Product Description

With web apps the power of the Internet meets the brilliance ofmulti-touch. And suddenly iPod touch can do that much more. Flick through lists of news articles on Digg. Play games likeSudoku and Bejeweled with the touch of a finger. View movie times

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21522 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Apple
• Model: MA627ZO/B
• Released on: 2008-02-19
• Dimensions: .26 pounds
• Display size: 2

Manufacturer's Description

Now there's even more to touch

Great new applications come to an already amazing iPod

Mail

iPod touch is the first iPod with Mail. And it’s the best email you’ve ever seen on a handheld device. This mail application lets you view rich HTML email with graphics and photos displayed inline, as well as PDF, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel attachments.

Maps

Get directions and check traffic with Google Maps. Even find yourself, wherever you are. Using some local Wi-Fi networks (if Wi-Fi is turned on), iPod touch finds your approximate location and gives directions from there. Mark specific locations, find the best route between them and search for points of interest along the way. With a hybrid map and satellite view, you can see major street names on top of satellite images. Drop a pin to mark a location and find nearby points of interest.

Widgets

Widgets are small, incredibly handy applications you can use every day. Three of the most useful widgets now live front and centre on your Home screen.

Weather - Get a five-day weather forecast, including highs and lows, for cities around the world. Save your favourite locations so you can check the weather any time.

Notes - Take notes, make a to-do list, or jot down a reminder using the easy-to-use touch keypad. Then save or email them.

Stocks - Check your stocks and track the market over one day, one week, one month, three months, six months, one year or two years.

 

Multi-touch

iPod touch features the same revolutionary interface as iPhone. Built to take full advantage of the large 3.5-inch display, the multi-touch interface lets you control everything using only your fingers. So you can glide through albums with Cover Flow, flick through photos and enlarge them with a pinch, or zoom in and out on a section of a web page. And iPod touch features a touchscreen QWERTY keyboard perfect for browsing the web in Safari, searching for videos on YouTube, finding music on the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, entering calendar events, or adding new contacts.

Ambient Light Sensor

The iPod touch display has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts brightness to suit the ambient light in your surroundings. The result? A better experience for you and battery-saving efficiency for iPod touch.

 

Accelerometer

An accelerometer detects when you rotate iPod touch from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display, so you immediately see the entire width of a web page, your music in Cover Flow, or a photo in its proper aspect ratio.

Touchscreen iPod

Music

If a picture says a thousand words, think of what all the album art in your collection might say. With Cover Flow on iPodtouch, you can flick through your music to find the album you want to hear. And when you do, a quick tap of the cover flips it over to display a track list. Another tap starts the music.

 

Video

The 3.5-inch display gives you video like nothing you’ve seen before on a portable device. Watch your favorite movie. Catch up on television shows, anywhere. Enjoy video podcasts. Play music videos. All using multi-touch technology that lets you bring up onscreen controls and go widescreen (or back to full screen) with a tap.

Photos

iPod touch holds up to 20,000 photos you sync via iTunes. Flick to scroll through thumbnails. Tap to view full screen. Rotate for landscape format. Or perform some sleight of hand by opening two fingers to zoom in. You can even play slideshows, complete with music and transitions. Set any photo as your wallpaper to personalize your iPod touch...with a touch.

Wi-Fi Web Browser

Safari

With Apple’s Safari browser built in, iPod touch is the only iPod that gives you wireless access to the web, everywhere you go. See websites the way they were designed to be seen. Sync your bookmarks or add a few as you go. Search the web using the touchscreen keyboard. Zoom in and out by tapping the multi-touch display.

YouTube

Got a bit of a YouTube addiction? iPod touch feeds it from anywhere with a special YouTube player built right in. Watch featured videos, check out the most viewed, search for something specific, then bookmark your favorites for future reference. It’s all the fun of YouTube — pocket-size.

iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store

With iPod touch, you can discover new music anywhere. Built-in wireless capability gives you access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, where you can buy songs with a tap. Browse New Releases, What’s Hot, and Just Added lists. Or find exactly what you’re looking for with a quick search. Tap a song to preview it or tap Buy to purchase it. From anywhere.

Box Contents

• iPod touch
• Earphones
• USB 2.0 cable
• Dock adapter
• Polishing cloth
• Stand
• Quick Start guide

---

Customer Reviews

Not for everyone, but an awesome piece of kit!
This is my review of the iPod Touch. Firstly, let me say how thin this thing is - it's even slimmer than the iPhone - but it still has a sense of being solid and well built. With a glossy black face and a mirrored metal back it continues the typical iPod quality feel. Where this one differs from the rest of Apple's offerings is in its outstanding range of capabilities. Not only can you listen to music, view photos and watch movies, but now you also have access to the internet via wifi, you can download songs straight to your iPod, surf Youtube, check weather, mail, stocks and even find your current position on Google maps. I found setting up a wifi connection and the Mail application both surprisingly straightforward. It's also worth noting that the Safari web browser coupled with the Touch's famous "Multi-Touch" display is simply the best portable internet I have ever used. It runs quickly, smoothly and is a joy to use. However, the most important part of any iPod is the sound quality and this one does not disappoint. If you have music encoded with a decent bit rate you will be in sonic nirvana. However, I have found that the audio equaliser settings make the music sound artificially coloured and are very much best left alone. To really enjoy your music you will have to buy a new set of headphones, as the earbuds that come with the Touch are quite frankly useless. If you upgrade to a quality pair, you'll kick yourself if you ever considered using the Apple ones - the difference in audio quality is that obvious. In fact, Apple have been very stingy with the included accessories - there's no cradle, just a lead to plug to you pc, there's no case to keep the iPod safe in, there's no AV kit to plug into your TV, you have to buy that separately too. But the one that gets me the most - if you want to charge to thing, you better have a computer nearby, because you have to charge it with the USB cable. If you want to charge it by mains, you have to buy a separate charger. I spent £250 on an mp3 player and it doesn't come with a charger? Ridiculous. Another thing that is tight is storage space. 16GB is not much these days, and the 8GB version wouldn't even hold all my music never mind photos and videos. However, there is a reason for the small capacity - the data is stored on flash memory, which is expensive to produce in high capacity, but has the advantages of being lighter, less power hungry, smaller and more shock resistant than a hard disk player (like the iPod classic). The small amount of space may be a deal-breaker for some, but personally I find 16GB is ample - just don't expect to put your entire DVD collection on it.

