If rumors from Macotakara are to be believed, there’s going to be a new iPod Nano released alongside iTunes’ Autumn update. The Japanese Mac blog has a history of getting rumors right, and is believed to have some accurate Chinese sources in the upstream supply chain for Apple hardware, so chances are good that they’re right about this one, too.

Sources say that the Nano will be going back to a more oblong shape, from the tiny square of the current generation. It will also be thinner than the current hardware, and much smaller than the 5th generation Nano, which was the last oblong iteration. The formerly ubiquitous click wheel on earlier iPods will not be making a return, but an iPhone-esque Home button might replace it. Macotakara’s source says the outer shell of the new Nano has a Home button-sized hole in the front face.

A concept render from Macotakara’s Taiyo Fujii.

No specs on storage capacity or screen resolution were available, but if the rumors are true, we’ll see the unveiling of this new Nano sometime between now and this Fall. Perhaps in some miraculous turn of events, one of these things will end up having FLAC support, finally.