14 DAY TRIAL // Dutch designer Martin Hajek, in collaboration with iCulture, has published a new set of images depicting his vision of a potential new iPhone design which draws inspiration from an existing Apple product – the iPod nano.
Despite shipping less and less iPods by the quarter, the fruity company still markets and sells millions of iPods. One of the key figures in the iPod line is the nano, a minimalistic player which, in the last generation, sports a touch-screen, a Home button, and runs a stripped down version of iOS.
The player is also a looker. Encased in anodized aluminum in several vibrant colors, the device is as much a music tool as it is a fashion accessory. the Cupertino giant sometimes takes cues from existing products to revamp other products, and the nano was no exception.
In releasing the latest version, Apple gave it the iPhone’s Home button and other design pleasantries to make it a better product overall. So why wouldn’t the California-based electronics vendor do the same with the iPhone? Could the company release an iPhone that this time borrows something back from the iPod nano?
He proposes that the iPhone 6 looks not just a little like the nano, but exactly like the nano, with the same curvature wrapping around the sides of the device and flat top and bottom.
The case would be of a unibody construction, something that could be achieved with Liquidmetal (considering that the radio equipment inside the device needs a window to the world).
While the concept certainly looks fancy enough to deserve the Apple logo stamped on it, there’s a slim chance Jony Ive and his team are thinking along these lines.
The iPod nano design, although brilliant in and of itself, is old. Secondly, it’s been likened to Nokia’s Lumia phones one too many times. Thirdly, the design simply doesn’t look all that good as a big device. It works for the nano, but it’s not exactly jaw-dropping on the iPhone.
