Earlier today iLounge reported that, according to their source, a 7-inch iPad is in the works and that will be announced later this year. 9to5mac also speculated that they’ve been hearing rumors of a smaller tablet, equipped with a Retina Display - “something like an insane 1500x1920 type pixel display”.

Now, we’ve got some interesting findings to share and speculate with you.

It turns out, if you can access the iPad’s file system (using Open SSH or Netatalk) and open the iBooks.app folder, there’s a “[email protected]” file in there. It’s well known that Retina iPhone images have @2x in the file name: in fact, the respectively iPhone images are called “[email protected]” and “bookmark-ribbon-iPhone.png”.

Check out the images and screenshot below:

Now, the normal bookmark image the iPad uses is 38 x 68 px, while the @2x is 76 x 136 px. Double the size. Could this mean the next iPad will feature something like a 2048 x 1536 display - as 9to5mac suggested? Furthermore, why did Apple designers leave that only file in there? There are no other iPad@2x files in the iBooks.app folder.

Let’s speculate.

[Thanks, Gabriel]