Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claims that Apple will be giving the iPad mini 8 the OLED screen upgrade. And while it will be the earliest to roll out, it will also sport its own unique upgrade. Gurman claims that this will come in the form of vibration tech for its speakers, but didn’t elaborate further. Judging from devices from the past though, this may be some variant of piezoelectric speakers.
MacRumors made the connection based on an old patent Apple was granted back in 2014. The long and short of the patent is that an electronic device using panels or sub-panels of its housing as part of the acoustic system. And while it may be a pretty old patent by the bitten fruit brand, it was beaten to the punch by the competition in terms of selling the tech.
Among the earliest examples of piezoelectric speakers in smartphones was the Xiaomi Mi Mix back in 2016. It’s also been described as an under-display speaker, though this implementation was limited to just the earpiece for calls. General audio was handled by a traditional mono speaker at the bottom. Huawei would have its own take in 2019 with the P30 Pro.
Then we have Sony, taking the tech to a whole new extreme with the Bravia A1 smart TV in 2017. It was marketed with the “Acoustic Surface” tech, with the display panel itself serving as a speaker, with a subwoofer also within the TV frame. And it’s become a bit of a staple for the company’s premium Bravia line up today.
While these will remove the speaker holes on the iPad mini 8, Apple will still likely not be able to remove the microphone holes. For these, the company will likely resort to the old gasket and glue combo. It still remains to be seen if its implementation will be as successful as the Sony Bravia TVs. But it will be the first among the OLED upgrade recipients to get unveiled. So it may not be that long a wait before we find out.
