Nooooooo....you mentioned xmas and it's only August the fourth!

It's just way too early.

Will we have to endure adverts for Easter eggs before January next year.

Oh oh! "Rant over, heads back in the sand peeps."

its Vodafone, happy now?

Milk that sucker / those suckers for all it's / their worth!

Even SHE's not *that* gullible!

So dialing will be like phones of yesteryear then.

I get the feeling the only reason this "Source" spoke to the daily mail is that they're the only ones who'd print it.

That ever reliable source of nonsense, The Daily Mail. I will try to withhold my excitement until a real news source mentions it.

I'm guessing it's Guy Kewney who publicly demonstrated how little he understands UI here....

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/01/10/iphone_no_scroll_wheel/

@dervheid: "Gullible" is reading a technology story in the Daily Mail, and assuming it's true. Or did your rabid desire to slag off iPhone users override your common sense?

This is clearly rubbish, a revised form factor wouldn't make any sense. Everything about the iPhone is built around a large touchscreen. Swapping this for a smaller screen and a "scroll wheel"...?! Personally, I very strongly doubt this will happen.

Someone at the Daily Mail has sat down and thought, "Hey, if Apple have released an iPhone... and there's already an iPod... and there's an iPod Nano... maybe there'll be an iPhone Nano! Let's print it, the 'kids' love iPods and this will make us look trendy. Can we invent an 'anonymous industry source' to add some gravitas?".

"could have a touch-wheel on the back and a display on the front, enabling numbers to be dialled from behind"

Please tell me that's a misprint...

You think this is bad? I've been busy marketing this Christmas's pantomimes since February. Some venues even announce their next Christmas show before the current one has even arrived.

Dear Chris

Please reboot your irony / sarcasm detectors, as they have clearly malfunctioned.

Or are you just a (now out of the) closet iPhone fanboi?

ps. I believe your 'gravitas' sensor may require calibration also.

How many more f***ing iPhones do people WANT?

IT'S A PHONE! Not a way of LIFE!

And yes: it has only turned AUGUST.

I mean, "enabling numbers to be dialed from behind"...?

"this is a great phone: wish I could dial numbers from behind though.

Perhaps the Daily Mail just like apple products cos they're white, eh?

Mine's the one you can dial from behind.

they haven't started selling collectibles and/or special editions... yet...

Now I've read an article about mobile devices and usability that quotes a *paragraph* from Lord of the Rings.

Wouldn't it have been enough to say "he's like that guy saruman"?

Lordy. Thanks for that one.

It's going to be the ideal phone for journalists and middle managers. They can dial from behind and talk from it at the same time.

Build an iPhone Shuffle. No buttons, it just dials numbers at random.

Althought I still don't get one part of the concept. Why should someone want to carry a phone around? It would be much better if Apple just got rid of that part and just buildt a portable web-browser.

Why would anyone go to the trouble of milking a product to death like this? The iPhone is a cash-cow for Apple- cheapening it with a piece of crap like is being suggested makes no sense. However it also makes absolutely no sense that the iPhone is being pushed at corporate customers when it doesn't have a keyboard and doesn't support video calling........ Even things like the Samsung F700v have these basic features........ Are we really technologically that far ahead of the Yanks, here and in Japan?

"Althought I still don't get one part of the concept. Why should someone want to carry a phone around? It would be much better if Apple just got rid of that part and just buildt a portable web-browser."

Maybe because some of us have friends we want to talk to? :)

Hm, I don't see much of a problem with a touch-wheel in the back of the thing, actually... Depending on the interface (software), of course. For instance, I never look at my iPod Nano's wheel when using it. I look at the screen only, and the finger just rotates around or goes to one of five positions (center, N, S, W, and E, say). Hardly something that needs visual guidance.

Not that I think this piece of "news" is anything to trust anyway, mind you, but whatever even if it's true.

Strange why people are dismissive of this.

Plenty of things stop people buying the iPhone:

• People who own the iPod Touch. Every Touch sale is a potentially a lost phone sale.

