in more realistic territory for many users. It's also worth noting that the 9th generation iPad with its larger screen and bezels is a great value at this point - if the new iPad Mini can hold its own against these options, I think it would be a compelling choice.

One thing that's certain, though, is that Apple has done an excellent job with this latest iteration of the iPad Mini. It's working out fantastically so far, and I'm excited to see what the future holds for this device. Whether or not Apple decides to add any of my suggestions - waterproofing, a mini Magic Keyboard case - remains to be seen. However, one thing is clear: the new iPad Mini is a brilliant tablet that's sure to please fans of Apple's lineup.

In the comments below, I'd love to hear from you - do you have an iPad Mini now, and if so, what are your thoughts on it? Are there any features or design elements that you think Apple should prioritize for future iterations? Or perhaps you're just curious about what might happen next with this device. Whatever your thoughts, let's get the conversation started!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi guys welcome to apple insider i'm mark ellis and this is the ipad mini i've waited ages for this redesign of all the ipads i always thought that the mini deserved the pro redesign and that's obviously the smaller bezels the squared off design it's just this lovely little slab of aluminium and since i've had it it's become my main note-taking device of choice thanks to the apple pencil 2 but it's also become the main ipad i use for consuming content but i do think apple has missed a few things with this ipad mini redesign and there's five that i want to talk about today firstly magsafe now obviously the most recent iphones the iphone 12 and the iphone 13 have magsafe on the back of them which is basically a magnet built into the casing which you can't see but which allows you to attach a whole bunch of accessories to so for example the wallet attaches nicely and more recently the magsafe battery pack which okay is a little bit unwieldy on the iphone 13 mini but it's just a nice use of magnet technology if that's what you call it now i think apple should have put magsafe in the back of the new ipad mini and the reason for that is simple it's lovely that this has usbc i'm a massive fan of usbc but to have another charging method which is completely invisible you can't see it it doesn't include any additional bulk to the device itself but to have that in there would just be another way of charging this ipad and when it comes to all of these devices charging convenience is absolutely key now i wouldn't really expect you to be able to use the magsafe battery pack on it that would look a bit a bit odd but you can imagine being able to just attach the charging magsafe puck to the back of it that'd be great and it opens up a huge amount of possibilities to people far smarter than me who can come up with innovative ways of using magsafe i just think it should have been in this i think that's a bit of a known goal there apple now one of the most significant changes apple made to the ipad mini was moving the touch id button which was originally on the home button here to the power button on the top great move they did that with the ipad air 4. but i do miss face id and as much as i like the convenience of having touch id there when the ipad is flat on the surface so you don't have to kind of look over it to get it to recognize your face it's a bit annoying when you're holding it like this so if you sat on the couch for example or in bed watching something i'm still used to my phone and my ipad pro recognizing my face now i've had the ipad air 4 for a year now and i still haven't really got used to touch id being there i still have to remind myself to use it it hasn't become as intrinsic as face id because with face id there's no need to touch anything you just look at the device and it unlocks now i can guarantee with a new ipad mini that there will be design considerations and also cost considerations for not including face id but i'd love to see face id on the next ipad mini redesign now the ipad mini isn't cheap i bought this one this is the base level one the cheapest one you can get for 479 pounds in the uk that's not a cheap ipad that puts it out of reach for a lot of people and yes you're getting a very good ipad for this you know you're getting the latest chip in there it's faster in theory or it's it's got a more powerful processor than the ipad air 4. but you're really paying for it and where this seems to have gone a little bit weird is with the storage choices so with this new ipad mini you go either for 64 gigabytes or 256 gigabytes and the 256 gigabytes takes it up to in the uk 619 pounds there's nothing in between there's no 128 gigabyte option and that's made even stranger by the fact that the iphone 13 starts with 128 gigabytes that doesn't make sense apple and it all relates to price so you can imagine if there was a 128 gigabyte version of the new ipad mini you'd then have a mid-tier price which i think at 479 would be fine but then you'd have the lower end version the 64 gigabyte version for less let's say they take off 100 pounds 100 that puts into more realistic territory for a lot of people and the fact that it is so expensive does reveal why the ninth generation normal ipad with the great big bezels and the home button is such a good deal i was kind of hoping that the new ipad mini would be more okay not quite as cheap as this version the ninth generation but somewhere like i say hundred dollars more it's just a bit too expensive for a lot of people now waterproofing the iphone 13 has an ip68 water and dust resistance rating and that means it can go to maximum depth