Why have you got one when you’ve already got an iPod Shuffle you ask? Ah, well, that’s easy an one:

See Don Hertzfeldt’s classic, Rejected for the reference :)

There’s no other reason than that. So, here is the little monkey:

I bought an 8GB model off eBay earlier in week. I didn’t go for the 16GB mainly due to cost but also one thing I realised from having a Shuffle was that you don’t need to have all your music to hand. Yeah I know, I’m a bit late to game on that one when it comes to playlists, but I’m getting the hang of them now.

Anyhoo, I got a bargain at £150 (+ 13 quid P&P) versus the RRP of £199. I was a bit annoyed with the eBay seller since they’d listed it as one of the new models which has Mail, Maps, Notes, Stocks, editable Calender, etc, aka the January Software Upgrade, but wasn’t. So I coughed up £13 quid for it and the total wasn’t much different from what Amazon are selling them for (£175) (and they’re the pre-update too). With the software upgrade it makes like a mini PDA. Using iTunes I’ve been able to sync up all my contacts and notes, which is nice.

Initial thoughts are that the battery life with wifi enabled is lousy. I haven’t tried running it until its flat but I reckon it would be less than 4 hours if you were constantly web browsing. However with wifi off, its much better. Again, I’m not sure how long it would last in total, but I used it a few days at work now (so say about 3 to 4 hours a day) and the battery indicator has hardly moved!

Web browsing with Safari is pretty good. You can have multiple windows open at once and switch between them relatively quickly, however I don’t recommend having lots open since it can make the poor thing chug! I thought perhaps the lack of flash support would be a problem, but it’s not. It’s actually been great because most sites now have no adverts appearing!

Thanks to the Accelerometer you can switch between landscape and portrait views. Some web pages work better in landscape and some the opposite. The Times for example is much better in portrait since its still perfectly readable and you get more on screen. Most apps seem to be in portrait mode whereas videos and cover flow mode for music are in landscape.

Of course the thing about the iPod touch is the touch interface to it, which I just love, its incredibly intuitive and there’s a wonderful tactile sensation to stroking it :D You’ve got two buttons. The home button, which is the white square you can see on the photos, and the power / lock button at the top left of the device. That’s it. Everything else is controlled by the screen. Thing is I now want everything to have a touch screen interface! Damn you Apple!