You might know the drill here at PDA Thoughts, no matter if a device is old(er) or already reviewed by many websites, I will still do a review-ish post to give my opinion about it. This weeks toy: the iPod Touch aka the little brother of the iPhone. I just split the topic in a number of parts in order to get an overview.
The box
The box is tiny, with a real size picture of the Touch on it. An AC-charger is nowhere to be found, which is a bad job for such a expensive toy. According to an employee from my local Apple Store, they did this because people who frequently buy a new ipod end up with a lot of these chargers. They also have compensated this with the prize, which I don’t believe for one bit. They dare to ask up to 40 euro’s for just an USB to AC adapter, and the prize surely didn’t went down that much.
The design
Being an Apple product, one can not go without mentioning the design. And as usual, it’s stunning. The black front with glass screen, the amazingly thin sides and shiny back which is known to get covered up in scratches. The somewhat strange looking power button on the top looks awfully thin, but after weeks of thorough use I can say that it’s robust enough. There is a light sensor on the front to determine the screen brightness, and it’s so well implemented that you will only see the little black dot when holding the device in the sunlight. A 10+ for the best looking mp3-player on the market.
The touchscreen
This is one the main strengths of this ipod, with the multi-touch capability and eye-candy. It feels really nice when touching it, better then say, touching the HTC Touch. I immediately reduced the screen brightness to half, with the auto-setting on. Still, the screen is really gorgeous. It could also be the combination of the black background with the colorful icons, but if you lay the Touch down and watch at it from a disctance or angle, it doesn’t seem so be a screen at all. It looks more like a picture, so bright and clear. The device is snappy and the multi-touch technology feels natural. But it’s obvious that the iTouch/iPhone had to feel so natural in order to become successful. How amazing that such a bright screen doesn’t consume much power.
The speed and memory
Being a music aficionado, I opted for the largest amount of memory currently available (32 GB that is). Due to the flash-based storage of the iTouch the device isn’t even a bit thicker than the 16 GB model. Pretty awesome if you ask me… Other advantages of the SSD memory are higher speeds, and lower battery consumption. So you can browse through your cover flow as much as you like, without a single slowdown. And you can do it for a really long time with this neat battery life. It will not beat your previous iPods, but this isn’t strange with the large screen, Wifi and operating system. Back to the 32 GB again. My previous iPod, which I replaced with my smartphone, was an iPod Photo with 30 gigs. I couldn’t even fill it up half, but then again I didn’t play movies on it. Now with the iTouch I have also 30 gigs of free memory, because of the operating system and software updates.

The overall experience
Great. That is to say it in the way Apple advertises; i.e. short, simple and effective. Apart from the odd behaviour that occurs at times when browsing or creating an on-the-go playlist, the iTouch works as it’s supposed to. Fluid graphics and almost non-existent waiting times allow you to do want you want to do- and fast. Tap, tap, tap and push the home button. Although being so simple, it doesn’t become boring. I don’t miss the five way d-pad, but I’m pretty sure I would miss it if it was my main device (like the iPhone would be in that case). I’ve become accustomed to being able to use my devices without looking, and I can’t archieve this with Apple way of navigation. Not that this is a problem for my multimedia device, but it would certainly be one if it was my phone. Again, the people at Cupertino have done a great job.
Conlusion
When compared to my regular reviews, this one might be a tad short. However, I have covered everything that matters with this device. Sacrificing a bit of portability by carrying two devices, I have a better user experience. The battery of my phone will last longer now that I don’t use it for music/video/pictures, and of course I have more free memory left. I can really enjoy multimedia now like it should be, with a near flawless experience. Plenty of memory and long battery life make up for the extra device in my pocket. My smartphones might not stay very long with me, but I just hope that this iPod does.