Comment by sandreas

For years I had a little project here to rebuild the iPod Nano 7g in Open Source Hardware and software. Not that small, but at least in the same size category (a lot smaller than the smallest smartphone).

The iPod nano 7g is not designed to last forever... it is hard to repair - the battery can be replaced but the internal 16GB flash memory is a job for professionals.

There are lots of <= 4 inch Android players which could simply run an app, but these are draining a battery so fast after a while it isn't even close to the experience of a specific device.

The main pain point is controlling the device via headphone remote. The iPod supports play/pause, next, prev, vol+, vol- and fast-forward as well as rewind. Nothing comes close to this in android.

However, I was aiming to take one of the newer RISC-V boards with USB-C (like LicheeRV Nano or Luckfox Lyra), add a 2.4 inch display and a battery + gauge to it and 3D print a case, work out a UI via LVGL, but having 2 children is just too time consuming for such a project.

Sticking to my iPod Nano 7g hopefully lasts another 5 years until I can focus on it again :-)