Virtually the day after the iPhone 5 made its way to store shelves a few weeks back, we’ve been hearing and reading nothing but iPad mini speculation. Rumors of pricing, leaks of accessories and components as well as some guesses as to when it was going to be unveiled and released on sale. If you remember rightly, a few months ago there was speculation that Apple would be updating the current full-size range of iPads to include the newly designed smaller Lightning port. Those rumors are back.

Sources of 9to5Mac claim that these refreshed 9.7″ devices will retain the same pricing model as the current third generation tablet. The main difference will be the swapping out of the 30-pin connector in favor of the new Lightning port found on the iPhone 5 and the new iPod lineup. There’s also speculation that we could see a slightly different LTE chipset being used to make it a more world-friendly 4G tablet. With EE having announced and launched its 4G network in the UK, it makes sense to upgrade it at this time, especially since by year’s end 16 of the country’s major cities will be fully up and running.

So, back to pricing: we’re looking at $499, $599 and $699 for the Wi-Fi only model of the “tweaked” iPads, then $629, $729 and $829 for the Wi-Fi plus cellular ones.