Apple iPhone Nano will have no memory

Apple fanboys, never ones to squash a rumour, have been debating what form the supposed 'mini iPhone nano' will take - and have settled on the concept of a device with next to no memory that will store all its user's data remotely.

Rumours of a cut-price, smaller iPhone gained credence yesterday after Apple's preferred gossip sheet, the Wall Street Journal, claimed that a device about half the size and cost of the iPhone 4 was in development and would be launched this summer.

If all the rumours are true, 2011 is shaping up to be quite a year for Apple, which is also said to be releasing the iPhone 5, the iPad 2 - and a 'Fall surprise', which may or may not be an iPad 3.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs likes to introduce smaller, cheaper, less feature-heavy versions of its high-end devices after they have become popular - for example the iPod gave birth to the iPod Mini, which in turn spawned the iPod Nano and Shuffle.

But the Apple faithful were (briefly) at a loss as to how the iPhone could be miniaturised in form and price while still retaining enough features to make it good enough to bear the Apple logo.

Happily, Cult of Mac has the answer - your bargain basement iPhone won't have any usable memory.

They have noticed that the Wall Street Journal article also mentioned that Apple is revamping its MobileMe offering - a subscription service where users can store photos, music and videos, and access them at any time from their iPhone, eliminating the need to store the data locally. The concept is often referred to as the 'Cloud'. The WSJ suggests that Apple may make MobileMe a free service.

Apparently, memory is by far the most expensive component of the iPhone. The iPhone Nano, as Cult of Mac is calling it, will have only enough memory to enable the device to stream data from the Cloud.

Of course, such a device would be a total nightmare for mobile phone networks, which are already creaking under the strain following an explosion in the number of data-hungry smartphones being used.

And from a parochial standpoint, an iPhone Nano with no memory would be utterly useless to many Londoners, who spend much of their dead time commuting on the Underground - away from the Cloud. ·