Opening the case housing the new iPod nano might just be a religious experience. If angels don’t sing as the clear plastic door swings back, it’s only because Apple hasn’t yet stashed the recording in the packaging.

The nano is a feat of design. It’s 3.6 inches tall, 1.5 inches wide, thin enough to fit three times over in an envelope and slightly ovular, with a curved crystal glass display screen. It fits easily in hand, and the curved edges mold comfortably into the fold between thumb and palm as you spin the click wheel. It makes the generation-two nano look like a slide rule, the original iPod like an abacus and all other products like those pieces of knotted string the Incas used to count on. And this is just talking about form.

As for function, the nano does everything previous products have done, with a few touted upgrades, and everything an MP3 player should do. It holds either eight or 16 gigabytes of music, movies, videos, podcasts, photos and games. It will play a day of straight music or you can watch a movie and a half per a single battery charge.

Snazzy new features include an accelerometer—like the iPhone and Touch, the nano knows when you’ve flipped it to its side and adjusts the aspect of its screen— and nine different colors for its exterior and a shake shuffle.

What’s that, you ask?

Say you’re jogging while listening to the “Yellow Submarine” album, and have gone through all the songs with lyrics. You’re into the boring instrumentals now, but don’t want to stop to switch albums. Just give the thing a good, hard shake, and it will automatically switch to song shuffle. The up-and-down of your jogging, however, doesn’t bother it a bit. You may now have to deal with “Aaron’s Party: the Aaron Carter mix,” but it’s worth the risk.

Apple’s newest and most excitedly hyped feature, the Genius Sidebar, is featured prominently. Hold down the center button on a selected song until a menu pops up, and the Genius is the first option. It suggests like-minded songs for purchase from iTunes. If you haven’t already, you will have to download iTunes 8, free from Apple, and turn on the Genius function for this to work.

Unlike Microsoft’s Zune or the Touch, the iPod nano doesn’t connect to the internet (so you can’t automatically buy new music suggested by the Genius) and no iPod models have an AM/FM tuner (though you can buy an external attachment for radio). The nano also won’t charge from FireWire-based power source, so if you don’t want to charge directly from your computer, you might need to upgrade USB power adapters.

But even with these minor shortcomings, Apple and its iPod prove themselves a force to be reckoned with, and entertain in the process.