wifi question for ipod touch owners

[B.A.T]

I'm thinking of buying a touch when they new generation comes out in a few months (or so I assume). I have noticed that the current generation Touch uses Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and not 802.11n. I don't know much about the tech side of things so I'm wondering how much of a difference it really makes? Are there times you have wished that your ipod touch had 802.11n?

[this is funah]

i dont think it's necessary just yet... the speed difference wont be noticable.. and it draws more power. but it has greater range and that would always help, as the wifi strength of my 2G ipod touch has about 2/3 the strength of my macbook

[jampat]

The speed won't matter. N really helps when you are moving gigs wirelessly, but the biggest apps I have seen are ~100MB. On my laptop, I normally get 700 KB/sec from itunes stores which is still a lot slower than G can handle.

N may be helpful for the increased range, but I doubt they will include it for a while. As the above poster said, it should hurt battery life.

[B.A.T]

Thanks for clearing that up. I hadn't thought about the battery life and was really baffled but now I get it.

[yayitsezekiel]

I believe that the 3rd generation of ipod touches (current generation) with 32 and 64 gig capacities have N wifi

[Moocher]

I believe that the 3rd generation of ipod touches (current generation) with 32 and 64 gig capacities have N wifi


I read that once, too, but I haven't seen anything about it since. If they do have the hardware for N then it's not turned on (I own a 3rd gen 64G).

Mooch

[Revomonster]

Personal I am fine with with having G for my wifi. I have a good wifi connection and I can download movies and things like that within thirty min.

[iThinkergoiMac]

The current iPod Touch does indeed have a wireless chip capable of N in it. The biggest reason for having N would be so that the Touch doesn't slow down the whole network it's on to G speeds. G is faster than most internet connections anyway (who here has internet faster than 54 Mbps?). The biggest benefit of N for computers is computer to computer networking and increased range. The Touch can't take advantage of most of this (though wireless syncing over N would be pretty snappy if Apple would allow it).

Also, there's some kind of issue with N requiring 2 antennas and the Touch (and many other mobile N devices) only having 1.

So Apple is really just disabling N... and for the most part it's not needed.

What's also interesting is that the wireless chip includes WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth, and FM. The same wireless chip is in the current Nano. So Apple's disabled both N and FM in the iPod Touch. Why? Who knows...

[Jimmy James]

Yes, I really wish the touch had N so that I didn't have to run my router in mixed mode just to support this one device.