When writing about the multimedia capabilities of the iPhone this summer, we called it "the iPod that's really a phone". You could say that the iPod touch is the iPhone that's really an iPod. See also: Second-gen iPod touch review and 32GB iPod touch review.
Safari, applications and some rough edges
Thankfully those display woes don't distract from viewing most web pages in Safari, which remains the best mobile web browser we've ever seen. For the most part, it works great on the Apple iPod touch, except when you try to multitask.
If you start up some music on the Apple iPod touch and tap your way over to Safari for some Wi-Fi-enabled web surfing, you may encounter problems. If we opened up a complex page or a second tab, the Apple iPod touch would often stop playing music, forcing us to go out to the main screen, tap over into music, and start it up again. We've also experienced the occasional crash after loading up three or more pages. We'd bet that these problems will be fixed in a future firmware update, but until they are they're two more reasons the Apple iPod touch feels a little rushed to market.
Not all of the Apple iPhone's applications made it to the Apple iPod touch. We can begin to see the rationale for omitting the Mail and Google Maps applications - both would work better with the Apple iPhone's always-on data connection - but why leave off the Notes application or the Weather and Stock widgets? The implementation of the Calendar application is also a bit confusing: while you can sync events from your PC's calendar, you can't edit them on the Apple iPod touch or add events.
Overall grade: incomplete
We'll keep on updating and adding to this review, in particular with results from our objective audio and battery life tests. (Apple rates the iPod touch as good for 22 hours of audio playback and 5 hours of video). We also hope that by the time we update, Apple will have responded to our questions about the Safari and screen issues we experienced.
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