Microsoft has confirmed the existence of the Surface Mini by including several references to the device in its user guide for the new Surface Pro 3, which went on sale today. As you can see in the image above, the document clearly references the unannounced device.

As we previously reported, the Surface Mini was killed at the last minute and is now expected to be announced when Gemini is ready for release. In total, there are four references to the Surface Mini, first spotted by Paul Thurrott on Twitter, but no further details are known about the device, other than that it was supposed to ship with the same Pen as the Pro 3.

While we don't know exactly when the Surface Mini will be announced, we do know what specs the device will include. The tablet is expected to have a display of 8 inches, feature an ARM CPU made by Qualcomm, have N-trig pen support (as noted by the Pro 3 guide) and does not have a kickstand.

This is obviously a pretty large goof up by Microsoft as this document confirms that the device is real and that our prior information is likely correct. We will be curious to see how long we have to wait for the Surface Mini to actually be release but this document shows that it was nearly ready to go at the time of the Pro 3 announcement.

We have reached out to Microsoft to get a comment on the Surface Mini and there is no comment at this time. When they do figure out how to dance around this mistake, we will be sure to update this post.

Download: Surface Pro 3 user guide (PDF)