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  Image courtesy of NetEase
  iPad Mini Rear Shell

Photos of the iPad Mini leaked earlier this week that show the device's rear shell.

The pictures first appeared on a Chinese site known as NetEase and the device can be viewed in great detail in both photos. It is said to have originated from OEM, the original equipment manufacturer in Shenzhen, China.

The opening for Apple's smaller dock connector can be seen in the picture along with a rear camera hole, and the interior lip where the display and front panel will be attached. This back shell in the photo appears to be for the Wi-Fi model since it does not have a cutout area where the SIM card would normally be placed.

The rear shell in the picture features little tapering in comparison to the current iPad model.

Two new iPad devices were discovered by Instapaper developer Marco Arment last week.

He found two new device codes for these Apple tablets in his logs that he believes belong to the long rumored iPad Mini.

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The codes he found were iPad2,5 and iPad 2,6. Arment stated that iPad 2,1 through iPad 2,3 designations represent the iPad 2's WiFi, GSM and CDMA models. The iPad 2,4 represents a die-shrunk, cheaper version of the iPad 2 that was released with the third-generation model. The third-gen model carries the iPad 3,x designation.

The two new codes spotted by Arment have not been seen before, so this indicates that they belong to new models of the device that are based on iPad 2 hardware. This seems to match up well with rumored iPad Mini as the device is expected to be a smaller version of the second generation iPad.

Arment feels this is the only theory that makes sense.

"The much more likely explanation is that iPad 2,5 and iPad 2,6 are the new iPad Mini in Wi-Fi and GSM, and I haven't recorded the likely iPad 2,7 CDMA version yet," he said. "If so, this suggests that the iPad Mini is effectively, an iPad 2: A5 with 512MB RAM and enough GPU power to drive the Gruber Display, but not a Retina Display."

iPad Mini - Rumor Roundup