Noted on The Next Web, during his Talk Show podcast with Dan Benjamin, DaringFireball John Gruber offered up some additional confirmation of the existence of a 7.85″ iPad. “Gruber reports that he has been told by “numerous” people that this size iPad is something Apple has been “noodling with”. ” In the podcast Benjamin asked Gruber if he thought a 7.85″ iPad would ever be released, Gruber responded “I don’t know. What I do know is that they have one in the lab…“.

Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that they have one in the lab… a 7.85 inch iPad that runs at 1024×768… it’s just like the 9.7″ iPad shrunk down a little bit. Apps wouldn’t need to be recompiled or redesigned to work optimally on it. It’s just the iPad smaller.

 Gruber has offered accurate information in the past and points out that Apple has many prototype products that never make it to market, so it looks like Apple has worked on an smaller iPad but will it ever be released?

We can not give you any hope that such an iPad will ever be released, but reports have been coming from the Chinese supply chain about such a device for months.

Source [macrumors]