With the demise of my old iPod Nano to my partners purse, I decided I needed a replacement and didn’t want anything with less than 16GB of space and could play movies. I was also on the lookout for a mini laptop to use for websurfing and emails around the house but I’m not sure that I need to look any further now.
I wasn’t sure about the Touch at first as I thought it was a bit of a white elephant. The whole touch screen thing and all the gimmicks didn’t appeal. What sold me on it was the big bright screen, the fact that I could watch movies in a landscape format (I’m not sure if it’s 16:9 or not but it must be close) and the option to have up to 32GB of storage.
Now I have to admit I don’t really do a whole lot of looking around when I buy things, I tend to go and have a play and make a decision on the spot. This time however I thought I’d check a bit of the competition out online and go and play with the top contenders in the weekend.
Something I didn’t realise and something that I really don’t like at all is the fact that the iPod Touch is not seen as an external drive to windows. This means that I can’t use it as a file transferring device at all. I also updated the FW to the 2.0 version as soon as I plugged it into the computer and didn’t do enough homework to realise that there doesn’t seem to be a third party application for music and movie transferring with the 2.0 FW. This means I’m stuck with iTunes until something changes.
I’m not a fan of iTunes at all. I’ve tried to be, honestly, but it’s just so damned slow and nothing seems to be logical. This is amazing to me considering that the iPods have been designed with usability in mind…
The WiFi on the iPod is great, I can set up my email addresses and grab the new ones through it. It can sync with my gmail or outlook contacts with no worries. It will even sync with my internet favourites (It will only sync with IE but you can export from FF and then import the ones you want into IE and get them that way)
The safari browser works pretty well. I haven’t done a whole lot of browsing as of yet to sites which push FF or IE. I like the multi touch zoom in and out as it means that pages are rendered properly and it doesn’t need a specific mobile page to fit the smaller screen res properly.
The accelerometers seem to work okay. The best game to demonstrate the accuracy of it I think seems to be Labyrinth. I got a few others but they just seem a little off right now.
Sound quality is more than acceptable. Using my Blackbox C14 headphones the sound is clear and rich. My older iPod Nano doesn’t quite match up I don’t think, but it could just be me.
All in all, I’m very very pleased with the iPod Touch. It stands up to the competition for the features I wanted very well, battery life seems less than what they say but it must be close. I’m quite taken by the little bugger.
The question for me now is whether or not I can wait for a 32GB version of the iPhone…
On another note, can the iPhone’s 3G data be turned off completely? I don’t use data on the road, only WiFi and I’d hate to be stung with data charges.
