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iPhone "nano" offers (vain) hope to Apple Zealot market

Sweet. "With the release of the iPhone Nano this June (hopefully), Palm’s Pre, which has caught the attention of smartphone critics, and HTC’s soon to be launched touchscreen competitor will surely find their way to the dustbin." No bias there, then...

It's been months since the first rumour of the Nano appeared, and of course, this week has produced two deafening silences. No announcement at MacWorld. No announcement at CES, either. And, just to really upset The Faithful, the launch of a really highly acclaimed rival from Palm!

No wonder "iPhone Lover" has seized on reported "insider leaks" from a Chinese electronics factory, to proclaim the amazing qualities of a product - a product about which nobody knows anything at all - to transcend the real features of real products.

No, not everybody is quite as impressed! Blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, for example, reckons it makes "nano" sense:

For starters, what advantage would a “nano” iPhone offer. After all, the reason that the iPhone works is that the device has a touchscreen that’s big enough both to use easily and which makes the device multi-purpose. I just can’t see how a small “nano” screen would work,

he argued. 

 But let’s forget about the screen for a moment and look at two other problem areas: battery - cramming a batter that would power a “nano” iPhone would be a real challenge; and apps - as far as I’m aware, iPhone apps screens don’t scale to smaller screens.

And, he concluded:

The iPhone “nano” sounds to me more like wishful thinking than anything else.

Bang goes his invite to the next Apple press conf, then...

Eric Savitz quoted Brian Marshall, an analyst with American Technology Research, who "thinks a low end iPhone will launch early this year." But he also says that he has learned that no such device is yet being tested by AT&T - which leads him to conclude that the launch of the still-theoretical new phone will be through a non-US carrier.

That analysis has been widely picked up by pundits, quoting Marshall (sometimes)to point to a carrier in China. Marshall says he has “no definite knowledge of this.”

Last week's story, announcing that fake Nano devices were already on the market, probably means there are "collectors 'items" available, somewhere - but as curiosities only.

You may be able to buy one, but, as fraud specialist Ian Shircore commented: "It's unlikely an iPhone Nano is in the works at Apple. You would have to radically reinvent both existing battery and radio technology. What's more, the LCD - currently the killer feature of iPhones - would also be shrunk."

In short, it probably won't work.