Apple considered making an iPhone nano around 2010. That’s according to emails from Steve Jobs that were made public in the lawsuit between Apple and Epic. The document does not contain many details about the iPhone nano.
The reference to the iPhone nano was discovered by The Verge in the documents from the lawsuit between Epic and Apple. The two companies are engaged in a legal battle over the commission in the Apple Store. All confidential documents surfaced in this lawsuit, including this email from Steve Jobs.
The email is an agenda for an October 2010 meeting where the company’s strategy was discussed. One of the items on the agenda is the ‘iPhone nano plan’. According to the agenda, the costs of this plan would have been discussed and showing a model and/or renders was on the program. More details are not known, but the iPhone nano certainly did not come.
The iPod has had a nano version for years. Between 2005 and 2012, seven generations of iPod nano were released. Sales of the nano model were discontinued in 2017.