Anyone looking for an iPad mini 6 this holiday season is going to be a little disappointed. At least it looks like iPad lovers won't have to wait another four years. Rumors suggest that Apple is not going to spend as much time developing the iPad mini 6 as it did the iPad mini 5.

Thanks to some recent credible rumors, we have a decent idea not just when we will see the next pint-sized Apple tablet, but what reasons it might give us to upgrade. Rumored changes range from powerful new processors to amazing new high-end display technology and redesigns.

Here's everything we know about the iPad mini 6 from leaks and rumors so far.

Japanese site Mac Otakara has obtained information from Apple's supply chain regarding the new iPad mini 6, which could be released as early as March.

According to a research note by Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple plans to release the iPad mini 6 in the first half of 2021. iPad mini 5 was released in March 2019, so there will be an interval of about two years. This would not be a surprise since Apple typically releases a new iPad in March.

The iPad mini 6 will likely maintain the $399 price point found on the previous model. Apple has generally kept its tablets at the same price over the years, and the iPad mini starts with 64GB of storage, giving it a better value proposition versus the $329 iPad with 32GB.

The 256GB iPad mini is $149 higher at $549, and the upgrade pattern from this price to storage will likely continue.

The biggest news from Ming Chi-Kuo's report is that the iPad mini 6 will not be as small. According to Japanese site Mac Otakara, the new iPad mini is expected to feature an 8.4-inch screen, a significant increase from the iPad mini 5's 7.9-inch screen.

Kuo also suggests that the next iPad mini is one of the devices Apple is considering adopting a Mini-LED screen. But that was earlier this year, when Kuo claimed that this iPad mini 6 would be 7.9 inches and would be released in 2020.

A post on Chinese tech site MyDrivers.com (through Google Translate) suggests that the iPad mini 6 will have an A13 processor, which makes sense as an upgrade from the A12 Bionic chip in the iPad mini 5.

That post also points out that the iPad mini 6 will continue to use the Lightning port. This connector has been the subject of controversy in recent Apple rumors. While there is much speculation that Apple will eliminate this port altogether with the iPhone 13, the iPad Pro gets a universal USB-C port.

Then again, the iPad mini 6 may be designed more like the new iPad Pro than the iPad--with slimmer bezels and no home button.

There is no reason to view such an idea as anything more than wishing upon a star. The 8.5-inch iPad mini doesn't sound like a radically different device; it's just a slightly larger chassis, as we can see from how the 9.7-inch iPad became the 10.2-inch iPad. [It's not hard to understand why some people would want the iPad Pro design on the iPad mini. Support for the second-generation iPad Pencil, which docks magnetically, makes the tablet much better than the first-generation Pencil.

These early iPad mini 6 leaks suggest that Apple is not resting on last year's update and is trying to make the next iPad mini at least an evolutionary version of the product.

If the Mini-LED iPad mini 6 does in fact appear, the tablet will feel like a revolution over the previous iPad mini, which was quite good to begin with. But if it gets a bigger screen and better performance without making the iPad mini so much bigger (it is, after all, still a mini model), the iPad mini 6 would be a worthy successor.

Stay tuned for the latest iPad mini 6 rumors.