Touch Interface
The main talking point of the Touch is the fact that there are no buttons as such, well there are two and that is all. As the name implies, the iPod Touch utilises a touch based user interface. Upon using this for the first time, it’s quite startling at how easy the unit is to use. Even though I am not used to iPod’s older interfaces, the Touch’s UI was incredibly easy and I was up and running navigating menu’s with ease inside a few minutes. It’s hard not to be astonished at how polished the whole thing is. It’s very clear Apple have put in a great deal of thought, and research in to the UI and navigation in general. The two buttons that you will use heavily is of course the combined On/Off/Sleep button at the top of the player, and the main Home button which takes you to the main Touch Dashboard.
When you’re browsing through your music collection whilst holding the player upright you can scroll through your playlist and albums by moving and dragging your finger up and down. When you turn the player sideways, the Touch automatically switches to Apple’s CoverFlow view in which you easily navigate through your music by flicking through album covers. CoverFlow is a joy to use and so simple too, just flick through the album covers with your fingers, single tap on the cover of the album you want to play, then up pops the album listing and another tap selects the track to play.
I have found browsing through my music collection with CoverFlow a complete joy so far and haven’t had any issues to report. Thanks to the fact that we are dealing with data being stored on flash based storage (SSD Page 1) the speed at which album art appears is close to instantaneous. If the Touch was hard disk based, we would see the hard disk close to choking under so much access, it would certainly struggle anyway and there would be noticeable ‘lag’ as the images appear.
Build Thickness and Scratches
We all know by now that the iPod Touch is a basically an iPhone without the phone, well that’s putting it mildly to be honest. At 8mm thick, it can slip in your trouser/jean pockets without even being noticeable at all. It feels pretty weighty to hold weighing in at 120g. Apple have certainly crammed a great deal of hardware into a very small form factor. Ultimately you will sometimes forget that it’s residing comfortably in your pocket. I know I did.
Go back a couple of iPod generations and you will recall how easy it was for owners to scratch their iPods. Aftermarket third party cases took off like hotcakes as a result. So I am happy to say that this issue is no longer the case with the new iPod Touch. There are many reports of hardware sites testing out the Touch/iPhone screen and hardly making a dent on it. One thing you should know about any portable music players or mobile phones that I purchase - I never ever use a case. Instead I rely on a ‘Shield’ to protect the screen from damage. My Zen Vision:M had one from SheldZone and my current Sony Ericsson w880i mobile phone has one too. I now await one for the front and back of this iPod Touch. I only do this because the environments that these devices are normally operated in at work means that they are often subject to having things dropped on them…like nuts, large spanners and the odd toolbox…
Sadly the screen is susceptible to fingerprints and picks them up like a magnet however they don’t affect visibility at all. Upon switching on the player, the only thing you’ll notice is the superb 3.5" 480×320 resolution screen that looks gorgeous.