- Apple TV upgrade from A15 Bionic to A17 Pro
- Apple's new wireless chip in Apple TV and HomePod mini
- Could arrive any time between now and the holidays
Apple's excellent Apple TV 4K is getting a big upgrade any day now, and the second-generation HomePod mini's getting a speed bump too. That's according to the latest leaked news leaked by, er, Apple.
As AppleInsider reports, details in Apple's own code indicate that the next generation of Apple TV 4K will come with the A17 Pro chip; the current model has the A15 Bionic.
I'm using the tvOS 26 beta on my Apple TV 4K and it clearly doesn't need any more processing power to handle the new Liquid Glass interface or the games you can play on it. And that suggests that other than more efficient decoding of video and audio formats, it's going to be for Apple Intelligence.
Apple TV 4K 2025 and the HomePod mini 2
The 2025 Apple TV 4K is likely to launch any time in the next three months, and is expected to have Apple's new wireless chip too. That would give the TV box Wi-Fi 6E support to match the current MacBooks; the 2022 model has Wi-Fi 6. And the same chip is expected to make its way into the forthcoming HomePod mini 2.
The HomePod mini has been around forever in computer years – it launched way back in 2020 – and the same report says it's getting an upgrade too. This is going to be much more minor, however, with the small speaker getting a variation of the S-series chips found inside the Apple Watch Series 9, 10 and the imminent 11.
The current HomePod mini is already S-powered but the 2025 version of the processor is likely to be significantly faster; again, the most likely beneficiary of that power is Apple Intelligence. If that means an end to the incredibly long pauses between me asking Siri to do something and Siri responding, I'll buy the new model in a heartbeat.
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