iQoo’s Shelved Mini Tablet Returns With an Unannounced Snapdragon Chip

Model number iPA2691 has cleared China’s SRRC certification as a Wi-Fi-only device, and tipster Digital Chat Station says it belongs to iQoo’s first true mini tablet. The filing confirms 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth, with no cellular radio listed anywhere. It is tipped to launch alongside the iQoo 16, carrying a Snapdragon chip that Qualcomm has not even announced yet.

iQoo tried building a compact tablet once before, back in 2025, and shelved it. Its return this year, chasing 2nm silicon that does not officially exist, lands just as a global memory shortage is already rewriting the rest of the company’s roadmap, including a reported cancellation of the iQoo 16’s own India launch.

A Filing in Shenzhen Confirms the Rumor

The certification itself is thin on detail. It does not reveal a name, a screen size, or a price. What it does confirm is connectivity: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only, nothing more. Since the certification lists only Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, with no cellular bands mentioned, the device looks like a Wi-Fi-only model built for home and travel use rather than mobile data.

A separate SRRC listing spotted by The Tech Outlook matches the same model number to the same story. A Vivo-linked device tagged iPA2691 also surfaced on the database, listed only with wireless LAN and Bluetooth support and no branding attached. That gap between what a filing proves and what a tipster claims is the whole story here. Digital Chat Station is the one filling in the blanks, describing the device as a gaming-focused tablet and using the word “mini” to describe its size, something iQoo has never sold before. No display size has been confirmed, though several outlets tracking the leak have pointed to something in the neighborhood of 8.8 inches, roughly the footprint of the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5.

iQoo Already Tried This Once

This is not a new idea for iQoo. It is closer to a second attempt at a project the company quietly paused a year ago.

1. May 2025: Weibo tipster Smart Pikachu first claimed iQoo was building a small, gaming-focused tablet for a second-half 2025 launch.
2. June 2025: Digital Chat Station added specifics, an 8.35-inch custom LCD panel with 3K-plus resolution and an unusually high refresh rate, with the current-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite or MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400+ under consideration.
3. July 2025: Digital Chat Station said the release had slipped into 2026.
4. August 2025: Coverage of the unrelated iQoo 15 Mini noted, almost in passing, that iQoo had put its compact tablet project on hold entirely.
5. May 2026: iQoo instead shipped the full-size Pad 6 Pro in China, a 13.2-inch tablet running the current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on a 3nm process, with a 13,000mAh battery and a price equivalent to roughly $842.70 (as tracked by TradingShenzhen).
6. June to July 2026: Digital Chat Station revived the mini tablet leak, this time tied to next-generation 2nm silicon that Qualcomm has not announced, followed by the iPA2691 certification.

The chipset swap is the detail worth sitting with. Coverage tracking the leak’s history has pointed out that the target chip changed entirely, from a current-generation processor to one that has not even been officially unveiled, and called that shift a sign of something beyond a routine delay. A project built around an off-the-shelf chip in 2025 got shelved. The version coming back in 2026 is betting on hardware that does not exist in any phone or tablet yet.

Why Does Qualcomm Need Two Flagship Chips This Year?

Qualcomm is expected to split its next flagship generation into two separate chips because building everything around the more expensive variant would push costs even higher during an active global memory shortage, so a cheaper, cut-down version exists specifically to keep mid-tier flagships and tablets affordable.

The leak, credited again to Digital Chat Station, identifies the two chips by their internal names: SM8950 for the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, and SM8975 for the Gen 6 Pro. Both are expected to move to TSMC’s 2nm process and share a 2 plus 3 plus 3 Oryon CPU layout. The split shows up in the graphics silicon instead. The standard Gen 6 pairs an Adreno 845 GPU with 12MB of graphics cache and 6MB of last-level cache, while the Pro steps up to an Adreno 850 with 18MB of graphics cache and 8MB of last-level cache, a jump described as a 50 percent increase in graphics cache that matters for sustained gaming and high-resolution rendering. Memory support splits the same way: the standard chip is tied to LPDDR5X, while the Pro adds support for next-generation LPDDR6.

That is a real downgrade in one respect. The current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 already ships with 18MB of graphics cache, meaning the new standard Gen 6 actually has less cache than the chip it replaces, a trade widely read as a deliberate cost-saving choice rather than a mistake. Reporting on the leak has tied that choice directly to the wider component squeeze, describing the two-tier chip lineup as a way to help the industry manage a memory shortage and price products for a wider range of buyers. It is still unclear which of the two chips the iQoo tablet would actually get. Coverage of the leak has left both options open, noting the tablet could be powered by either the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 or the Gen 6 Pro chipset.

Laid out together, the pattern is hard to miss. iQoo’s newest tablet and its newest phone are tipped to split the same two chips the same way Qualcomm split them, cheaper cache for the tablet, the fuller variant reserved for the phone that actually carries the flagship name.

Where the Leak Runs Out

Leak coverage on a device this early tends to blur confirmed fact and tipster guesswork. Here is where the line actually sits.

• Confirmed by certification: Model iPA2691 supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth, with no cellular bands listed.
• Confirmed by the tipster’s track record: Digital Chat Station, credited across multiple prior iQoo and Qualcomm leaks that later proved accurate, says this is iQoo’s first mini tablet and ties it to next-generation Snapdragon silicon.
• Confirmed by iQoo’s own product page: The Pad 6 Pro exists today, launched in May 2026, with the current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and a 13.2 inch display.

• Unconfirmed: Display size, battery capacity, price, and an official name. “Mini” is the tipster’s shorthand, not a confirmed product name.
• Unconfirmed: Whether the tablet lands on the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 or the pricier Gen 6 Pro.
• Unconfirmed: Whether it ever leaves China. iQoo has not sold a compact tablet in any market before.

