New iPod is like iPhone without the cellphone

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday unveiled a new version of the company's popular iPod media player that's based on the iPhone, featuring wireless Internet access and a Web browser but not cell phone capability.

Dubbed iPod Touch, the 8-millimeter-thick device and can store photos, music, videos and other digital data. It features the same 3.5-inch (7.6-centimeter), touch-screen display as the iPhone, on which light finger touches allow the user to scroll through menus and use two fingers to resize pictures.

The iPod Touch also has built-in wireless Internet access and the Safari Web browser, including Google and Yahoo search engines and easy access to YouTube videos. The iPhone, which runs on the AT&T cellular network, also includes Wi-Fi.

An 8-gigabyte version will cost $299 (€220). A 16-gigabyte version will cost $399 (€294). It will be shipped worldwide starting later this month.

"It's one of the seven wonders of the world, it's just incredible," Jobs told employees and journalists gathered at a special media event near downtown San Francisco.

Jobs also unveiled other new iPod models, including an iPod Nano with a 2.5-inch (6.3-centimeter) video monitor for watching movies and playing built-in games. The current version has a 2-inch (5-centimeter) screen but does not play videos.

"It's incredibly tiny. It's incredibly thin," Jobs said of the new Nano, which features a 320-by-240-pixel screen with 24 hours of audio playback. "We think it's really, really beautiful."

The new Nano, which will be in stores starting this weekend, will come in a 4-gigabyte version for $149 (€110), and an 8-gigabyte version for $199 (€146).

Apple also announced it will be selling ring tones for the iPhone for 99 cents, plus the 99-cent cost of the song. Ring tones from more than 500,000 songs available on iTunes will go on sale next week.

Source : Internation Herald Tribune