Can the iPod Nano camera really replace a Flip?

Apple lifted the veil off of the is year’s iPods, but is the Nano going to be all that they led us to believe?

The annual iPod event was held today, and in a rather large surprise, the iPod Nano was the model to receive the most love from the engineers at Apple. One of the most intriguing additions was the FM tuner being announced. This was a feature people had called for for years in all of the various iPods, and it had just never manifested. Why now? Why in the Nano? Your guess is as good as ours, but it’s there.

The radio function isn’t the only thing the Nano received, however. The mid-line iPod is also now sporting a built-in pedometer as well as built-in microphone and speaker so that you can record voice notes and so on.

Of course notes isn’t the only thing the microphone is there for, it is also there to help with the included video camera. Why the Nano got the camera and the iPod Touch was left without is the biggest puzzler of the day, but that’s the way things are.

Apple pointed out that you can buy a 4GB Flip camera for $149, but you could pick up an 8GB Nano for $149 (8GB for $179). While you can obviously see where Steve Jobs was going with this train of thought, it’s like comparing … well, apples and oranges. The sensor on the Nano camera is so tiny that its resolution is going to be amazingly tiny, and while it may look fine on the built-in Nano screen, it’s hard to imagine it’s going to look that good on your television screen.

While all of the new features do seem a bit of a bargain at $149, suggesting it as a repleacement for the Flip just seems to be a bit of an overstatement.