After almost 2 weeks of near-constant use, here's my thoughts:
It's an amazing device. I had an XDA about a year ago and flogged it - the battery life was poor, and it was just too big. The browsing on it wasn't great (many websites were not supported with Pocket IE), although its LAN capabilities were very good, and I could install whatever apps I wanted to on it. I could also view movies on my network via wi-fi (haven't tried this yet on the Touch).
With the touch, websites are pretty amazing looking and almost every site I use regularly works a treat. Email is cool (I've got GMail IMAP), YouTube is neat, videos and music are awesome - especially Cover Flow - and photos just look awesome. I've also started using the App Store in the past few days, and what I've downloaded so far (ie. the freebies) are great. And if you live in the UK, the BBC's iPlayer is nothing short of amazing. I was only able to browse the net before I upgraded to 2.0, so I can't comment on the differences between 2.0 and the previous software (apart from being able to download from the App store, which is a big plus).
Maps: pretty cool, although I wish it would cache a little more of the maps (ie. even if I haven't zoomed). I set some directions, and when I got near my destination, we took a detour, and I wasn't able to zoom outside of the general drop-pins without a wi-fi connection.
On the whole, it's totally incredible.
Now for the minor drawbacks:
typing is a bit of a pain. There's no real "feedback" when pressing letters, and it's easy to make a mistake - I simply do not agree that two-thumbed typing is a whizz. It's not, but you sort of find your own way of typing efficiently, which isn't ideal. Of course, the Touch helpfully offers suggestions for miss-typed works which subsequently appear if you type a space, but they're not always what you want (although, it's cool that you can miss-type a simple work like 'and' or 'don't' and it automatically knows. Some additional keys would be useful on the main keyboard, like a full-stop, a comma, a colon, quote marks - but I guess you can't fit it all in. Perhaps they could be something that show up in landscape mode? Oh, and as we all know, no copy and paste, which is a pain for links. And what's with no .co.uk button for UK users?
Browsing: I don't know how many times I've been flick-scrolling through a page, and I've hit a link that I didn't want to visit, which means I need to go back and re-load the entire page I was on all over again. It's a major drawback that the Touch Safari doesn't cache pages for back-and-forward browsing or offline browsing. I've also found the wi-fi battery life to be pretty crap. About an hour of browsing, and it starts running dangerously low. Apple need to get on to that asap.
Background apps: Apple really need to get all applications working in the background - I want to be able to fire up a webpage, flick to my email and have the page loaded by the time I go back to Safari. Similarly, I want to be able to open multiple pages and have them downloading as I'm reading another. Also, having to press the home button every time I want to use another app is a pain. It needs a "minimise" option.
Contacts and bookmarks: come on Apple - how difficult is it to let me sync with Thunderbird and Firefox? Not everyone uses IE and Outlook/Express.
External speaker: it really needs one. When it gets one, I'll probably upgrade relatively quickly. It's the only major thing missing from an otherwise near-perfect device (Bluetooth would be nice - GPS would be a luxury). At the very least, someone needs to make a very small external speaker at a reasonable price.
I also bought a nice cheap Marware rubber case which seems to be doing the trick - and a Belkin Clearscan FM transmitter for the car (which works a treat, despite what people say about FM transmitters).
32GB is fine for me, although I might have got away with a 16GB. I'm currently using up 15GB with all of my music, 1 video +130 photos (more vids and pics to come!) and about 7 apps. Of course, I plan to install much more - which is why I got the 32GB. The bigger capacity they make the Touch, the better. I can certainly see a day in the next 18 months when the iPod Classic will be consigned to history.
If you're waiting to buy one, don't - just get one now, it's worth every penny.
It's an amazing device. I had an XDA about a year ago and flogged it - the battery life was poor, and it was just too big. The browsing on it wasn't great (many websites were not supported with Pocket IE), although its LAN capabilities were very good, and I could install whatever apps I wanted to on it. I could also view movies on my network via wi-fi (haven't tried this yet on the Touch).
With the touch, websites are pretty amazing looking and almost every site I use regularly works a treat. Email is cool (I've got GMail IMAP), YouTube is neat, videos and music are awesome - especially Cover Flow - and photos just look awesome. I've also started using the App Store in the past few days, and what I've downloaded so far (ie. the freebies) are great. And if you live in the UK, the BBC's iPlayer is nothing short of amazing. I was only able to browse the net before I upgraded to 2.0, so I can't comment on the differences between 2.0 and the previous software (apart from being able to download from the App store, which is a big plus).
Maps: pretty cool, although I wish it would cache a little more of the maps (ie. even if I haven't zoomed). I set some directions, and when I got near my destination, we took a detour, and I wasn't able to zoom outside of the general drop-pins without a wi-fi connection.
On the whole, it's totally incredible.
Now for the minor drawbacks:
typing is a bit of a pain. There's no real "feedback" when pressing letters, and it's easy to make a mistake - I simply do not agree that two-thumbed typing is a whizz. It's not, but you sort of find your own way of typing efficiently, which isn't ideal. Of course, the Touch helpfully offers suggestions for miss-typed works which subsequently appear if you type a space, but they're not always what you want (although, it's cool that you can miss-type a simple work like 'and' or 'don't' and it automatically knows. Some additional keys would be useful on the main keyboard, like a full-stop, a comma, a colon, quote marks - but I guess you can't fit it all in. Perhaps they could be something that show up in landscape mode? Oh, and as we all know, no copy and paste, which is a pain for links. And what's with no .co.uk button for UK users?
Browsing: I don't know how many times I've been flick-scrolling through a page, and I've hit a link that I didn't want to visit, which means I need to go back and re-load the entire page I was on all over again. It's a major drawback that the Touch Safari doesn't cache pages for back-and-forward browsing or offline browsing. I've also found the wi-fi battery life to be pretty crap. About an hour of browsing, and it starts running dangerously low. Apple need to get on to that asap.
Background apps: Apple really need to get all applications working in the background - I want to be able to fire up a webpage, flick to my email and have the page loaded by the time I go back to Safari. Similarly, I want to be able to open multiple pages and have them downloading as I'm reading another. Also, having to press the home button every time I want to use another app is a pain. It needs a "minimise" option.
Contacts and bookmarks: come on Apple - how difficult is it to let me sync with Thunderbird and Firefox? Not everyone uses IE and Outlook/Express.
External speaker: it really needs one. When it gets one, I'll probably upgrade relatively quickly. It's the only major thing missing from an otherwise near-perfect device (Bluetooth would be nice - GPS would be a luxury). At the very least, someone needs to make a very small external speaker at a reasonable price.
I also bought a nice cheap Marware rubber case which seems to be doing the trick - and a Belkin Clearscan FM transmitter for the car (which works a treat, despite what people say about FM transmitters).
32GB is fine for me, although I might have got away with a 16GB. I'm currently using up 15GB with all of my music, 1 video +130 photos (more vids and pics to come!) and about 7 apps. Of course, I plan to install much more - which is why I got the 32GB. The bigger capacity they make the Touch, the better. I can certainly see a day in the next 18 months when the iPod Classic will be consigned to history.
If you're waiting to buy one, don't - just get one now, it's worth every penny.
