The whispers and smoke and noise about the rumored iPad mini—an iPad that would be 7.85-inches in screen size—are definitely getting louder. It's by no means real yet, but the iPad mini could very well be an actual thing. But what would it look like? Tweeter TrojanKitten points out that unlike the twinsies nature of the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, the iPad mini would house a different form factor from its 7-inch contemporaries, with a different sized screen.
The rumored iPad mini would very probably definitely share the same 4:3 aspect ratio of the current iPad, which (among other reasons) would call for a 7.85-inch screen as opposed to the flat 7-inch screen of the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7. So though in name the iPad Mini might be a "7-inch tablet", the rumored dimensions of it have it as nearly 40% larger than 7-inch tablets and two-thirds the size of the original iPad. That means the iPad mini is still a pretty decent amount bigger than the 7-inch tablets Google and Amazon have been clamoring to make. Is that small enough or would that still be too big? Only Apple knows for now. [TrojanKitten Yfrog via Daring Fireball]