A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece speculating on what the dynamic between the iPhone Duo and the OLED iPad mini would be once both were revealed to the world. Well, we know all about both products now as Apple starts to wrap up a whirlwind of fall product launches, so I thought it would be worth checking in.

Both the iPhone Duo and iPad mini had some unexpected tricks up their sleeves. For the Duo, the big surprise was Apple Pencil support. This marks the first time the accessory has worked with anything other than an iPad, and it further blurs the line that the Duo toes between being an iPhone and a small iPad.

The big question going into the Duo announcement for me was what Apple would do with iOS to adapt it to a folding form factor. Here’s what I wrote in August:

My future with the iPad mini is going to be determined, I think, by the folding iPhone’s software. If it acts like an iPhone with a bigger display, I don’t think that’s going to replace iPadOS for me. But if it’s truly an iPad mini I can fold in half and carry with me everywhere, then that’s the dream of the one-handed tablet brought to its logical end point, and it’ll be a beautiful thing indeed.

Having spent a little over a week using the iPhone Duo, I’m still working to fully wrap my mind around its software, but I think it’s landed closer to my dream of a folding iPad mini than I expected. Most of the time, the iPhone Duo behaves like an iPhone, especially when I’m using its outer screen. But when I unfold it and hold it in portrait mode, it feels almost exactly like using an iPad mini – to the point that I sometimes forget that the device I’m reading, writing, and watching videos on is my phone. It’s a strange and enticing feeling.

I’ll have more to say on the iPhone Duo down the road, but when it comes to replacing my iPad mini for content consumption and shorter writing tasks, the Duo fits the bill perfectly. I was sad to see it go, but this week, I officially passed my iPad mini down to my son, kicking off what I hope to be the next generation of love for tiny tablets.

But my being enamored with the iPhone Duo doesn’t change the fact that the newly announced iPad mini looks incredible. Not only does it adopt OLED screen technology and its many benefits – including an iPad Pro-style thin chassis and expanded screen with smaller bezels around it – but it unlocks a whole new use case for the iPad mini: extended desktop mode. If you connect an iPad mini to an external display, it can use the screen as an extension rather than a mirror. This unlocks the ability to turn Apple’s smallest tablet into a desktop computer with multiple resizable windows, the way we’ve been able to do with the iPad Pro and Air for a few years now.

In a pre-iPhone Duo world, I very well might have gone all in on this iPad mini as my main computer. The idea of a tiny tablet that I can carry anywhere and easily expand into a desktop computer with a display is sickeningly appealing to me. It’s something I’ve wanted for a very long time, and it’s now a reality!

That capability is emblematic of what sets the iPad mini apart from the iPhone Duo. It’s an iPad, and it has all of the features of the iPad lineup, including desktop mode, pro-level apps, and multitasking with multiple resizable windows. Jason Snell put it well in his review of the new iPad mini: “The reason the iPad mini has earned the love and loyalty of a wide array of users is that it’s tiny, portable, and does everything an iPad can do—and that’s a winning combination.” The iPhone Duo, as impressive as it is, can’t currently replicate these iPad-exclusive features.

So even though the iPad mini is no longer a part of my workflow, it still very much has a place in Apple’s lineup and in the use cases of the many people who love it. I’ll be carrying on with my 13” M1 iPad Pro as my computer for now and my iPhone Duo for everything else, but I’m grateful the iPad mini exists and is receiving the substantial update it deserves. I know a lot of miniature tablet fans are going to be very happy with it.