Yesterday an image made the rounds on all the Apple related sites showing a 'leaked' image of the new iPod nano. Today most of the larger sites who displayed the image received take-down notices from Apple legal. Consensus seems to be that the take-down notices confirm the image was real. Based on that, it's possible to approximate the size of the new nano by using an overlay of the current nano and its known dimensions.
I've made the assumption that the click-wheel is the same size on both nanos. There is no reason to think otherwise, and in fact they match-up perfectly in width of ring, diameter of center button, font/symbol size, etc.
It's interesting to note that the distance from the click-wheel to the top of the nanos is exactly the same. Also, the bezel width from the top of the nano to the top of the screen is the same. Using the known dimension of the current iPod nano, I interpolated the size of the new nano to be approximately 3" x 2.3" (using the rulers in photoshop adjusted to the pixel/inch scale of the current iPod nano image). That means the length decreased by ~0.5" and the width increased by ~0.7".
A size of 3" x 2.3" is very peculiar. The 5.5G iPod has a width of 2.4". Why would Apple make the new nano about as wide as the iPod? The whole point of the nano is that it is significantly smaller than the iPod. With an iPod nano almost the same size of an iPod, indeed with almost exactly the same size screen, there needs to be something else as the distinguishing factor between the two models. That factor could be an iPhone-like touch-screen and size.
Since I'm already taking so many logical leaps (like using a 'leaked' image to base all this on), I'll say the new iPod nano form factor strengthens the rumors that the next iPod will be touch-screen and will be available at the same time as the new nano. This also falls inline with the rumor of OS X on the new iPod. Guess we'll see.
UPDATE: Yay me!
