The iPad 5 is already among the rumors of early 2013 and although originally it was said to come this March, now recent speculations place it in October. Today we get to see a supposed back panel of this tablet, a model known under the codename J72 for now. Apparently, the design of the slate borrows a few cues from the iPad Mini.

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As usual we take rumors and pictures with a grain of salt, since they both can lie. The source of the leak is saying that what we’re dealing with here is a prototype of an iPad 5 with a 9.7 inch display. The casing is supposed to be almost as thin as the iPad Mini’s back. The casing here is presumably the one of a LTE model, as the black antenna cut indicates. If the next iPad does surprise us with a March launch, it would be logical to see such cases floating around on the interwebs already.

In the meantime Apple announced an 128 GB Retina iPad, seen by many as a hint to the fact that this Spring we won’t get a new iPad, so Apple will keep us busy with 128 GB models. If I were to predict things about the iPad 5, well, I expect it to be more of a design revamp than a hardware upgrade. Maybe more RAM and a better camera?

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