Impressions and pics: iPod Nano 4G

So I was at an electronic store in Tokyo and had a chance to play with the iPod Nano 4G today.

Pictures are at the end of the post (apologizes for the blurry pics, they were taken with my cell phone). And here are my impressions:

• Cover Flow can be activated by tilting the Nano horizontally. The feature worked smoothly and felt like the iPod touch / iPhone experience. In fact, it felt so much like it, my first intuition was trying to flick through the covers with my finger, and I realized, oh, I got to use the click wheel. Maybe they will eventually have a touch screen for Nano in the future. 
  
  
• They probably didn’t think of the tilting feature when they first designed the click wheel. The click wheel provides an intuitive and consistent user experience when the Nano is in both the portrait and landscape mode. Very neat, I thought.
  
  
• After used to watching video on my iPod touch, the Nano screen is simply too small for videos. I can’t imagine watching it for long period of times. 
  
  
• It small and thin, and easy to hold in your hand. The design seems to make the previous Nano look outdated. 
  

And I just realized I forgot to try out the shake and shuffle feature. Oh well, next time.

The Nano 4G seems like a good buy if music listening is the primary activity. The 16GB model should hold quite a collection of music, and in such a small device! If watching videos is something you want to do a lot, the limited memory space and screen space might be something to think about. In that case, the iPod classic gives you lots of space, and the iPod touch gives you a bigger screen. For now, you just can’t get both yet, at least with Apple.