So, we just exposed the awesome secret that Facebook’s iPad app is actually already out there, hidden inside of the iPhone app. Now it’s time to show it to you.

I’ve been playing with the app for much of the night, and it seems solid. Of course, there’s no guarantee that this is what Facebook will launch when the iPad app does officially hit, but this looks and feels about right.

After months of downplaying the importance of having an iPad app, and instead playing up HTML5, Facebook has clearly spent some time working on this. At the same time, it is an HTML5-rich experience, with things like the News Feed being populated this way. But other things, like image uploads simply cannot be done without native code at this time.

At the end of the day, would I use this app over the full website, which functions pretty well on the iPad already? Absolutely. I cannot wait for this app to actually launch.

Below, find many images.