On iPhone Nano
Wall Street Journal has a juicy article (or perhaps leak) regarding an iPhone Nano.
The first skeptical aspect is “half the size of the iPhone 4.” Immediately one imagines squinting at a tiny screen. But there might be ways around this.
Take a closer look at the current iPhone 4. Note the black bezel space — currently reserved for the speaker and home button — between the top, bottom, and even sides of the screen. In every day use, I hold the iPhone by its edges — all this space isn’t as crucial for gripping as on the iPad. Now remove all that black space, keeping the screen size the same. Maybe the speaker is moved to the top edge of the phone, and the home button to the side — or eliminated altogether with a touch gesture of some sort.
Now you have the liberty to reduce the screen size by much less than half — say 10% — and still keep the the same UI. There’s your iPhone Nano. And ties into the article’s mention of an “edge-to-edge screen.”
Then tweak the phone plan pricing — keep the voice plan constant, but perhaps make the data plan optional, payable on a monthly basis whenever one needs it as with the 3G iPad.
Last, adjust the local storage amount, perhaps down to 8GB.
The “power users” will want the local storage (for apps in particular) and 24/7 data connections but perhaps all those who use their smartphones as phones more of the time and don’t use a ton of apps will go for the Nano.
So this is my iPhone Nano guess. The iPhone 4 is hardly broken and doesn’t need much fixing. The hardware and contract are tweaked but the software remains essentially the same.
Well, except for all the MobileMe /cloud storage speculation… which deserves another post.
This is in line with what every one else is predicting. But I can’t see why anyone would buy the standard iPhone if this product were available. Storage? That’s the “pro” feature? Everything else about this rumored phone sounds better than the iPhone4. There has to be some compromise to make it actually cheaper. Apple can’t simply charge less and take a hit on every phone. The phone has to actually cost them less to manufacture.
The difference in cost to Apple between 8GB and 32GB of flash is negligent. And the data plan would make the phone just as expensive to the customer over two years, anyway.
And I’m going on record right here to say no reduction in screen size for iOS is going to happen. Apple believes way too strongly that it has nailed the EXACT proportions on the iPhone 4’s screen for the UI it has designed. Any reduction would require “sanding down the fingertips” as Jobs put it. They spent a LOT of money experimenting with sizes.
The only way to make a smaller iPhone is to rethink the iOS UI from the ground up. Can’t run standard iPhone apps. Must be something different, more akin to the iPod nano introduced last year. Think reduced functionality, some 1st party apps for Phone, SMS, iPod. NO Third party apps. At least for now.
Anyway, I wrote up my thoughts here: http://jcieplinski.posterous.com/the-iphone-nano-its-not-what-you-think.
Well, two further thoughts:
1) we don’t know what the iPhone 5 is at this juncture; it could very well have some new features that justify it beyond the iPhone Nano beyond just the storage. NFC comes to mind, maybe those rumors of a touch screen on the back, maybe 32 GB standard, maybe the Nano has no video camera (lack of storage), etc.
2) You could follow the steps above and not reduce the screen size even that 10%, keeping it exactly the same. My main point was that the screen size would not need to be shrunk that much if at all, once you remove the black bezel. That way a new UI wouldn’t be required.
Your post definitely has some precedent in the current iPod Nano which really drastically different from the iPod Touch in every way, different form factor, app design, and way of interaction. Certainly possible, too.
Personally I’d say your prediction is less likely but would be even more earth-shattering and market-disrupting. And so this is one of those product decisions where Steve Jobs’ instinct is surely pivotal.