8 & 10 GB iPod Nanos Rumored

koweja writes "The UK based technology magazine T3 is predicting that Apple will release larger iPod Nanos in the near future. From the article, "Munster's reasoning is that, as the touchscreen iPod will likely not now appear until next year, Apple needs to launch something eye-catching in time for the lucrative run-up to Christmas - and bigger capacity nanos fit the bill nicely." Granted it's an almost completely unsubstantiated prediction from somebody outside of Apple, but it is what a lot of people have been asking for since the original Nanos came out."

In Other News

I rumored a 16GB iNewton is in the works. Does that make me any more credible!?

Re:In Other News

iKnewIt!

Wow! Baseless speculation!

Gosh... here's some more... Apple will eventually release a 16 gig ipod Nano! You heard it here first.

Anyway, a 10 gig Nano makes no sense. 8? Sure, but 10? No. It can't be a single chip, and the size difference between it and an 8 gig isn't enough to justify the price difference for most people.

Re:Wow! Baseless speculation!

I've seen product tear-downs that showed the current nano had two flash chips in the 4GB version, one in the 2GB version. Some might have two 1GB chips if it was more cost-effective. So an 8GB nano would have two two 4GB chips. Of course, bare flash chips are rated in bits, not bytes, so the chips might be 8Gb, 16Gb and 32Gb for the respective sizes.

It might be more realistic to expect to see a 6GB version (1x 4GB and 1x 2GB chip) and the 4 and 2 GB models pushed down in price $50 each.

Re:Wow! Baseless speculation!

I'm too lazy to actually check out the sources, but wikipedia says it's 1x1GB, 2x1GB and 1x4GB respectively. Since there's 4GB chips already, and apparently room for two I imagine it's a matter of cost. An 8GB Nano would have a quite high price point.

my prediction

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict that Apple will never increase the capacity of the Nano. Why would they do something as stupid as that?

Re:my prediction

You misspelled iPod Flea [google.com]. ;)

Dvorak's answer

If Dvorak had been writing this then it would be:

"Apple needs to allow Microsoft to run Windows on the iPod. I don't believe it either but I love to screw with your head".

Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

Nanos were made to have smaller capacity because Apple weren't selling a good balance of Minis and normal iPods, if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod.

And does this really qualify as news?

Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

Not if they bump the storage on the larger iPods as well.

No, there's a break-even point. Even a 20GB iPod will play about music for about two weeks continuously, day and night before repeating. Every CD and vinyl record I've collected in the past 20 years will fit on a 40GB iPod, and that's close to AU$20,000 worth.

I suspect everything I'd ever want to listen to would fit on a 100G iPod, and it would only take a 6 TB iPod to play music continuously for every waking hour of my life without repeats. I wouldn't want to buy anything bigger than that.

Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

Right, but you forget two major factors.

1) The fullsize ipods do video now. That needs a whole lot more space. The nano doesn't do video (does it?) and so the nano almost fits the "music only" category, which tops out around 20-40GB for most people. The HD based ipods then become more and more targetted at video customers.

2) Lossless. I listen to my music at home via Squeezeboxes [slimdevices.com], and lots of people are starting to use HTPCs, Airport, etc to listen to the same rips at home as on the go. I know I sure as hell don't want to listen to AAC or MP3 on my nice hifi, so it's lossless all the way. Now I could (and in fact, do) keep two copies of everything - one for portable and one for home. But that's a pain to maintain. Would be easier if I didn't have to worry about space and could store all those huge files on a portable player too. My CD rips are currently around 200GB, and most of it is still lossy. When it's all reripped as lossless we'll be looking at over 0.5TB. Bring on the big portable players :)

Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

1) The fullsize ipods do video now. That needs a whole lot more space.

But will portable video ever take off enough for that to matter? It's not clear to me how many are buying the video iPod for the video. Even on the plane, it surprises me how few people I see watching movies on laptops, since it's about the only place I ever do so.

Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

There is a point at which it would become pointless, but 60GB aint it. I've got over 100GB of (legally aquired) mp3s in my library, and although there's a limit to the amount of music that I can listen to while I'm out, I don't know when I leave the house exactly which tracks I'm going to want to listen to - greater capacity means greater choice of music when I'm in the mood.

Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

Nanos were made to have smaller capacity because Apple weren't selling a good balance of Minis and normal iPods.

I'd say the capacity of the Nano has more to do with the flash memory than with any marketing goals. Flash memory is expensive and doesn't come in large-capacity flavours. Once it becomes cheaper and comes in higher capacities, you can bet that there will be higher-capacity Nanos out.

if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod.

Precisley. Which is why the regular iPods will be phased out, save perhaps for some large-screen video iPod. After all, why would I want a hard disk based mp3 player if I can have a solid state one with the same capacity for the same price? Hard disk players are going to die out, it's inevitable. Regular iPods won't be an exception.

Does size matter?

Why really needs a size like this? I have a MDplayer and 1GB on my PDA and survive easily (even got a movie on the pda, but not found a long enough tube trip to watch it all yet). Cynical people like me might think that it could be a gimmick where they can reduce supplies of the smaller memory sized nanos, and sell the bigger (oh look more expensive!) nanos... surely they have a bigger margin on those too ?

Re:Does size matter?

I don't really want to hassle with changing what's on there when I get bored of the selection.

You don't have to. I have my iTunes auto-rotate tracks on my 4GB nano. It's not obvious, but what you can do is sync the unit to one or more smart playlists. The smart playlists are set to randomly select a certain number of tracks that have been played less than "X" number of times. Right now, my "X" is "1". Once it has been played, it is removed and another track replaces it. With this scheme, I think I can do very well with a 1GB nano.

Larger Nano

>>Apple will release larger iPod Nanos in the near future

I hear it's going to be called the iPodx10^-8

Is it even physically possible?

Do 8 & 10 gig flash media drives even exist at this time (or in the near future)?

Just 10GB?

10GB? Lame, that's barely enough for my Frank Zappa MP3s.

And what about wireless?

Here is Why...

You can get a 4GB USB thumb drive for $100 [meritline.com] (or get four 512MB and one 2GB bundled together [dealmac.com] for $108). The current crop of MicroDrives (CompactFlash-compatible miniature hard drives [buy.com]) of similar capacity runs even less.

If a normal consumer can buy these things on the retail market today, Apple really needs to get its act together and start increasing capacity on its lower end or it is going to lose that market to these cheap drives and the simple add-ons that allow playback of music.

More Music

Great, a 10GB would let you have 2,500 songs (according to apple's rating), this is great business for apple. Now instead of just getting 1,000 dollars from people to fill it, they can bump it up to 2,500 dollars! Brilliant!

Rumor v.s. obvious.

Naturally as larger (smaller) hard drives become cheaper they will come up with ipods with more space, this isnt a rumor that they will be doing it, maybe a rumor that it will be happening soon.

Difference between rumor and speculation

There's a difference between rumor and speculation, and this is more speculation than rumor.

nano replaced mini

The nanos were clearly created to replace the minis, which were cute but had limited battery life due to the power requirements of the hard drives, and as they were so small could not have larger batteries.

As the minis were phased out, they had a capacity of 6 gig. I have been expecting the nano to increase to 8 gig for a while. Of course the nano still has a short battery life, and perhpas the added memeory is just going to make that worse.

The 4GB are available, and given Apple discounts are not overly expensive. I do not see a 10 gig nano, as the nanos seem to have pairs of cards. Hopefully they will come out with a 8 gig Nano in the $250 price range, and drop the other prices according. That might be enough space to make it worthwhile. I would also like to see a 2gig shuffle, though that product line also seems to be dead.

why?

I don't see the point. If you're gonna dock to your computer, then you only need memory for one battery charge, and 2G is plenty. If you're going to use a charger while traveling, 10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection.

I bought the 4G but discovered through use that I could have saved my money and lived just fine with the 1G or 2G model.

Re:why?

"10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection."

Actually, 10 gig is almost exactly the size of average music collection when stored in 128kbit compressed format. This BBC article shows that men own, on average, 178 albums (women, on average, own less).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/410 2786.stm [bbc.co.uk]

178 (albums) * 650MB (maximum data per album) * 128 Kb/sec (good quality compression rate) / 1411.2 Kb (per sec data rate e on the CD) = 10493.5 MB. This is over just 10 GB to store the average mans music collection.

