One of the cool features of the iPod is it's ability to play audiobooks either speeded up, or slowed down, without affecting the pitch. There are ways to convert podcasts into official audiobooks so they can take advantage of this feature as well.

I listen to a ton of podcasts, so being able to listen a little faster is invaluable to me. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to listen to everything that I want to, so every little bit helps.

When the iPhone came out I noticed that the books played even faster. There is no fine control over the playback speed. Your choices are Normal, Slow or Fast. But on the iPhone the fast setting is significantly faster than on the iPod. I didn't realize it until I went back to the iPod after using the iPhone. Even speeded up audio seemed almost painfully slow. So, I am a junkie for speeded up audio books and podcasts.

Now, I wanted to get an iPod Nano with h2audio.com waterproof case so my morning swim wouldn't be so boring, but I was curious if the Nano would play at the faster iPhone speed, or the slower iPod speed (which is still faster than normal). I looked, but could not find an answer to that question. So finally I decided to just get the Nano. Even if the speed wasn't what I hoped, it would still be less boring than swimming laps with nothing to listen to. And, it helped that my wife gave it to me for my birthday.

So, here are my results.

The iPod and the Nano play at the same speed as each other. Playing the exact same podcast, in 10 minutes of real time, the Nano and the iPod played 12:30 of content (25% speed increase), while the iPhone played 15:00 of content (50% speed increase).

So, in an hour I can listen to 75 minutes of content on an iPod or 90 minutes of content on the iPhone. Kinda cool.

Anyway, since I couldn't find this information anywhere, I decided to post it here, in case it helps someone else.