The Weekly Spark

The new iPad mini 8 is here, bringing an OLED display, a more powerful A20 Pro chip, a thinner and lighter design, and some genuinely interesting new features. But if you already own an iPad mini 7, is there really enough here to justify upgrading?

In this week’s episode of The Weekly Spark, I’m taking a closer look at what Apple has changed, what remains the same, and whether the new iPad mini is worth its £699 starting price.

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You can spend a considerable of money on a colour e-reader, yet end up with a screen that can appear darker and less sharp. When you’re buying something mainly to read on, that’s quite a compromise.

Last week E Ink announced Kaleido 4, its latest colour display technology, promising better contrast, brighter screens and improved colour reproduction. So could this finally address some of the biggest compromises of colour E-Ink? And might we soon see it appearing in Kindles, Kobos and the like?

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Better screens, proper Google Play access and a more premium design. But has Amazon left the budget tablet buyer behind?

Amazon very recently announced three new tablets, and they look considerably more ambitious than the cheap Fire tablets many of us associate with the company. There are aluminium bodies, better screens and, finally, proper access to the Google Play Store. There are also considerably higher prices.

I can understand wanting to make better tablets. What I’m less convinced about is whether that means moving away from the customers who simply wanted an affordable one.

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Amazon sells the books, makes the e-readers and certainly has the infrastructure.

So why can I buy a tiny e-reader from XTEINK, but not a tiny Kindle from Amazon?

Is it protecting sales of its existing devices? Is the market too small? Or is Amazon waiting to see whether these little readers have a future?

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BOOX has recently announced three new E-Ink devices, ranging from a phone-sized reader to a full 10.3-inch colour tablet.

They all run Android 16, use upgraded 4-nanometre octa-core processors and include BOOX Super Refresh technology, which the company says should make E-Ink feel faster and more responsive.

Look a little closer, though, and the picture becomes less straightforward. One appears to be a meaningful update, one occupies a slightly strange position in the range, and one may leave existing owners wondering what has actually changed.

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Apple has finally made a folding iPhone and at first glance, the new iPhone Duo looks like it could replace two devices: your standard iPhone and your iPad mini. You carry one device, unfold it when you need more room and leave the small tablet at home.

Except I’m not yet convinced that it is there. In fact, after the most recent Apple event where they launched other products as well as the iPhone Duo, I have ordered the regular iPhone 18 Pro rather than the Pro Max or the Duo, and I think I may have made the more sensible choice.

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Whenever I’m reviewing products over at my YouTube channel, The Spark!, there’s one thing that always leaves me feeling a bit disappointed: opening the box and finding a USB-A-to-USB-C cable.

The product itself might have a nice, modern USB-C port, but the other end of the cable still expects me to use USB-A. And it got me thinking: why are we still using this?

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The basic Kindle has just become nearly 40 per cent more expensive in the United States, and similar list-price increases are appearing in the UK and parts of Europe.

It has not gained a new screen, more storage or any major new features. Amazon has simply increased the US price of the 16GB basic Kindle from $109.99 to $149.99. The Paperwhite has also risen by $40, from $159.99 to $199.99.

Amazon says rising memory and storage costs are responsible. Those costs, in turn, are being pushed upwards partly by the extraordinary amount of hardware required by the AI industry.

As technology companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars building AI infrastructure, are ordinary customers already picking up part of the bill through higher prices on products such as the Kindle?

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If I pick up a book, or open an eBook and see an author’s name on it, I assume that person wrote the entire book.

Sure, they may have used an editor. Hopefully someone proofread it. Maybe the publisher suggested changes. But fundamentally, I have every right to believe the words came from the person whose name is printed on the cover.

But it’s 2026, the world is going crazy over AI, and maybe that expectation just isn’t realistic anymore.

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For years, the route into YouTube’s full Partner Programme has been fairly straightforward: reach 1,000 subscribers and rack up 4,000 hours of public watch time within 12 months. From February next year, that second number is changing rather dramatically.

Instead of needing 4,000 hours of watch time, new creators will need 8,000.

That’s quite a jump, particularly when the existing target can already take smaller channels months, if not years, to reach.

My questions when I first heard this news was: why 8,000? How did they come up with that number? It seems rather arbitrary.

The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more I think this might be about something much bigger than simply making creators work harder. I believe YouTube is planning ahead and making some seemingly tough decisions now as it lays new foundations for what the platform is ultimately becoming.

Because increasingly, YouTube isn’t just YouTube.

It’s television.

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