That is not unusual for a device still months from its own chip’s unveiling. It is unusual for how far the guesswork has already traveled without a single official word from iQoo.

The Memory Crunch That Already Killed One Launch

While the tablet chases a chip that does not exist yet, the phone it is supposed to launch beside is already running into a problem that very much does. Tipster Yogesh Brar has claimed the iQoo 16’s India launch may be scrapped entirely because of memory prices.

With current memory rates, iQOO 16 will cross Rs 85k.

Brar made that claim on social media, adding that iQoo has only one budget Z-series phone planned for India this year, with the rest of its lineup reportedly shelved for that market. At roughly $890 at current exchange rates, a price above that threshold would put the iQoo 16 well outside the range the brand has built its Indian reputation on. The iQoo 15 already tells that story in miniature. It launched in India at Rs 72,999, then saw its price pushed to Rs 76,999 after launch as component costs kept climbing, a jump from a phone that opened at Rs 54,999 just one generation earlier.

iQoo is not alone. Brands like CMF have also scrapped a planned budget phone for the same reason, and Nothing has confirmed it will skip a successor to its own Phone 3 this year. iQoo’s India launch for the iQoo 16 was reportedly cancelled amid rising memory costs, even as the phone itself keeps moving forward in China with an appearance already logged in a telecom database.

The scale of the problem shows up in industry-wide numbers, not just tipster claims. Research firm IDC forecasts tablet shipments falling 8.6% this year, even as memory costs push average prices higher across the category. Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s research manager for its Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, put it plainly.

The era of bargain-priced PCs and tablets is behind us for now, as rising ASPs and component costs shift the market’s balance of power.

Ubrani added that memory shortages are expected to persist well into 2027, with prices unlikely to return to where they sat before the squeeze began. That is the backdrop iQoo’s mini tablet is walking into, a chip built to trim cost on one end, and a market where cost is already the whole conversation on the other.

Small Tablets Are Having a Moment

This is not happening in a vacuum. Compact, high-performance tablets have quietly become one of the more active corners of the Android hardware market, and the data backs that up. By screen size, tablets in the 8 to 10 inch range now hold the largest share of the tablet market at 45%, driven in part by demand for smaller, more portable devices.

Apple still sets the pace overall. Based on global shipment data, Apple remained the leading tablet vendor in the first quarter of 2026, and its iPad mini still anchors the small-tablet conversation for a lot of buyers. But Apple has no answer for a gaming-first, flagship-chip compact slate, and that gap is exactly what a wave of Android challengers has been racing to fill. The category has gained renewed attention over the past couple of years, with demand from gaming, cloud streaming, emulation, and mobile productivity all pulling in the same direction: powerful tablets that are easier to actually carry around.

The Rivals Already Waiting

iQoo would not be entering an empty field. The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5, widely seen as the category leader, uses the current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in an 8.8 inch body. The RedMagic Astra, sold in China as the Gaming Tablet 3 Pro, runs the same generation of chip, and RedMagic has already teased a successor, the Gaming Tablet 5 Pro, without confirming specifications yet. Every compact gaming tablet on the market right now runs on 3nm silicon, which is exactly the gap iQoo’s 2nm bet is aimed at.

Then there is Xiaomi, which already shipped a device close to what iQoo is rumored to be building. The Xiaomi Pad Mini pairs an 8.8-inch 3K display with a 7,500mAh battery in a compact metal body, running MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400+ chipset, and it launched at a starting price of $429. Reviewers have called it the first real Android answer to Apple’s small tablet, a flagship chip in a body you can actually hold in one hand.

The fight is not confined to gaming silicon, either. In India, ASUS is challenging Samsung and Apple’s grip on OLED tablets with its own new Pad, one more sign that Android’s tablet lineup is getting more crowded on multiple fronts at once, not just at the compact, gaming-focused end iQoo is chasing.

Qualcomm is not expected to unveil the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series until its annual summit in September, meaning any iQoo tablet built around it will not ship before October at the earliest.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many new flagship Snapdragon chips is Qualcomm launching this year?

Leaks point to as many as four new high-end Snapdragon chipsets across 2026, spanning both 2nm and 3nm manufacturing. Alongside the 2nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Gen 6 Pro, reports describe a 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5XX Edition and a more modest Gen 5 Pro or Gen 6 chip without the Elite branding, aimed at cheaper devices.

Will the iQoo mini tablet launch outside China?

There is no confirmation either way yet. iQoo’s existing Pad 6 Pro launched only in China, with its pricing tracked in dollar terms by import sites rather than sold through official channels abroad, and iQoo has never sold a compact tablet in any market. Nothing so far suggests this one breaks that pattern, but iQoo has not addressed it.

Is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 official yet?

No. Every detail so far comes from tipster leaks, primarily Digital Chat Station, and Qualcomm has not acknowledged either the standard Gen 6 or the Gen 6 Pro chip publicly. An unveiling at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in September is the widely expected timeline, based on the company’s past launch cadence.

Why did memory prices spike in 2026?

Industry trackers point to surging DRAM and NAND demand tied to the broader AI data center boom, which has pulled memory supply away from consumer electronics and pushed component costs up across phones, tablets, and PCs alike. IDC has said relief is unlikely before 2027.

Does the iQoo 16 still exist if its India launch is cancelled?

Yes. Only the India launch is reportedly in doubt. The phone itself has already appeared in the GSM Association’s IMEI database under model number I2601, and it is still expected to launch in China, reportedly with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chipset on board.