Pros:
Looks awesome
Very thin and small
Beautiful touch screen display
loads of great apps built in and in the app store

Cons:
Gets full of finger prints
Battery doesn’t last too long when playing games on it

Rating: 5/5

Yey! I got an iPod Touch. I was originally going to get one for Christmas but couldn’t decide if I definitely wanted one. But just a week ago, I made up my mind and purchased the 8GB model.

I got some half price accessories with the iPod: a leather case and stylus & screen protector. The case, for £10, is really nice. It looks good, feels good and is quite padded so will provide a bit of protection if I happen to drop my iPod. The only bad thing I can say about it is the hole for the earphone cable to go through is slightly too far to the left and makes getting the earphone jack through a little more awkward that necessary.

The stylus and screen protector, on the other hand, are pretty pathetic! The screen protector was hard to get on and I ended up with bubbles under it. And yes, I did do it from the bottom and smooth it on carefully but still, I got bubbles in it, especially around the edge. The stylus, which came in the same box as the screen protector, is useless. It doesn’t make input easier and requires you to press down quite hard whereas with your finger you barely need to touch the surface of the iPod Touch. The only use the stylus has is if your fingers are not clean and you want to avoid messing up the iPod. However you normally wouldn’t want to carry the stylus around with you as it’s the length of the iPod and doesn’t clip onto it, or the case, in any way.

Having said that, I am going to keep the screen protector on and keep the stylus in easy reach as it’s better than damaging the iPods screen. And, for £5, I can’t complain too much.

The best feature about the iPod Touch, and the iPhone too, in my opinion, is the app store, and the apps within it. I will be recording full reviews of various apps in the near future but for now, I’d just like to mention a few of the built in apps.

I’ll start with Safari. Obviously, Safari is the web browser that is built into the iPhone, iPod Touch and also Mac OS X. It’s a great browser on the desktop but I wasn’t sure if it the mobile version could meet the same standards. I should never have doubted apple however. You get an incredible ‘desktop-like’ experience on the iPhone and iPod Touch when browsing the web. The only feature it’s missing is flash support. I could live without things like Java but flash is a must have. It does however let you watch YouTube videos, but I’ll get to that later.

The second app it comes with is the calender app. Basically it is just the same as the desktop version in OS X minus a few features, but it works very well and syncs with iCal on your Mac too!

Mail is amazing. It is very simple to use, can synchronies the mail accounts you already have set up on you mac and renders emails perfectly.

I’ll not bother writing about the Contacts, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Clock and Notes apps as they do what the title suggest which usually isn’t really very exciting. Instead, I’ll finish with the YouTube app. This is a great app for finding and watching YT videos but is let down by the fact that you cannot log into your YouTube account and cannot leave, or even view, comments on other videos. If you do want to log in to YouTube, there is a way to do it. Here’s a tip from PCgeek2k8 on YouTube:

You can login to YouTube by going to http://youtube.com in the Safari app, scrolling to the bottom of the page, clicking ‘Sign in’ and there you go! But, if you want to look for your subscriptions, again go to the bottom of the page and click ‘View Desktop Version.’

So, there you go, a simple review of some of the apps and accessories for the iPod Touch. I will be reviewing some other ’3rd party’ apps that I like later. If you know of any good apps, please leave a comment and share it with me and the community.

Has this encouraged you to purchase an Apple iPod Touch? If so, you can get one from Amazon!

Tags: accessories, apps, Case, iPod, jake, Review, screen protector, stylus, touch, Unboxing, wright

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