//This comment ONLY applies to a potential western-released iPhone Nano
Although an "iPhone Nano" sounds realistic at first blush, when you actually consider it in detail, it doesn't make sense.
1) Most problematic is the text input. The iPhone virtual keyboard is already quite small and many find it usable only in landscape mode. Shrinking the screen and thus shrinking the onscreen keyboard could potentially make the device even more difficult to use.
2) An iPhone with a smaller display would complicate the user interface situation. If the device had the same resolution in a smaller screen, user interface elements like text, dialogs, buttons, and other controls would shrink. On the other hand, if the smaller display had lower resolution, it'd be even worse with display elements literally going off the screen. So regardless, developers would have to maintain two separate versions of their apps which seems unlikely to be something Apple would want to cause.
The only way I see this happening is if Apple is working on a new OS and SDK update that creates a UI scaling system that makes the iPhone essentially resolution independent. This does make sense however since it is likely that a future iPhone will have a higher resolution display, so this may be necessary anyways. Also, resolution independence may find its way into the next desktop version of OSX -- OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard.
“At a glance -- particularly as a non-Storm user -- you might say "wait a second, that's just a Storm." And in reality, you wouldn't be far off with that assessment.”
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//This comment ONLY applies to a potential western-released iPhone Nano
Although an "iPhone Nano" sounds realistic at first blush, when you actually consider it in detail, it doesn't make sense.
1) Most problematic is the text input. The iPhone virtual keyboard is already quite small and many find it usable only in landscape mode. Shrinking the screen and thus shrinking the onscreen keyboard could potentially make the device even more difficult to use.
2) An iPhone with a smaller display would complicate the user interface situation. If the device had the same resolution in a smaller screen, user interface elements like text, dialogs, buttons, and other controls would shrink. On the other hand, if the smaller display had lower resolution, it'd be even worse with display elements literally going off the screen.
So regardless, developers would have to maintain two separate versions of their apps which seems unlikely to be something Apple would want to cause.
The only way I see this happening is if Apple is working on a new OS and SDK update that creates a UI scaling system that makes the iPhone essentially resolution independent. This does make sense however since it is likely that a future iPhone will have a higher resolution display, so this may be necessary anyways. Also, resolution independence may find its way into the next desktop version of OSX -- OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard.