Video Quality
Provided they are encoded correctly, video’s look stunning on the Touch. Given that I could easily watch movies and TV shows on my Vision:M’s 2.5" screen, the Touch’s 3.5" is a bonus. The display is ‘apparently’ the same screen used by the iPhone - there has been a great deal of debate over this mostly accusations at Apple for using a poorer screen on the Touch’s. So far I have nothing but praise for the screen. I find it very bright, crisp and colourful. The viewing angles are very good so if you’re trying to show photos or videos to your friends they’ll be able to see them without you having to reposition the screen much.
Sadly this being an Apple product, there isn’t any Xvid or DivX support at all, so you’ll end up doing almost decomposing as you convert your videos over before the Touch will recognise the supported H.264 format. I used the superb video features of the Vision:M almost as much as I listened to audio on that thing, but on the touch I’ll be ignoring videos for the most part. I have better things to do then spend 30mins - 1hr converting videos.
The rest of the applications
Having covered most of the common applications, we’re left with a hugely dumbed down Calendar application. So dumbed down that it doesn’t really do anything except sync with Outlook on your PC and that’s all. You cannot edit or add appointments to it nor do anything else as a matter of fact. The dumbed down Calendar app is somewhat strange given that the Contacts app allows full editing of er contacts. You can even embed pictures into it and this app also uses Outlook to synch with. Contacts is a really nice and handy little app that I will make use of.
The Clock is a real neat piece of work. It acts as a world clock that you can store clocks from different time zones. If that isn’t enough, it has the ability to act as an alarm clock, a stopwatch and a timer. Very handy with good functionality. Lastly there is a calculator app, very basic yet functional and it has huge round buttons, which are easy to select as opposed to the built in keyboard.
