My (Not-So) Ridiculous but Probably Unoriginal iPhone Nano Concept

Engadget just found a tiny touchscreen with the name Apple on it. What would Apple do with such a thing?

How about an iPhone Nano?

Yes, I know you’ve hard this before, but bear with me here!

An iPhone Nano sounds like a ridiculous idea, particularly if you think about it as a shrunken iPhone. But if you think about it as an iPod Nano with a cellular radio chip in it, it seems a lot more plausible. Really, all you would need to turn an iPod Nano into a phone is to throw a cell radio in it, put in a speaker on the front like the iPhone has and turn the screen into a touchscreen number dialer.

I wouldn’t expect any of the iPhone’s vaunted features - apps, a full-size touchscreen, mail, etc. - to make it to such a device, nor should Apple try to do so. It doesn’t need them, however.

What it could do for Apple is to be successful where the KIN failed miserably: the featurephone market. An iPhone Nano would require no data plan, and would compare very favorably to the current RAZR-like phones that are available for those prices.

The only real issue - and it is a big issue, unfortunately - is that text messaging would be a royal pain on such a device, though in landscape mode it might be able to fit a usable QWERTY keyboard. I don’t own a Nano so I can’t say for sure.

Of course, this may just be wishful thinking because I don’t have the money for a smartphone yet, and my phone needs to be replaced with something respectable. One can dream though, right?