A review of my Apple iPod Touch 2G!

Hi Guys,

I got a new Apple iPod touch from my brother. Actually he had got it for me when he was in US. Since his stay in Uruguay extended much longer than he anticipated, he made it reach me through one of his colleagues in Uruguay, who came back to India a few days ago. After a little fumbles I was able to contact his colleague and got the iPod a fortnight ago. So, first a big thanks to my brother for this wonderful and expensive gift, ‘Thank you dear brother’.

It is an Apple iPod Touch 2G with 16 GB capacity. I’ve been using it mainly to hear music. For people saying, ‘what else can u do with an iPod?’ Read further. I’ll be writing review to the iPod as likes and dislikes.

Likes

Appearance

The first thing I liked about the iPod was its appearance. It is slim and beautiful and resembles an iPhone in its model. Its metallic grey color is impressive. The buttons and spaces for earphone and USB cable for invisible. It has just two buttons (sleep and volume control) and a center wheel for home.

Display

The next thing I like is the display clarity. IPod touch has 3.5” LCD screen. The clarity is great. It’s great for watching movies and photos. The sensitivity is good. When you turn the iPod the screen also turns accordingly.

Battery Capacity

IPod’s battery is so good. It allows 36 hours of audio playback (3G iPod Touch provides 30 hours only) and 6 hours video playback. This means you can hear songs for one and half days or watch 3 movies continuously. The battery gets charged in 4 hours (80% charge in 2 hours).Though, there is no separate charger. You need to charge it via computer only.

Music

Of all the good things, this is the most wonderful thing. What else is an iPod designed for? Music effects are great. There is lot of equalizer options and you can choose any of them (though I read in a forum that equalizers drain the battery).

Earphones

I said music is great. But don’t you need a perfect earphone to hear them. Apple provides a perfect earphone for the iPod. I’ve been hearing songs using the earphone and it’s a great experience. It has changed some of my views on certain songs. It provides you the complete dynamics of the song and music. It mesmerized me most of the times. In online forums, I read that the earphones provided by apple are very poor. But my earphone is rocking or maybe people are expecting more.

These are all the likes. Interested in iPod touch? Wait; there are equal numbers of dislikes too.

Dislikes

Problems without Wi-Fi connection

There are lots of inbuilt applications in iPod such as Mails, YouTube, Safari, Maps, Weather, etc. But you need Wi-Fi connection to use them. Where the hell can you get Wi-Fi connection in India? So you can’t use all these things. IPod’s front screen will be blazing with these apps, but you will never be able to touch them. But I hope this will be over soon as Wireless Broadband Spectrum auction is taking place.

Everything through Apple iTunes

Want to copy songs, photos or videos to your iPod? You can do it only through Apple iTunes. The software is free of cost, but its working is not so great. It doesn’t detect some of the songs in my computer. Syncing photos to iPod is also a problem. It’s not very comfortable using iTunes. I read a saying written by an anonymous person in an online forum, ‘If you buy an Apple iPod, Apple will make you their permanent customer. Whatever you need to do, you need to do it through Apple’. It’s quite true. You can’t even add an application that is outside Apple Store. In India, we like a lot of freedom in using things. Though, we can break our iPod, I’m not interested. I’m more happy hearing songs than use apps.

Very low speaker volume

In likes, I said earphones are great. But the speaker is pretty bad. The sound generated is very low. I understand that the less efficient speaker is due to thin nature of iPod, but still it could have been better.

Frequent Crashes

I’ve been using the iPod for a fortnight, but I’ve had two crashes in this span. The first time the applications (such as music, videos and photos) were not opening. It worked properly after restarting the iPod. The second time, the iPod crashed and nothing except a white screen was present. It was not getting switched off too. I was afraid and checked in online forums. Quickly I understood there are lots of crashes in iPod touch worldwide. I got a solution (had to press sleep and navigation button simultaneously) there.

Great Online Forums and Communities

Apple doesn’t provide a user manual with the iPod. But you need not worry, since there are lots of iPod touch forums online. The communities in Orkut are also good. When I checked online, I was amazed to see that Apple iPod touch is more popular than iPhone or any other iPods despite its cost and problems. Whatever the problem maybe you can get solutions in the forums. You can get it by just searching in google.

My Suggestion

If you are of the idea of buying an iPod touch my suggestion is to go ahead with it. Today 3G iPod touch is being sold (8GB, 32 GB and 64 GB are available). 4G is going to be out soon. It will provide you a great music experience.

If you are in India, I would advise you to look for Apple iPod Nano, which is quite low cost. It’s more suitable for Indian conditions (doesn’t have lot of apps). IPod Nano has FM radio and video recording in addition and is available in lively colors. A few of my friends have iPod Nano. The problem is it is very thin and short (at least iPod Touch is relatively long). If you carry it outside you need to be very careful, as you can lose an iPod Nano very easily (even if it falls when you take your hand kerchief, you can’t sense it). IPod Nano is already in its fifth generation.

Happy Reading!!!

P.S: G refers to Generation in iPod. It doesn’t have to do anything with G in mobile phone technology. There will be no great difference in iPod generations. 3G iPod touch is an improved version of 2G iPod touch (mostly software alone differs). Software updates are done freely by apple.