of 6 meters for 30 minutes now by comparison ipads have never had an official ip rating and you can kind of see why that's the case because for ipads of this size the ipad air or the 12.9 inch ipad pro you're unlikely to be in situations where you need waterproofing but because this ipad mini is so small and so portable i think you may find yourself in situations where a bit of waterproofing would add the peace of mind that you need my idea with this ipad mini which is working out fantastically so far is for it to be a kind of companion device to my iphone 13 mini this has a very small screen it's great for a lot of stuff but it's not great for content consumption and that kind of stuff so my idea was to have the ipad mini as the fill-in for that the kind of consumption device and that means that i can occasionally find myself in situations where it might be raining and i would just like the peace of mind that it's not going to get damaged i'm not going to go diving with this that isn't the point at all it's just to have an official ip rating would give you a bit of as i say peace of mind that it's not going to get damaged if it happens to rain or if you happen to spill your glass of water over it of all the ipads at apple this one needs an ip rating right hear me out on this one you'll think i'm mad and please let me know in the comments what you think you probably disagree with me but i have thought about this quite a bit i would love there to be a mini version of the magic keyboard case for the ipad mini 6. now hear me out please because i know it seems daft this is such a small device you imagine the keyboard it's going to be tiny but there's something about the ability to have a little keyboard not built for long stretches of typing you know you're going to be typing out war and peace on this just the idea of having a small keyboard where you can finger type and use it for things like emails moments where you need to have a keyboard really it's just nice to have a keyboard i hate the on-screen keyboard on ipads i much rather type on a proper keyboard the idea that being a little magic keyboard case for this is quite exciting now technically you can add any bluetooth keyboard to this so i could connect this magic keyboard to it but that's a bit of a strange setup to be taking with you whereas a magic keyboard case acts as a case obviously but would have that built-in keyboard if you needed it equally it could be a terrible idea but it would at least be an option it would also be ridiculously expensive knowing apple but there you go so those are my five wishes for the next version of the ipad mini but what about you have you got one of these now and if so what are you missing from it or have you completely skipped this generation because it doesn't quite do what you want it to do let us know in the comments what apple should be doing or what they should have done with the ipad mini 6. i think this is just to confirm a brilliant tablet it is my favorite ipad of the last four or five years and i don't see myself ever putting it down so these wishes they're a bit like i say they're not deal breakers for me they'll just be nice to have so i would love to see it iterated in that way but yeah let us know what you think guys in the comments and as always thank you so much for watching remember to subscribe hit the bell icon so you don't miss any of the apple insider content and we'll see you in the next video youhi guys welcome to apple insider i'm mark ellis and this is the ipad mini i've waited ages for this redesign of all the ipads i always thought that the mini deserved the pro redesign and that's obviously the smaller bezels the squared off design it's just this lovely little slab of aluminium and since i've had it it's become my main note-taking device of choice thanks to the apple pencil 2 but it's also become the main ipad i use for consuming content but i do think apple has missed a few things with this ipad mini redesign and there's five that i want to talk about today firstly magsafe now obviously the most recent iphones the iphone 12 and the iphone 13 have magsafe on the back of them which is basically a magnet built into the casing which you can't see but which allows you to attach a whole bunch of accessories to so for example the wallet attaches nicely and more recently the magsafe battery pack which okay is a little bit unwieldy on the iphone 13 mini but it's just a nice use of magnet technology if that's what you call it now i think apple should have put magsafe in the back of the new ipad mini and the reason for that is simple it's lovely that this has usbc i'm a massive fan of usbc but to have another charging method which is completely invisible you can't see it it doesn't include any additional bulk to the device itself but to have that in there would just be another way of charging this ipad and when it comes to all of these devices charging convenience is absolutely key now i wouldn't really expect you to be able to use the magsafe battery pack on it that would look a bit a bit odd but you can imagine being able to just attach the charging magsafe puck to the back of it that'd be great and it opens up a huge amount of possibilities to people far smarter than me who can come up with innovative ways of using magsafe i just think it should have been in this i think that's a bit of a known goal there apple now one of the most significant changes apple made to the ipad mini was moving the touch id button which was originally on the home button here to the power button on the top great move they did that with the ipad air 4. but i do miss face id and as much as i like the convenience of having touch id there when the ipad is flat on the surface so you don't have to kind of look over