New iPod Nano announced

Kevin Rose’s spy shots turned out to be correct! The 4th generation iPod Nano is exactly like the spy shots we’ve seen in the last week or two — it has an aluminum oval design, with a longer screen. Jobs claims it’s the “Thinnest iPod we’ve ever made”, and “You’ll be blown away by how thin it is”. As for new features, the 4th-gen Nano will have an enhanced UI, accelerometer from the iPhone and iPod Touch for CoverFlow — and, support for the new iTunes 8 Genius function.

Everything on the new iPod Nano works in a similar manner to the iPod Touch and iPhone. You can turn it horizontally for CoverFlow, and use it for watching widescreen videos and photos. If you hold down the center button, you will get a pop-up for the Genius mode. It has the regular organiser functions too, like calendar, stopwatch and voice recording when it detects a microphone. Another innovative new feature is “Shake to Shuffle” — simply shake the iPod to change the track.

The device has 24 hours of battery life for music playback, or 4 hours for video. It now comes in two sizes: $149 for 8GB, $199 for 16GB. There are new colours, including: Blue, Purple, Orange, Green, Pink.

Check out more news in our live Let’s Rock coverage.