I purchased this product in November 2008, as a Christmas present for my fiancé. She had hinted at getting a new ipod, as her previous one was the 2 GB ipod nano from a few years back. I walked into the apple shop that had recently opened up in Belfast, surrounded by the whole apple range I looked at a couple different models from the new 8 GB nano to the ipod classic. But my eyes finally came to a halt upon the shiny surface of the 8 GB ipod touch. I knew instantly that this was the present that I was to buy her. So I went to the counter, the cashier asked me what I wanted and I placed my order, at which point he turned his back to me and started looking through some drawers, a few seconds later he turned around and handed me a very small rectangular box with curved edges. Hmmm, I thought to myself, it’s rather small… so I handed over £150 worth of crisp notes from my wallet and he placed the box into a high quality branded apple bag. Then I looked at my watch and I realised I had to rush back to work as my break was nearly over, so as I rushed through a busy Belfast full of Christmas shoppers, I thought I have the best present in the world in my hands. I got home and wrapped the box, which I may add was quite easy due to its small size and nature, and I placed the wrapped package back into its bag and hid it till Christmas day. When out it came and I had one very please fiancé. She opened the bag and looked inside and seen the small package, she lifted it out with great care. And slowly started unwrapping it, as soon as she seen it was the ipod touch and not the new nano that she had been hinting upon for several months she went crazy jumping around the room in joy….

The device turns on at a touch of a button then you have to slide across a little bar to confirm that you want the device to turn on so that battery is not wasted by accidentally pressing the button. Once the ipod is turned on you are presented with a screen which gives all the programs that has been installed and also a button to press to access any music of videos that you have on the ipod. Once you go into the music menu there is a variety of ways you can search for music by album or artist or by song title. Once you enter each of these, an alphabet appears down the right hand side of the touch screen, meaning that you can press a letter and the browser will jump to that letter so that you don’t have to scroll the whole way down. I think this feature is very handy as when you have over 1000 songs on the ipod then it can become tedious having to scroll through them all just to reach one song.

Now I am going to explain the technical side of the ipod touch (please note some of this information is taken from the apple website, the information taken is not a direct copy of what is found on the website, but I have taken it from there for use in my review so that I have accurate data). The ipod’s standard full charge time is about 4 hours but it can also survive on a 2 hour fast charge which charges it to about 80% battery life. The 8 GB memory is adequate enough to store up to 1,750 songs, 10,000 photos or 10 hours of video, or a combination of all three. The battery life of the ipod touch is stated to be up to 36 hours of music playback and up to 6 hours of video playback, I can say that the average time that the battery has lasted is about 30 hours due to a mixture of playing music, video and also some games from the apps store. The dimensions of the ipod are 110mm tall by 61.8mm wide by 8.5 mm thick, and the ipod itself is not the heaviest device in the world either it weighs a mere 115 grams, which is roughly the weight of any modern mobile phone such as nokia’s N95. The display of the device is quite a large display taking up nearly the whole front of the ipod; the display is a 3.5 inch widescreen display, which is very clear and has a good resolution and colours are displayed perfectly. The device has the capability to be a web browser and can also view video over websites such as youtube; this is done via a wireless connection the device can connect to any wireless network that is Wifi 802.11b/g enabled. The device is fitted with an accelerometer, which can detect when the device is turned around and accordingly flips the direction of the screen, I find this aspect very handy as when viewing a picture you can simply turn the screen and view the picture in the correct aspect. This feature is also useful for gaming as it enters the movement of the device itself into the game such as for control of a racing car or holding a ball in the centre of the screen.