Well, I'm convinced

Granted it's an almost completely unsubstantiated prediction from somebody outside of Apple, but it is what a lot of people have been asking for since the original Nanos came out.

There are rumours that God exists. Granted it's an almost completely unsubstantiated prediction from somebody outside of Heaven, but it is what a lot of people have been wanting since the original Homo Sapiens came out.

It has been done already

Hackaday.com recently had an article about converting a 4 GB iPod nano to an 8 GB. Apparently apple only uses 1 flash chip in the Nano to make up the entire 4 GBs, but in fact it has a second spot on the board to attach a second 4 GB flash chip. It wouold be pretty cool to have an 8 GB iPod Nano though. http://ipod.hackaday.com/entry/1234000233073484/ [hackaday.com]

8Gigs?

640k should be enough for anybody.

The reason I havent bought is the small size

You have to remember that the so-called 6 gb mini doesn't really hold 6 gb, it's slightly smaller (it reports 5.6 gb on the About screen). So with a decent amount of songs plus a regular collection of the four podcasts I regularly subscribe to, I easily fill my Mini. I don't see that I could put the same amount on a Nano, so I haven't bought a Nano. I'd be much more inclined to consider an 8-gig Nano, and could really care less about a touch-screen model.

Finally!

So can we now expect prices on the smaller ones to finally fall to reasonable levels? That's all that's prevented me from buying one, actually.

My iPod

is going to have 11GB

I wont be buying it

although it looks cool and easy to use, the battery nightmare was enough for me to ditch it. Not to mention you cant pull the mp3s back off it, or use it with anything but itunes-shamola.

Still waiting for video on nano

I know the screen it's small but believe me, it has enough resolution to play videos. I have a Rockbox on my nano and Doom really looks great, even better that the GBA version. Also the included 3d screensavers like "plasma" and "fire" are neat.
I wish Apple includes video support in an upcoming software upgrade.

8Gig easily possible, 10gig seems plain odd

Apple already use a single 4gb samsung part(K9NBG08U5M) in the 4gb nano and can easily make the nano hold 8gig using two of the 4gb parts and theres even a site out there has details on how to do this upgrade yourself using the old flash from a broken 4g nano. they can simply continue they agreement with samsung and install these chips at no real extra cost to themselves.

however the 10gb option is where journalists needed to do just a little research and realise that samsung do not have a larger flash part available and that 10gb is a very odd number to pluck out of the air when referring to flash memory that doubles with every generation. the only plausible way is that you could squeeze 2 x 4gb and 1 x 2gb into the nano but this seems far fetched as it would require apple to build new circuit boards plus i dont think there is the physical space.

if, scratch that, when apple release the 8gb nano i will certainly be thinking hard about buying it cos its almost a sweet spot for an on the go music collection. i realise ppl say of youve got 60gig of music but seriously do you listen to that ALL that music all the time. from what i seen of peoples music collections there is a core selection of music ppl love surrounded by other music they may listen to from time to time. if they are on the move they want the stuff they love with them but are not fussed if the likable music goes too.

thats just my £0.02 :)

Why is this?

What I want to know is, if Apple can make such high capacity little devices, why can't USB Thumb-drive manufacturers? I've never seen one over 2 gigs, and that one wasn't really a Thumb-drive. It was a little cheese wheel-looking thing with a retractable cord. Granted, I live in the middle of nowheresville so can someone prove me wrong here, or are they keeping something from us?
What I'm asking is, is there a USB drive with a capacity over 2 gigs that I can fit in my pocket, without it pulling my pants down?

Oh fudge

After months of trying to come up with a practical reason to spend $150.00 - $300.00 on an iPod, I just ordered a 1 gig nano a couple of hours ago only to just now run across this story.

Oh well, at least I got it engraved with DON'T PANIC!

