Apple Announces New iPod Touch: A10 SoC Inside
by Andrei Frumusanu on May 28, 2019 5:00 PM EST
It’s been 4 years since Apple last updated the iPod lineup with the 6th generation iPod Touch in 2015. Today Apple did the unexpected and released a hardware refresh of the dedicated media player.
In an age where everybody uses their phones as music and media players, I think it’s fair to say that the market for dedicated devices such as iPods has shrunk quite a lot. Nevertheless, Apple wants to cover this niche with the new iPod Touch and advertises it as the cheapest iOS device one can get.
The new iPod touch is now powered by Apple’s A10 chipset and features the same 4” 1136 x 640 pixel display as its predecessor, promising a relatively meagre 800:1 contrast ratio and a 500cd/m² maximum brightness.
One great benefit of going for an iPod Touch is the fact that it’s almost half the weight of modern smartphones. At 88g it’s a relatively featherweight device.
Other than the SoC, the only other apparent upgrade to the hardware is the addition of 802.11ac WiFi, although Bluetooth remains at version 4.1.
Apple has also upgraded the storage option, but disappointingly the smallest model is still only 32GB and comes at a price point of $199. Upsell variants at 128GB and 256GB come at $299 and $399.
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s.yu - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
It won't touch the a10, a $200 tablet will lag at everything you throw at it and end up a screen for watching videos at most.PeachNCream - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
What an odd idea of SoC performance. I do quite a bit on phone with a much slower, less performant processor (MediaTek MT6580M - 1.3GHz quad core Cortex-A7 and Mali 400 MP2 graphics) and don't feel like my phones "lags at everything." In fact, said phone is pretty much my primary computing device these days since I don't use my laptop much at all anymore. I think maybe your perceptions about performance are skewed into being unreasonable.s.yu - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
My current slowest ARM based device is on the Exynos 7420, I consider that it lags quite a bit at most tasks.SquarePeg - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link
88 grams is impressive. Too bad it most likely correlates into sub 2 hour battery life when playing a demanding game with the screen brightness up. But that 6 year old design though...Alistair - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link
This looked great, until I saw it didn't come with 128GB storage. Pass. No SD card slot.Xex360 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
Does it have a headphone jack port? /sWhy would anyone buy this expensive piece of garbage, while you can get a proper smartphone with high audio quality for similar price.
solipsism - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
It's amazing that everyone on this forum seems incapable of understanding that various large buyers want a handheld device that doesn't have cellular radios.• https://www.honeywellaidc.com/products/enterprise-...
kaidenshi - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
Yes, but those large organizations aren't paying $200 per device either. Apple could throw their consumers a bone and either remove the 32GB version for retail and drop the 128GB version down to that price point, or offer the 32GB version for $99. Either way they'd have a lot more retail sales than they stand to now. Hell, I use an iPhone 7 as my daily driver and I'd grab one of these at $99 just to use at work to save my phone's battery.lightningz71 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
The base model should have easily been 64GB. At that price, to have access to Apple's eco-system, it might have moved a few units.The main reason for this is that most of Apple's older iPod Touches are based on very outdated SoCs and are about to loose IOS support. This at least keeps them in that market with a supported device. That being said, there's no point in getting the upgraded storage option against a base model iPad mini unless you absolutely have to have the smaller form factor.
Peskarik - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
I would love to have a dedicated music player...but there is nothing cost-effective on the market. Apple is no go for me because I cannot upload music like on a hard-drive, I hate iTunes.