Apple may begin replacing hard drive based iPods with solid state NAND flash memory. The move in using an all Flash based iPod would make way for smaller and thinner iPods, and improvement in battery life, according to a report from Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora. “We believe that the video iPod transition from 1.8-inch hard disk drives to NAND flash memory may occur as soon as late 2007,” Tortora wrote. Although 32GB is the highest capacity in NAND Flash memory, Totora questions whether this is sufficient enough for an iPod to hold video. He also said that a 30GB of HDD-based iPod can last around 40 hours of video content, but only has about 3.5 hours of battery life for video playback. Replacing the hard drive with flash memory would allow for an increase of about 60 percent in battery life to 5.5 hours of video playback. Further, he believes the next generation video iPod will come with a touch wide screen, Wi-Fi built-in to transfer files between Apple TV and will have GPS functionality.

In related news, Samsung announced the world’s first laptop based on NAND Flash Memory and SanDisk announces Flash hard drives for notebooks.