• The fact it's the size of a brick and weighs a ton. Not good in the pocket.

• It's on contract.

The holiday season kicks off in early autumn. They need to announce something because everybody bought their iPod Nanos and Touches last year.

Or is it because a number of plastic backed units are sporting cracked and flawed plastic casings and an odd one or two has gone a tad melty due a rapid discharge of it's battery cooking the cheap dupont plastic nicely ?

Choices from the Cupertino Pirates are those designed to empty the fans wallets and credit/debit cards whilst they raid the kids future college funds for the rest as well !

Oh to be blind , thick , gullible and stupid at the same time like the one in ten thousand wankers who continually fall for this stupidity every time !

Such is life , as for Ifoney bargains Nelson has the answer for this in following two words "Ha ! Ha! " !

I'm really getting bored with hearing about Apple day in and day out.

Has Linus Birtles got some deal with Jobs that says the Reg must carry an Apple story EVERY day in exchange for a few grand a year to cover the server/bandwidth fees?

I own an iPod Nano and yes its great at what it does but so is a light switch!

I have to ask how many different ways apple can merge an MP3 player and phone and how many different form factors they can come up with before people realise its the same bloody thing in a different package!

Mind you, looks like the market is getting as bored as me as Apple shares are on the slide.

Time to come up with something original Jobs as the iPod/Phone are old news.

Apple users like doing it from behind.....

The iPhone nano will have a rather predictable spec:

• Smaller size

• larger touch screen

• Longer battery life

• 160GB storage

• Fold-out sqwerty keypad

• touch-wheel

• Hexaband frequencies (SMUTS, JIMJAMS, HEDGE, Jsus, GPERS, JSM)

• 12.3 megapixel camera (with 380WS flash)

• HD video recording

• Dolby 5.1 audio

• DVB TV & DAB radio

• Available in red, yellow, pink, green, orange, purple and blue

• No cut & paste

The price will be $49, which at current exchange rates will be £49

With it being a Nano iPhone, apart from not being able to do MMS messages it'll probably not even do SMS!

Paris cos she likes to be dialled from behind.

Too late!

Here in Australia the first Easter Eggs for 2009 (!) were spotted on the weekend at Coles Supermarket, Katoomba, NSW. Yep. Easter, 2009. Buy early for Christmas 2010! BUY! BUY! BUY! CONSUME!

Isn't that one of the signs of the imminent return of Gozer?

Am I the only one that remembers this new design being touted as "the next iPod", with speculations that it might actually be this "whispered-about but never seen" new phone venture from Apple?

Now, a couple of years later, the *same* patent design is being trotted out and it's now "a new iPhone", unless it's a new "whispered-about but never seen" iPod.

Gah!

It was always going to happen... Not everyone wants the iPhone feature set/price as they are now, but every "cool" school kid wants to say they have one.

Now, as for the design:

To get an iPod Touch, they took the phone parts out of the iPhone.

To get the iPhone Nano, I predict they'll simply use what they have spare from all the iPod Touches they've sold :P

you cheap sensation-mongering bastard!

What did the Romans give us? Roads, clean water, sewers, concrete....

And what did Steve Jobs give us? A few expensive plastic toys and some eye-candy so-called operating system or two. So some trendy overpaid musicians (so-called) and graphic designers (so-called) and scientists (so-called) and kids (so-called) like their stuff - well, they fucking would wouldn't they.

Solid command-line industry standard no-nonsense DOS on an IBM foundation - that's the way to go!!

And then elbowing into the serious mobile entertainment sector with a bloody do-nothing crowd-pleaser that spawned a whole fucking me-too stampede by PR-driven rivals who should have known better.

And then this fucking iPhone (so-called) bleeding cheek - Motorola and Ericsson not good enough for you, eh! Stuck-up pink satin shirted bastards...

You'd never see Dixon of Dock Green swallowing this toxic plastic confectionary candy-floss.

Next thing you know there'll be colour television, sliced bread and electrical gadgets to toast it with...

