Apple’s Latest Secret: Five Facts and Guesses About the “iPhone Nano”

Personal gadget geeks and casual users across the universe are nearly unanimous in their praise of the iPhone as the best invention since...well, the phone itself.  But as patent filings show, it's possible that Apple is already one step ahead of us and preparing work on a device that could be described as an "iPhone nano."

The nano, of course, refers to the miniaturized version of the popular iPod.  You know – a smaller version of something that’s already, well, small.  Though no one is sure what Apple would name a miniature iPhone, writer Jack Purcher has already shown us illustrations of what the potential mini-gadget might look like.

What do we know?  Maybe not a whole lot about this point, but if you're curious about a potential iPhone nano, here are some things you can learn or guesstimate:

1.  As Paul Boutin notes, the original patent for this device didn't belong to Apple.

In fact, it belonged to John G. Elias of FingerWorks, a company that sold its assets – including its patent rights – to Apple in 2005.  By the way, Elias is now an Apple employee.

2.  The "iPhone Nano" is actually double-sided.

It's an interesting interface that apparently beckons users to use two sides to maximize the little amount of space you have to work with.  Apparently, one side will even have a "cursor" or cursor-like feature.  Could this new nano be the world's smallest laptop?  Er, finger-top?

3.  This could be really cheap.

According to Boutin, forty-nine-dollars-cheap.  One would have to imagine a pricing structure similar to the iPod and iPod nano – the nano is smaller and therefore cheaper.

4.  You might see a device similar to the "clickwheel."

Users of the iPod know the clickwheel like the front of their thumb, and that interface may help guide the overall interaction with the new "nano."

5.  News of the patent might have been missed because it wasn't originally Apple's.

Since this project has been undergoing some kind of work since 2005, it's easy to see how the news was missed – after all, the original patent was John G. Elias', not Apple's.

As other companies seem to scramble to produce their own version of the iPhone, it appears that Apple may be already thinking about the next generation of small gadgets:  really small gadgets.