iPod Nano and iPod Touch Receive Small Updates
by Andrew Cunningham on October 4, 2011 1:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Apple
- iPod Touch
- iOS 5
Apple today announced a handful of minor updates to its iPod line: the iPod Nano and iPod Touch have received modest upgrades and price cuts. The iPod Classic, however, is MIA.
The Nano ($129 for 8GB and $149 for 16GB) will retain the same basic form factor of last year's model, but is given bigger icons to improve navigation, improves Nike+ support, and is given some new clock faces for people who want to use it as a watch. It seems like a firmware update could do all of this for the old Nano, but no such update was introduced Update: iPod Nano firmware 1.2, downloadable via iTunes, upgrades last year's Nano to this year's interface, making the products functionally identical.
The iPod Touch (8GB for $199, 32GB for $299, 64GB for $399) remains the same on the inside, but gets new capabilities courtesy of iOS 5 (reinforcing the software-centric nature of these updates). It now also comes in white. Apple’s decision not to use the A5 in the iPod Touch reflects both the fact that the A4 is still Good Enough for most tasks, and the fact that Apple needs all the A5s it can get for its phones and tablets.
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ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
Someone needs to tear down or go through the software on these "new" iPod Touch to see if Apple at least up the RAM to 512MB like the A4 in the iPhone 4. Apple never releases RAM specs for their devices so I wouldn't have expected an announcement whether they made the change or not. 512MB would go a long way to improving the usability of the iPod Touch even if it didn't get the A5.tipoo - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
I doubt it, if all they mentioned was a price drop the internals are probably the same. Would be nice though.CharonPDX - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
What with all the demos of how much better gaming is on the iPhone 4S, combined with the very game-centric marketing of the iPod Touch...tipoo - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
Yeah, that's a bummer. With the A5 the Touch would be about half as powerful as the PS Vita in both CPU and GPU, with the A4 its not even close. Since they advertise the gaming aspect heavily that's a big letdown. But I suppose they want as many sales as possible to go to the iPhone instead.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
Why is the phrase "Good Enough" capitalized? Did I miss a joke or something?icrf - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
Standard cliche, one of those defined things without being defined. Kind of like doing something The Right Way or releasing something Real Soon Now.tipoo - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
Another year without an update, poor guy. There's a lot they could have done with it, Toshiba is replacing the 160GB drives in the Classic with 240GB ones, and they could have elongated the screen like the Zune 120, or added wifi sync or bluetooth, but nope, none of the above.Also, its a bummer the Touch won't be getting the new SoC, Anandtech's own graphics benchmarks show the A4 is quite long in the tooth compared with current SoC's, and if they want the Touch to compete with dedicated handheld consoles then the performance isn't even close to the Vita's quad A9 processor + quadSGX 543 graphics.
I was somewhat excited by the prospect of a 4+ inch iPhone, having used Android phones that large it feels cramped going back to iPhones. Too bad.
MadMan007 - Wednesday, October 5, 2011 - link
As the only remaining 'mainstream' high capacity player, and one of the only few decent brand ones available at all, they really ought to update the classic. 250GB 1.8" drives have been available for a while. Although it might seem excessive, it would hold nearly my whole music collection in lossless format, or for normaly people a lot of high bitrate music and video.Too bad they didn't decide to offer a 160GB and a 250GB.
Also, they really should have upgraded the capacity of the Touch, 25nm flash has been available for long enough.