My colleague Chris returned from a business trip to the US today bringing me this little beauty. I loved my iPod Photo until it was unfortunately stolen out of my bag on my trip to Mongolia back in July. Since then I have been iPodless and waiting for a reason to buy a new one. Last week Apple gave me one when they unveiled ‘el nano’….

The picture on the website gives you some idea of what it’s like, but the thing I didn’t really take in was quite how small it is. It’s the same height as a busines card and thinner than the iPod shuffle. The display is also much better than I expected – I could see that it was smaller than the iPod Photo’s but had thought that it would feel squashed and be hard to read. However, the text is clear and even the album art is recognizable. I could be wrong about this but it seems the resoulution is higher than on a Photo which may have something to do it.

As I listen to it on my desk – I am continuously picking it up and playing with it – it really is one of those gadgets that seems somehow ahead of it’s time. They have taken all the features from the regular iPod and shrunk them to a quarter the size. Kudos to the Apple enginneers for a) squishing all those electronics into such a small design, and b) not letting slip to the public what they were working on all this time. News of this on the horizon would have hammered sales of the shuffle and mini….

There has been a lot of talk recently about how Apple’s honeymoon cannot last, and that there will be a backlash of consumers defecting to players from other manfacturers who don’t tie themsleves to such closed platforms. That may be true eventually but for the time being Apple are not going anywhere especially if they continue to innovate and produce players like this. Tempted?