The rumors about the upcoming iPhone Nano has started circulating around the net even before the original iPhone hit the stores.

Apple’s patents confirmed that Apple is exploring quite a few possibilities of the smaller iPod Nano like phone. There was full screen iPhone Nano with touchpanel at the bottom, there even was an iPhone Nano version without a touchscreen at all. And everything about the real phone was pure speculation.

But now, you tell me what’s this:

The pictures of the device that Dutch gadget site gadgetzone.nl came up with look very similar to the iPhone. Only instead of 11.5 cm this one is just 8 cm long.

Now, there can be four ways to explain this:

1. A very skilled Photoshop job
2. Some enterprising Chinese vendor ripping off Apple’s design
3. Some design shop’s experiments
4. First spy pics of the real iPhone Nano

The pictures look real enough for me and are not likely to have been photoshopped. So the options No. 2 and 3 are probably the most likely explanation here.

But until the author of the pics comes forward and denies it, we can not completely rule out the possibility that these are the first spy shots of the new iPhone Nano, can we?

Update: On the other hand, this one and this one looks very similar to the the pics above. So Chinese plain-vanilla 2GB PMP rip-off without even a touchscreen seems very likely

Another update - This is the response of gadgetzone.nl to our doubts (via machine translation from Dutch):

Our source in the US implores that us the photograph of the iPhone nano real is and comes from someone who works at Apple. The apparatus 4GB flash-geheugen will have, which would be not strange because Apple has stopped recent with producing 4GB the iPhone. Also is the apparatus provides with touchscreen with tactile feedback oftewel vibration if you press knopje on the baffle what kind of a more pleasant use looks. Further zit the ear-phone connection to the lower part, just like at the new iPod nano.

Well, I guess we’ll really have to wait and see…

And yet another (final) update: Well, it was fun while it lasted. But here’s the final proof that this ‘iPhone” nano is just a cheap Chinese rip-off: