iPod Touch vs iPhone Differences

[texasguy]

But if it has safari and WiFi, you CAN get mail on your iPod Touch!

iPhoneAtlas compiled a list of differences between the new iPod Touch and the current iPhone.

Amongst the differences:

- No Email, Maps, Stocks, Weather, or Camera in the iPod Touch
- Double tapping the iPod Touch's Home button twice when it is sleeping brings up touch controls to control your music
- iPod Touch has separate Contacts app and separate Video app. On the iPhone, Contacts is built into the Phone function and Video built into the iPod function.
- No Microphone or Speaker on the iPod Touch
- Headphone jack on bottom of iPod Touch and is not recessed (unlike the iPhone)

Apple has posted a guided tour video detailing the functions of the iPod Touch.

Apple is expected to release an iPhone update to add Wi-Fi iTunes song purchases to the iPhone. The "double tap" Home button functionality detailed above could also easily be added in software to a future iPhone update.

Article Link

Since you can access the 'entire internet" on the iPod touch, you can log on to any e-mail client on the web and get your e-mail. This is especially good for those with a work e-mail on a Microsoft Exchange Server who will be able to log in and receive and respond to mail! Any comments?

 

[JGowan]

How does getting music onto the iPhone work?

From what I understand, you don't drag and drop music onto a little iPhone icon of the left side like you would a normal iPod... is this true? How is music put onto your phone?

 

[dr_lha]

Since you can access the 'entire internet" on the iPod touch, you can log on to any e-mail client on the web and get your e-mail. This is especially good for those with a work e-mail on a Microsoft Exchange Server who will be able to log in and receive and respond to mail! Any comments?

"The Entire Internet" is wrong, as the Internet also includes stuff like telnet, ssh, pop, imap which are not on the iPod Touch. "The Entire Web" is more correct. Personally my email is IMAP and works great on the iPhone, but the web client interface sucks to high heaven, so I wouldn't enjoy using it on the iPod Touch.

 

[dr_lha]

From what I understand, you don't drag and drop music onto a little iPhone icon of the left side like you would a normal iPod... is this true? How is music put onto your phone?

You can either sync your whole library (if its small!) or sync individual playlists. You can't drag and drop in iTunes like on a regular iPod.

 

[jesteraver]

hopefully there will be a 16gb iPhone.

 

[PrettyUgly]

I'd rather have a 4 gig iphone than an 16 gig touch

So they finally removed the phone and the camera huh?
Why is this better?

For those of you who can't decide between the touch and the phone, get the phone. You won't regret it. You're probably not standing in a wifi hotspot nearly as often as you think you are (don't count your own house. you're not going to sit beside your computer and surf the web on your 3.5 inch iPod.) Having internet access and especially google maps anywhere you go is amazingly convenient.

Also, one thing i hadn't considered that much before was just how much I love the little play/pause/skip/mic button on the iPhone earbuds. I love the way I can quickly stop my music if someone is talking to me, and it is the only way i make phone calls now.

The 16GB phone can't be too far off.

 

[Merser]

Well I would have thought that the "touch" would have had email on it. If Safari was on there then they could easily have Mail. For me the lack of Mail is almost a deal breaker. So I hope that in a future update they will add Mail.

Also before anyone jumps on me saying that if I want mail then I should get an iPhone, just like people were jumped on when some people wanted safari and wi-fi on the iPod before it was released, I am a loyal Verizon subscriber and AT&T cell and customer service have turned me away from them years ago.

Christopher

Correct me if I am wrong.... Actually iTouch DOES have email, just not as simple and straight forward as the iPhone.

I have yet to really try the safari on an iPhone, but wouldnt you be able to just go to yahoo .mac gmail...etc with safari and send receive email that way?

 

[dr_lha]

Correct me if I am wrong.... Actually iTouch DOES have email, just not as simple and straight forward as the iPhone.

I have yet to really try the safari on an iPhone, but wouldnt you be able to just go to yahoo .mac gmail...etc with safari and send receive email that way?

Yes, but web interfaces are nowhere near as good as the iPhone's Mail application. Also not everyone has a web frontend to their email, but do have POP3 or IMAP.

I can see why they left out the Mail application ("on the go" use is limited with only WiFi), but it does seem that they could have just as easily have included it for those that want it.

 

[JGowan]

You can either sync your whole library (if its small!) or sync individual playlists. You can't drag and drop in iTunes like on a regular iPod.

I must say, that's ridiculous. Thanks for the info though

 

[carltabet]

I must say, that's ridiculous. Thanks for the info though

Huh! That limitation defies logic!
They should really do something about that with an update. I've never done syncing, at least I know what's going on when I update my iPod manually.

 

[dankn]

So they finally removed the phone and the camera huh?
Why is this better?