Paris cos she understands the age-old wisdom of real utility, although she's not so solid when it comes to attractive packaging to lure the punters...

The iPhone (2G) is not going anywhere anymore, coz most people (who have the money) want a 3G phone. But loads people (I guess, in this now cash-strapped economy) could quite fancy a re-engineered iPhone Nano type product, which is basically a re-designed iPhone 2G.

OK - so maybe a slightly smaller display, smaller battery, but with pretty much the same "guts", just shrink-wrapped onto a smaller PCB and then wrapped into a smaller "package".

The 2G "technology" is proven, so there's plenty of life left in the old horse....like PH.....(or is she a bike - coz everybody's ridden her ??).

"The fact it's the size of a brick and weighs a ton. Not good in the pocket."

I just don't know where you get that...having owned 3 HTC smartphones, including the original Touch (the smallest), my iPhone 3G is without a doubt the best phone in the pocket I have ever had. It's THIN...thinner feeling even than the Touch, and the extra length isn't objectionable at all. As someone who carries my phone in my trousers pocket, all I can say is you really need to carry one for a bit before you comment - it is obvious you haven't. There ARE smaller phones, but none with a true smartphone feature set...

That cock on the Gadget Show loves them, that's good enough for me to NOT want one...

The world's fastest personal phone, running a phone-enabled version of Mac OSX Leopard on an 8 core call-processor to enable you to make up to 6000 calls at once. Housing the electronics is a titanium "iBackpack" designed by iPhone inventor

Al Gore, the iPhone Pro is also Airport enabled, letting you make calls wirelessly over the network at up to N rated speeds. Control input is by a new "multi-multi touch", letting up to twelve people simultaneously make calls using their hands, feet and elbows. GPS is provided by the much faster US military satellite network, although coverage is limited to areas in the vicinity of missile installations. The customisation list is huge, and a fully specced iPhone Pro will set you back a cool £678,187, although with basic options this comes down to a more reasonable £3,471. Available in late December, the iPhone Pro is expected to make mainly media industry phone calls.

haha, iphone a brick? I used to have an n93!!

I think this is actually a good idea, think about it, kids who have nano's are also the most likely to have PAYG mobiles, a cut down PAYG nano version of the iphone is therefore ideal for this market!!

still, this talk of a scroll wheel AND a touchscreen is just nonsense, the whole point of the touchscreen is that it is the input device, its like having a car 'now with handlebars AND a steering wheel'

Well, I own a Touch and that's too big for your pocket. Thin, yes, but its length is awkward.

The iPhone is much thicker and weighs a whole lot more.

Smartphones by their nature are going to be a bit bigger - fine.

But for us who want a more consumer based phone, size is a factor. The first thing I thought when I held the iPhone was "I wouldn't like to carry this around in my pocket all day".

The market is full of handsets which are much lighter and smaller. All I'm saying is that an iPhone Nano would be an advantage to those of us who want a more compact device.

The Nano concept exists because it's what consumers want.. Otherwise, they'd be no iPod Shuffle or iPod Nano.

"extra length isn't objectionable at all. As someone who carries my phone in my trousers pocket,"

Maybe some of us have no room for the extra length in our trouser pockets....

Paris, becuae she like a bit of lextra ength

Every new toy we buy looks like crap after a year, and then we just move onto the next must have......why ?

Get a 6310i if you want a phone, and turn the wireless on if you want music, as for the internet - it is clearly the work of Beelzebub and should be avoided.

MAC products are just fashion items anyway - like Harleys they are masterpieces of form over function - only difference is you don't have to be fat to own a MAC.

</old git>

"That cock on the Gadget Show loves them, that's good enough for me to NOT want one..."

Oh, I thought his "review" of the 3G version last night was fair and even handed. *cough*

Ahh the 6310i. Look's at the very battered model in drawer that finally died early this year, one day I'll fix my trusty friend.....

"Maybe some of us have no room for the extra length in our trouser pockets...."

I hang to the other side, mate...