it to get it to recognize your face it's a bit annoying when you're holding it like this so if you sat on the couch for example or in bed watching something i'm still used to my phone and my ipad pro recognizing my face now i've had the ipad air 4 for a year now and i still haven't really got used to touch id being there i still have to remind myself to use it it hasn't become as intrinsic as face id because with face id there's no need to touch anything you just look at the device and it unlocks now i can guarantee with a new ipad mini that there will be design considerations and also cost considerations for not including face id but i'd love to see face id on the next ipad mini redesign now the ipad mini isn't cheap i bought this one this is the base level one the cheapest one you can get for 479 pounds in the uk that's not a cheap ipad that puts it out of reach for a lot of people and yes you're getting a very good ipad for this you know you're getting the latest chip in there it's faster in theory or it's it's got a more powerful processor than the ipad air 4. but you're really paying for it and where this seems to have gone a little bit weird is with the storage choices so with this new ipad mini you go either for 64 gigabytes or 256 gigabytes and the 256 gigabytes takes it up to in the uk 619 pounds there's nothing in between there's no 128 gigabyte option and that's made even stranger by the fact that the iphone 13 starts with 128 gigabytes that doesn't make sense apple and it all relates to price so you can imagine if there was a 128 gigabyte version of the new ipad mini you'd then have a mid-tier price which i think at 479 would be fine but then you'd have the lower end version the 64 gigabyte version for less let's say they take off 100 pounds 100 that puts into more realistic territory for a lot of people and the fact that it is so expensive does reveal why the ninth generation normal ipad with the great big bezels and the home button is such a good deal i was kind of hoping that the new ipad mini would be more okay not quite as cheap as this version the ninth generation but somewhere like i say hundred dollars more it's just a bit too expensive for a lot of people now waterproofing the iphone 13 has an ip68 water and dust resistance rating and that means it can go to maximum depth of 6 meters for 30 minutes now by comparison ipads have never had an official ip rating and you can kind of see why that's the case because for ipads of this size the ipad air or the 12.9 inch ipad pro you're unlikely to be in situations where you need waterproofing but because this ipad mini is so small and so portable i think you may find yourself in situations where a bit of waterproofing would add the peace of mind that you need my idea with this ipad mini which is working out fantastically so far is for it to be a kind of companion device to my iphone 13 mini this has a very small screen it's great for a lot of stuff but it's not great for content consumption and that kind of stuff so my idea was to have the ipad mini as the fill-in for that the kind of consumption device and that means that i can occasionally find myself in situations where it might be raining and i would just like the peace of mind that it's not going to get damaged i'm not going to go diving with this that isn't the point at all it's just to have an official ip rating would give you a bit of as i say peace of mind that it's not going to get damaged if it happens to rain or if you happen to spill your glass of water over it of all the ipads at apple this one needs an ip rating right hear me out on this one you'll think i'm mad and please let me know in the comments what you think you probably disagree with me but i have thought about this quite a bit i would love there to be a mini version of the magic keyboard case for the ipad mini 6. now hear me out please because i know it seems daft this is such a small device you imagine the keyboard it's going to be tiny but there's something about the ability to have a little keyboard not built for long stretches of typing you know you're going to be typing out war and peace on this just the idea of having a small keyboard where you can finger type and use it for things like emails moments where you need to have a keyboard really it's just nice to have a keyboard i hate the on-screen keyboard on ipads i much rather type on a proper keyboard the idea that being a little magic keyboard case for this is quite exciting now technically you can add any bluetooth keyboard to this so i could connect this magic keyboard to it but that's a bit of a strange setup to be taking with you whereas a magic keyboard case acts as a case obviously but would have that built-in keyboard if you needed it equally it could be a terrible idea but it would at least be an option it would also be ridiculously expensive knowing apple but there you go so those are my five wishes for the next version of the ipad mini but what about you have you got one of these now and if so what are you missing from it or have you completely skipped this generation because it doesn't quite do what you want it to do let us know in the comments what apple should be doing or what they should have done with the ipad mini 6. i think this is just to confirm a brilliant tablet it is my favorite ipad of the last four or five years and i don't see myself ever putting it down so these wishes they're a bit like i say they're not deal breakers for me they'll just be nice to have so i would love to see it iterated in that way but yeah let us know what you think guys in the comments and as always thank you so much for watching remember to subscribe hit the bell icon so you don't miss any of the apple insider content and we'll see you in the next video you\n"