For those of you who can't decide between the touch and the phone, get the phone. You won't regret it. You're probably not standing in a wifi hotspot nearly as often as you think you are (don't count your own house. you're not going to sit beside your computer and surf the web on your 3.5 inch iPod.) Having internet access and especially google maps anywhere you go is amazingly convenient.

Also, one thing i hadn't considered that much before was just how much I love the little play/pause/skip/mic button on the iPhone earbuds. I love the way I can quickly stop my music if someone is talking to me, and it is the only way i make phone calls now.

The 16GB phone can't be too far off.

If you ask me, I would go with the ipod touch before the phone. Yesterday, I did ponder it for a few minutes as I was on the apple store site with my credit card in hand. It was either the 8gb touch for 300 for the 4gb iphone for 300. In the end, I think the choice between the touch and the phone depends on your life style. I am a college student. I have a phone, a decent plan, no bells and whistles, and it serves me just fine. I hate lugging around my computer around campus but I do it cause of the hours I need to kill between classes. I spend most of those hours surfing the net. My campus (UCB) is a gigantic hot spot. So why get the iphone? Yeah it is the same price. But $60 a month for the plan (not counting all the taxes and such), plus the $36 activation fee? I calculated it out, basically in the first year, at the very least the iphone will cost me $1,200. So for me, the idea of having a device with a decent sized screen, that can hold a chunk of music, videos, and I can surf the web all for a one time purchase of $300 dollars is an amazing deal. As for those who say the hard drive is to small to be a significant device without the phone ability, I say the contrary. Yeah it is nice to have your entire collection of videos and music on one ipod. But I mean is that really necessary? On the ipod I have now, I have all my music and videos placed on it but I can say that most of it never gets touched. Especially the videos. I will watch them once and then they will be forever archived into the ipod, never to be looked at again. It takes a little more work to transfer stuff you might want to listen to or watch on a particular day, but it is not that much work. And I am sure, within the first month, new apps will be made avalible either through apple or some third party. The ipod touch is the device I have been waiting for ever since I bought my first ipod in 2003. I cannot wait until mine arrives.

 

[cmcconkey]

Correct me if I am wrong.... Actually iTouch DOES have email, just not as simple and straight forward as the iPhone.

I have yet to really try the safari on an iPhone, but wouldnt you be able to just go to yahoo .mac gmail...etc with safari and send receive email that way?

I would be using it to access my work email account and my home email account when I am not at either location. Yeah I can use mail2web.com or something like that but I have been pampered by Eudora (back when I got my first Mac in 1993) and now Entourage. I don't want to log into a website to jump to my POP account(s). I am sure that there is a possibility in the next couple of weeks, thanks to Apple employees looking at this site and others like it, there will be some "surprise" apps be added (notes, maps, mail). If not before it gets released then at some point in time in the near future. Either Apple will do it and make everyone happy, or some 3rd party will do it and Apple will just break it in a new update.


Christopher

 

[Homerun7dh]

Huh! That limitation defies logic!
They should really do something about that with an update. I've never done syncing, at least I know what's going on when I update my iPod manually.

Why is it any harder to drag things to a playlist than drag things straight to the iPhone? THAT degies logic.

Also, if you have a synced play list, you can add recently downloaded songs onto it without having the iPhone plugged in, and sync it later.

 

[odedia]

I am using the iPhone for 8 days now, and I must admit Steve Jobs is right, this is the 7th wonder of the world.

It was worth 600$, and it is definetly worth 400$, or 300$ for a 4Gigs version.

Apple is going to make a big win this holiday season.

 

[Darkroom]

i know this will NEVER happen, because of settlement (or whatever) to get the iPhone name... but with the inclusion of the new ipods... i really wish the iPhone was called the iPod touchtone

iPod shuffle
iPod nano
iPod classic
iPod touch
iPod touchtone

then the iPhone would really belong in the family of iPods, instead of being the odd one out...

oh well... i'll continue dreaming...

 

[kzin]

But this is not a PDA.

Sorry, but you're on crack.

The iPhone is a smartphone (I don't think they've actually used that word, but that's what it is, that's what market niche it's competing in). A smartphone is a phone + pda.

The iPod Touch is "iPhone - phone". Lets do some logic here:
iPhone = smartphone = phone + pda
iPod Touch = iPhone - phone = (phone + pda) - phone = pda

The iPod Touch is a pda.

It's central focus may be its MP3 player capability, but it IS a PDA.

 

[kzin]

Since you can access the 'entire internet" on the iPod touch, you can log on to any e-mail client on the web and get your e-mail. This is especially good for those with a work e-mail on a Microsoft Exchange Server who will be able to log in and receive and respond to mail! Any comments?

Webmail is not an acceptable substitute for real mail clients.

I don't know if the iPhone mail client does message caching for off-line reading, but if it's a decent mail client it does. You can't do off-line reading with webmail.

Also, you may have more or less difficulty doing some form of "search my messages for X" with a webmail client (I don't know of any of them that do a decent job on that, but I'm haven't used all of them), whereas any decent mail client does have a means of doing that (such as Mail.app's integration with spotlight, or Thunderbird's message search/filter ability, etc.).

