An iPod sizzles, a music phone fizzles.(iPod music-management software)(ultra-tiny iPod Nano)

Having sold more than 20 million iPods, Apple has predictably made news by replacing its best-selling player and launching its first cell phone. Does the ultra-tiny iPod Nano, which replaces the iPod Mini, live up to its hype? Yes. Not so the Motorola Rokr, the first camera phone that uses Apple's iTunes, the iPod music-management software. The details:

THE IPOD NANO

Almost as small and light (about an ounce and a half) as the Shuffle, the tiniest iPod, the Nano is even thinner and can hold 500 to 1,000 songs, about four times the Shuffle's capacity. Like the Shuffle, it stores music in flash memory, a more durable technology than the hard drives used on the iPod Mini and most other more-capacious players, which are more easily damaged if the player is dropped.

You select music by using a scaled-down version of the easy-to-use clickwheel on larger iPods. Though little bigger than a postage stamp, the Nano's color display is easy to see under most lighting conditions. You can easily create slide shows with music (but you can't play them on a TV, as you can with more expensive iPods).

Quibbles. A 2-gigabyte (500-song) Nano costs $200, which used to buy you a 4-GB iPod Mini. (There's a 4-GB, 1,000-song Nano for $250, which used to buy a 6-GB iPod Mini.) The Nano's claimed music-playback time of 14 hours, although more than the Shuffle's, is about half the playback time of some other flash-memory players.

The bottom line. The Nano is the top choice among MP3 players, with what may be the best-yet combination of size, storage, and ergonomic ease. Consider a flash-memory player from another brand if you want additional functions such as recording capability or an FM ...