Higher Standard

Well, I would require the following features in any Audio player I would buy: 1-NO DRM WHATSOEVER. 2 The ability to play MP3, OGG, and other format files (need not play WMA files). 3 It has to use USB Flash drives as memory, which gives the capability to transfer files between devices.(Sandisk Cruzer MP3 Companion type device) 4-Be powered by 1 or 2 AAA NI-MH batteries. 5-Be capable of listening to FM radio AND NOAA broadcasts. 6-Obviously this device cannot be as small as some players, but that makes it harder to lose! 7-Not be vastly overpriced like the iPods all are! (for what you get) 8-NOT be a (CR)Apple or Macintrash product (see #7) So far I have not found an audio player that fits these requirements...if anyone know of one please post here how to get one!

longer battery lifetime

instead of more memory, how about longer battery lifetime? even with my 2GB ipod, i already ran out of battery before running out of songs. (i do pick songs by hand regularly and that makes the LCD on frequently.)

I'm still holding out...

...for the iPod Macro. Fits in the back of any tractor-trailer rig, comes preloaded with every song ever recorded and plays for 12 hours on a gallon of diesel fuel.

False Rumor

The next ipod has already been hinted at in this announcement:

http://www.biggercheese.com/index.php?comic=591/ [biggercheese.com]

Re:Bigger?

Congrats, you're the first poster on slashdot to manage fusing a HORRIBLE joke with extreme grammar nazism!

Re:Holy **** people...

I predict less than 150 replies for this topic. [J]

Hmm, is there money being wagered here? ;-)

But it's kewl!!!!!

My music collection is nowadays around 7 GB. But that includes of course music I hardly ever listen to. And even if I would want to even on an iPod it is not that convenient to search for specific songs in a heap of several thousands.

I don't think that there are a lot of people around who could fill 10 GB with legal music. What would they put on a 10 GB iPod Nano? For the normal iPod we have a solution: Movies.

But for the iPod Nano? Flip-books?

People will probably buy those Nanos just to be cool and be able to say "my iPod Nano is larger than yours".

Re:The Point here is...

They don't make much margin on the main device (weather large or small) the money is in the periphels.

Apple makes a healthy margin on the "main" device. This has been their M.O. for years, as far back as the original Mac.

Re:Holy **** people...

I recently bought a pair of 250GB disks to run as a mirror pair for my legal music collection because I've got another fifty CDs or so that need encoding. Big part of the reason I need so much space is because I archive in flac, but even lossy it would take in the neighborhood of 45-50GB to hold the 700 or so albums I have.

Re:Holy **** people...

If people are willing to purchase a larger capacity iPod, why shouldn't Apple offer it to them? Companies should never limit sizes because a few people don't understand why you need that much hard drive(or flash memory) space. When we went to Iraq, everyone who had iPods copied their entire music selection to their iPod, and those who didn't had almost no music. If you build it, they will come. Also, what are people supposed to be focused on while on public transportation? Its not like they are driving...

Re:The Point here is...

On a conference call to discuss the results, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said iPod gross margins were above 20% during the quarter, and that according to NPD Techworld, the company now holds 78% of the U.S. market for MP3 players.

Found the quote in this article: http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?g uid=%7B96F58ECA-995C-42E4-ABAB-A3CBA070E6E1%7D&sou rce=blq%2Fyhoo&dist=yhoo&siteid=yhoo [marketwatch.com]

I'd consider that to be making goood money off the main device.

Re:The Point here is...

"PLUS it could save face for the touchscreen miss."

Wait a second?

Are you suggesting that Apple should somehow make up for not releasing something they themselves never intended to in the first place?

Re:Holy **** people...

I had an older 30 GB iPod, that was almost full - 99.5% of which was from CDs I own. I few months back I bought a 60GB 5G iPod so I'd have room to grow.

If I were to load all my parents' CDs onto an iPod, I'd fill up 30 GB no problem. And if I were to load all their old records and cassette tapes as well, I'd probably fill up a 100 GB iPod easily, if one existed.

Re:This tech is so OLD it qualfies for SocialSecur

Dear Bushido Hacks,

Brick sized form factors are so. . .

Uh, what year was it that huge frikkin' pockets were in vogue? Nineteen-oh-never?

Dear Bushido Hacks, Nanos don't use hard drives.

Sincerely,
Apple

Re:I think I speak for others too...

I disagree. I think the Nano is just great! His Steveness said so!

Back to my "own" opinion, whats the Mini better at? I dont like the shape at all, whenever I held one for a period of time, it felt a lot worse than my 3G iPod, the rounded sides were egh compared to the whole slick surface of my iPod. Screen, size, everything, the Nano is better.

Please point out what you prefer about the Mini.