Sep
17
2007
Apple iPod Touch – Review
Posted by luna6 3 Comments
The technological wonder known as the Apple iPod Touch has arrived in retail stores and we got lucky enough to do a hands on evaluation of the 16 GB unit. When first holding the device you do get a sense that your holding a device from the future. Elegantly styled like most of Apple products, the Apple iPod Touch, along with its iPhone sibling, seems to be the first true handheld device of the 21st century. Grand statement eh? When you actually use one of these things thats the kind gee-whiz thoughts that will pass through your mind. Even with all the technological marvels the iPod Touch displays, the unit isn’t a perfect device. This was intentional, as Apple intentional crippled PDA & VOIP capabilities of the device to prevent cannibalization of the iPhone sales.
The unit features an attractive 3.5″ display with a 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 pixels per inch. Good enough to comfortably watch full length movies in the palm of your hand. The unit comes in at an svelte 4.3 inches (Height) x 2.4 inches (Width) x an ultra thin 0.31 inch (Depth). This would be the first hand held device that I have used, where I enjoyed watching full length movies with! You don’t feel the need to squint as the screen size looks large when held an arm lengths distance from your eyes. Colors looked sharp, though blacks often looked slightly on the grey side.
Two caveats with the iPod Touch as media player would be the small storage space (8 GB or 16 GB) and the limited formats that the iPod Touch can play. If you don’t buy from the iTunes store, get ready to learn about encoding videos to H.264/MP4 real quick as those are your only options.
With a device this thin, obviously flash memory was used rather than a hard drive. Flash memory has its advantages (smaller size, faster response times, longer battery life) but still offer only a fraction of the storage space that hard drives offer within reasonable price limits. For me I could live with the 16 GB storage space, I comfortably fit 10-20 video clips, 30 albums and all my photos onto the iPod Touch and had about 5 GB of space left. The trade off for longer batter life was worth it in my opinion. For digital pack rats the smaller storage space offered in the iPod Touch could be a bigger hindrance.
Playing music on the iPod Touch was a pleasure. The new Album Flow view worked great and you don’t notice any lag time like you do on the smaller iPod Nano when flipping through the album covers.
The automatic change of views from the more traditional iPod vertical view to the album flow when holding the device in a vertical or horizontal position, was a neat feature to say the least. Viewing photo’s on the iPod Touch was equally as good. The slick manner in which you can slide through your photos with your fingers was a neat feature.
Wi-Fi was mostly a slam dunk. The Safari web browser worked better than any other hand held I have used for surfing the internet. The unit is smart enough to adjust on the fly portrait or landscape mode, which was most useful when viewing websites. To get a general overview of a page, holding the device upright is recommended and to get a closer view to read full length articles turning it sideways gives a close up landscape view. YouTube was nicely integrated into the iPod Touch. You can easily launch the custom YouTube app from the iPod Touch’s main screen. Video quality looked great, better than what it does on the computer with its larger video resolution. The problem with the Wi-Fi aspects of the iPod Touch would be a lack of an email client or any kind of VOIP capabilities. If this thing could do Skype I would be in 7th heaven. The Wi-Fi music store also is a new feature found on the iPod Touch. This would be the first time Apple’s offered a way to purchase or download music into the iPod without having to go through a desktop or laptop computer.
The virtual keyboard worked well once you have acclimated yourself to its particular idiosyncrasies. I did notice that I would have to push on the virtual keys slightly to the left of its onscreen image to get the right response.
Pro’s :
Cover Flow view brings about a compelling new way to browse your music.
Video looked great. For the first time I enjoyed watching full length films on a hand held device.
Apple’s integration of Safari into the Touch provided for the best web browsing experience I have encountered on a handheld device.
Long battery life (Watch two full length movies before needing a recharge – great for international flights).
Con’s :
8GB or 16 GB is downright skimpy.
No Bluetooth support.
Email & Google maps are not integrated into the Touch like the iPhone.
Users Rating: 8.29 
(7 votes)
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Comments
3 Comments so far
cool, thanks. planning to pick one up when they arrive in Seoul.
“Colors looked sharp, though blacks often looked slightly on the grey side.”
That was evident on the Touch unit I had. It really depended on the source material, but images with dark backgrounds (ex. The Host movie) had a greyish tint rather than true black. Otherwise the clarity and color was quite vivid.
Also if you viewed the device off axis (more than 45 degress) the picture darkened considerably.
Yet strange as it seems I was still impressed with the screen and enjoyed watching videos on the device. Here’s a pic of the Touch playing a video of Cat Power live on Jools Holland.
and this is a random video played from YouTube
how’s the screen? are you getting the “negative black” screen issue?
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/09/17/ipod-touch-negative-black-screen-issue/