Review: iPod touch 16GB zt (圖)

Apple\'s iPod line has been steadily evolving over the past years since the first iPod was introduced in 2001. Since then, we\'ve seen multiple revisions and eliminations (iPod mini) of each line, slowly migrating into the product lineup we see on store shelves today, the iPod classic, iPod touch, iPod nano, and the iPod shuffle.

One of the latest iPods introduced into the line is the iPod touch, a product which looks to have evolved from the iPhone - labeled as a slimmed down iPhone, or an iPhone without the phone.

Capacity

The iPod touch is available in two flavors, 8 and 16GB. For this \"small\" reason the product has been heavily slammed by a few large names in the industry. They\'re saying \"why couldn\'t Apple have put a 160GB hard drive into the device instead of the excessively expensive flash based drives. For this reason, some have been swayed away from purchasing the device, I wasn\'t one, coming off a 60GB iPod and somewhat \"downgrading\" to the 16GB iPod touch I haven\'t felt at all restricted with the storage limitation.

When formatted, the 16GB iPod touch has 14.82GB of space remaining for video, image and audio content. I\'ve heard many claims that Apple is un-fairly advertising its storage capacity, though it\'s the same with everyone. Companies claim to have a 250GB hard drive when the actual formated capacity is around 230GB - 232GB to be exact.

Slimness and Scratches

As been labeled as the slimmed down iPhone, the iPod touch certainly is. At just 8-mm thin, the touch is much thinner than the iPhone, it feels great in hand and when slipped into my pocket it\'s so light I can almost forget that it\'s there. It\'s amazingly thin and light - the iPod I\'ve always dreamt of.

In the past it has been a scary thought of slipping an iPod into your pocket without a case due to their knack to scratch easily - this problem is now non-existant with the iPod touch. The screen is repellent to scratches. For the purpose of backing up this claim, I ran the point of a sharp needle over the screen of the iPod touch a few dozen times, when looking up at it in the light, no scratching or scuffing was apparent - impressive - I\'m considering skipping on a case purchase for this iPod.

Touch Interface

The most apparent new feature to the iPod touch is the touch-based user interface. After five minutes of playing with it I was already in astonishment with how well Apple thought out the UI and general feel of browsing the device.

The touch interface is a great new way to browse your music and navigate around your iPod. When you\'re browsing through your music while holding the device upright, you can scroll through by moving and dragging your finger, when you turn the device sideways, the iPod touch automatically switches the iPod to CoverFlow view in a horizontal format, allowing you to browse through your music by flicking (quite literally) through album covers. This innovative new way to navigate your music library is great fun and yet another way Apple has integrated its new acquisition of the technology to the product line.

I\'ve found browsing through CoverFlow a very quick and pleasing experience, due to the use of the flash based HDD, flicking through music is rather snappy, this is one area of the device I see the flash hard drive to be very useful. A standard spinning drive would choke and burn under this performance stress.

Battery Life

When you want to preserve battery life while listening to music, you can press the sleep button on top of the device, this shuts off screen power and keeps your music playing. When pressing it again, it wakes the screen and prompts you to move a slider to unlock the iPod to prevent accidental input. This is by far one of my favorite UI enhancements - it works seamlessly and is perfectly executed.

Battery life for video playback is slightly under Apple\'s estimate. The audio playback time is rather impressive, I\'ve been playing music for 5 hours a day for three days now, and the battery still has around 50% remaining. This was one of of my major concerns with the iPod touch before it arrived - the power required to display such a large display.

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