If you only want an mp3 player for music and videos, then this one is not for you. There are many higher capacity and lower priced alternatives out there. However, if you are likely to want some internet or mail capabilities on a portable device in addition to music and video then the iPod Touch is hard to beat. It simply exudes quality, but this quality comes at a price. It's not for everyone, but it is for me!

Great for email, youTube and web browsing.
Well I've had the iTouch for several months now and I have to admit it is much better than I first thought. I'm not an Apple devotee so it took me quite a while before I decided to buy one. What swung it for me was watching the keynote address about the iPhone SDK and the potential for future applications and gaming.

To be truthful I wasn't looking for a music player, more a replacement for my aging Palm PDA. So the news that you'd be able to run applications and even write your own was enough for me to pick one up.

I can't say much about the device as a music player. To be honest my Sony mp3 player is probably a better device for this as it has excellent noise canceling headphones and can be used in the pocket without needing to look at the display. I can't say much about video playback or photos as I haven't got around to putting any on the device.

However, I can talk about the email client, youTube, the web browser and iTunes integration, oh and google maps. They are all excellent.

I find myself frequently using the web browser on my iTouch rather than booting up the PC. Similarly I can check my email quickly without the need for a PC too.

I can use the iTouch to write quite long emails as the keyboard, contrary to many (iPhone/smartphone) reviews is very good. The keyboard is virtual, rather than a physical keyboard with real buttons and as such provides no tactical feedback when you press a key. When you look at the keyboard when composing emails it looks fairly small and typing errors are very frequent. However what many of the negative reviews of the iPhone keyboard neglect to mention, is that the keyboard has both corrective and predictive text... Difficult to explain, but it will try to predict the word you are trying to type e.g. 'hello' even if you've typed 'helko' because you've typed k instead of l due to their close proximity to each other. In practice you can type very quickly even if you're getting say 20% of the letters incorrect. I'm very impressed with this feature.

I would also like to mention the language support of the device. You can select which languages you wish the device to support, for example, English, Spanish and Japanese and then when you're writing email etc. you can easily change between these keyboards. The japanese is particularly impressive as you can type in romanji and it will give you the kanji and hiragana options. Again with predictive completion. Very cool.

The implementation of google maps is brilliant. You can do the zoom in and out thingy with your fingers... it can give you satellite overlays etc. the same as on the PC. It is worth knowing that it seems to cache the maps so that you can store a map for when you're out and about away from a wifi access point.

iTunes integration is very good and the wifi support allows you to browse and purchase music whenever you feel like again without the PC. The same for youTube. You are guaranteed to waste more time on youTube with this device... and if you've set up the email you can send friends links.... (If it sounds like I'm old because I'm going on about email rather than facebook/mySpace etc... it is because I am :-)

I don't have a protective cover for my device, other than keeping it in a soft (minidisk) pouch. It seems to be pretty robust as I don't give it any special treatment. It gets slung in my rucksack with all my other junk. The screen does get smeared, but after the first week or so you stop fanatically polishing it :) Keeping it in the previously mentioned pouch keeps it fairly polished without any effort.

I find the stocks application very useful, it gives you a 20 minutes delayed price and % change for each of your stocks. The weather application gives you a week at glance for each location you setup (In Madrid, that's mostly 'scorchio'). It all works very nicely.

On the 11th of July Apple will be releasing a software update for the iTouch (unfortunately we'll have to pay to upgrade) which will allow access to the application store, which will be to apps what iTunes is to music. I'm particularly looking forward to getting Sega's super monkey ball game :-)


There are a few issues, like no cut, copy and paste when editing text. It also seems to occasionally jump out of youTube or the web browser for no reason... It has locked up once or twice mainly whilst trying to exit a youTube video.

Overall I'd say that the iTouch is a pretty decent portable computer. It has even made me think that the iPhone might not be such a bad idea after all.

Geez. I sound like an Apple fan boy.

You Want One....You Know You Do!!
Let's just think about this for a minute...people say the Touch doesn't have a big capacity (well, I can't fill my 16Gb), but if that's the case, buy the iPod Classic! People say it's big to carry around (it's like a PDA or smartphone)...OK, go buy a Shuffle! Oh, and it gets covered in fingerprints....yeah, it's the touch screen that does that!

If you can get beyond this and you really do want the coolest iPod on the planet...something that plays your music, plays music videos, plays downloaded TV programmes or movies, plays You Tube clips, gets your emails, has a web browser, plus the latest Apple applications that are included on this version...then you really are going to enjoy this little thing!!

I am extremely impressed with this - it has a lovely quality feel, a quality sound and the screen is awesome - looks great and a featherlight touch screen (just wipe the finger marks off if it bothers you).

Get a decent case for it if you're worried about scratches - I did and it's now, most definitely, my new favourite toy!

You will love it!!!