9to5Mac brought up some points. Let me tell you how I feel about them.
Mockup
The Nexus 7 and iPad mini mockup comparison. Well, just. Wow.
The Nexus 7 looks natural, or at the very least acceptable, while the iPad mini mockup makes me cry. It just looks unbalanced and wrong. The bezel on the iPad looks even all the way around (even though the top and bottom are marginally thicker, but sizes in combination can be deceiving). The iPhone/iPod touch bezel is fair because the head and chin make everything feel centered and even. The iPad mini does not.
Cameras?
The iPad mini will definitely have a front-facing camera for FaceTime. The back camera is tricky. The optics in the iPad 3 are substantially better than anything even in most phones, and the iPhone 4S still beats it. The iPod touch back camera is so worthless it might as well be taking pictures of the metal inside chrome backing. Where does that leave the iPad mini? Depending on thinness? Either an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 camera? Or if they’re making a lot, why not just include them all. But if you stoop to the lows of the iPad 2 or iPod touch (which are the same by all accounts, it’s not really a selling point.)
Thickness
The iPod touch is incredibly thin. Impossibly thin. Without a case, I could not have used mine. Since it is smaller, a little bit more bulk might going a long way in keeping it safer rather than just tossed around in a bag.
LTE?
Maybe. But where would the pricing go? If it starts at $249, would the LTE model be $299 (the ratio between the base iPad 3 wifi and cellular is essentially 20%, so applying an extra 20% to $249 gets you $300). That does not sound like a huge increase, but if that were the case, where would other storage sizes fall?
But an iPad mini would be great with Internet access everywhere.
Launch
Hopefully doubling down on secrecy means that the iPad mini will be ready to go in September. But the last time I checked, Apple pulled a new MacBook Air out of the bag in October in 2010. So an iPhone now and an iPad mini later? Maybe. But I hope not.