Saying that "webmail is the answer for iPod Touch and email" is just admitting that there's a major gap in the iPod Touch's features.

 

[kzin]

For those of you who can't decide between the touch and the phone, get the phone.

Since what I really want is something like a UMPC, I took a third option: I ordered a Nokia N800 internet tablet today. I'm not getting it for its MP3 or (SIP/Skype) phone capabilities, so I may still get an iPhone later ... but, I just decided that the iPod Touch and iPhone are making what I really want just a little too difficult.

With the N800, I can get the soon-to-be-released FreedomInput slim (credit card size) thumb keyboard, and use it like a tiny laptop, without having my screen real-estate taken up by a stylus or finger keyboard. I can IM, I can use email, I can use a web browser, etc. While it's true that it doesn't have the incredibly compelling UI of the iPhone, it has something better: the actual apps I want and need (ssh, document/file editing apps,etc.), and the ability to easily add new apps myself or from a software package site.

So, for what I want, it's already better than the iPod Touch (both do wifi; I've never actually carried my existing 15GB iPod so I don't care that the N800 might be a significantly inferior MP3 player; and I _can_ use the N800 has a wifi phone; the N800 has document editing abilities, and ssh clients, so I can do _actual_work_ with it).

If I decide that I really do want an iPod, actual advanced cell phone capability (I currently have a work-issued-and-paid-for very basic Nextel phone), actual Safari instead of Opera (I've never used Opera before, so I have no idea how good or bad it is), or if I find the N800's email client to be "not good enough", then maybe I'll buy an iPhone. And depending on the iPhone's ability to be used as a bluetooth gateway for another device to access the internet via the cell network, maybe it'll be used as a gateway for my N800.

The 16GB phone can't be too far off.

Yeah, I'll probably wait until later in the year before I make the iPhone decision. If they release a 16GB iPhone, esp. one that can be used as a internet gateway via bluetooth (for a Macbook, etc.), then that'll probably help my buying decision quite a bit. But, the things that weren't announced for the iPod Touch have pretty much made me sure that I'd rather have an N800 than an iPod Touch.

Of course, if I find out later that the Touch had the things I wanted, and they just weren't announced, then I might regret it. But I doubt that's going to be the case.

 

[funwithstuff]

Does the alarm clock play any playlist?

Apparently the iPhone has a great alarm system (different alarms for different days etc.), except that it wakes you with a ringtone rather than a full playlist. Regular iPods let you wake up to any playlist, assuming you've plugged it into speakers.

What about the iPod touch? Does it copy the iPhone's rich but flawed system, or does it let you select any playlist? Or worse is there no alarm?

 

[stompy]

Sorry, but you're on crack.

The iPhone is a smartphone (I don't think they've actually used that word, but that's what it is, that's what market niche it's competing in). A smartphone is a phone + pda.

The iPod Touch is "iPhone - phone". Lets do some logic here:
iPhone = smartphone = phone + pda
iPod Touch = iPhone - phone = (phone + pda) - phone = pda

The iPod Touch is a pda.

It's central focus may be its MP3 player capability, but it IS a PDA.

Math major?

 

[emotion]

I find this hard to believe. Jobs has openly stated that 3G is not ready for iPhone. The chips are too big and he doesn't feel the technology is fully ready. I don't see him changing dimensions of the phone just for Europe so it can be 3G. If we see a 3G iPhone, I am guessing it will be at Macworld with 16 or more GB of storage. Even that seems unlikely though.

No 3G for Europe. The O2 upgrade to EDGE is a big hint. Also, in the UK at least 3G coverage isn't all that good. Especially outside cities. 16GB is quite likely though to distract from the lack of 3G, which most people will still see as a major problem.

I've seen jailbreak based ways of tethering a laptop to an iPhone - I'd love to see if there's a way to tether the iPod touch to a 3G phone like the N95/k850i. If that can be done that would really increase the market for the Touch. I'd buy one like a shot.

 

[clintanson]

No-one is talking about Wi-Fi being used for Wireless Headphones......can this be done??? Bluetooth???

 

[munckee]

This whole "I want mail on my iPod" nonsense is, well, nonsense.

People, this is an iPod.

But...it's not. The iPhone has made clear that there is both demand and potential for it to be much, much more. It's your pocket computer. It's a phone, mp3 player, PDA, entertainment center, god-only-knows-what in your pocket. The iPod may have started off as just an mp3 player, but why deny it's potential just because that's where it started

 

[kzin]

Math major?

Heh. Close. Computer Science major.

 

[TuxToaster]

* Patiently waits for a refresh to the iPhone, possibly with 16GB and maybe some minor tweaks (non-recessed earphone jack or GPS would be nice).

Hopefully it happens just in time for the holidays, I don't think I can wait till next spring.