iPhone Rokr and iPod Nano Announced - A Rocker Phone and An Executive iPod   - 3,275 Views,

The Apple iPhone (nee the Cingular Motorola ROKR (rocker, get it?) phone) was uncovered months ago, and confirmed as a near certainty last week. In fact on these very pages we confirmed the Motorola ROKR phone as the new Apple rocker phone. Perhaps the one unknown now known (and to me a disappointment) is that the phone has only Shuffle-like capabilities - you get only random play of your tunes.

The iPod Nano, on the other hand, took everyone by surprise, in part because everyone was focusing on the to-be-announced iPhone (was it? wasn’t it?), and in part because it is intended to replace the iPod Mini.

Gasp.

Yes, it’s true. The iPod Mini, perhaps Apple’s best-selling iPod of all time, is being sent to pasture, and being replaced by the sleek, monochrome iPod Nano. Say goodbye to pastel pink and green, and hello to white, black, or, well, that’s it, white or black.

On the other hand, unlike the Mini, the iPod Nano has a color screen, and will display photos. And it weighs only 1.5 ounces (really) and is impossibly thin. Remember all those almost-credit card sized calculators that were in vogue in the 80s? Yep, that size.

But perhaps it’s biggest difference is this: it has flash-based memory. In fact, the iPod Nanos, at 2gig and 4gig ($199 and $249 USD respectively) represent the first truly high-capacity flash-based consumer devices to market.

Which means no more tossing your iPod in the trash because the disk drive failed 1 month out of warranty or after your Apple Care expired.