Yes, you read that right. Thought I was dead, eh? Well, I don’t blame you. For a moment there I thought that it was time to get an obituary printed in the paper, but just when you think your parent has given up on you, you rise back up from the ashes. Okay, okay, I am being a little dramatic but hey, I came back from the dead. How many of you have done it? This seems a bit of a year for comebacks – one of my cousins, the iPad mini too got back into circulation after being written off. Moral of the story – you never say never when you are an Apple product!
But back to me. You might confuse me with my older, 2015 brother when you first look at me. And that’s perfectly all right, for, after all, we look exactly the same. I am not even exaggerating. Exactly. The. Same. I carry the exact same 4-inch display with same thick bezels around and along with me. I also bring back the good old fashioned home button on the chin. A dedicated home button, mind, not the one that could be used as a fingerprint scanner. Just the basic home button, which surely will take you back to much simpler times when bezels were not hated and buttons were just…buttons. I carry the selfie camera on the thick white bezel sitting above my display.
And my design tale stays unchanged when it comes to the back as well. I have the same curve-y, thin sides that my elder brother did, and a circular primary camera, with a silver ring on the circumference, that juts out ever so slightly. And of course, every camera’s sidekick, the LED flash. Yes, times may be calling for multi-camera setups, but I am the iPod touch, not your full-fledged smartphone – one camera is all you will get. I, sadly, still carry that odd black thick horizontal capsule-shaped antenna band on the top right side in line with the camera and flash. And to prove that I am my parent’s offspring, I carry its logo and the iPod branding on my back. My metal back curves around the frame and meets the display on the front. There you will see some chamfering – that old school charm (I remember how Jony explained it in the videos!). Talking of the frame and old school, mine is basically the same as my older brother. I carry the power/lock button on the top, the volume buttons on the left and I have the speaker grille, the lightning port and the 3.5 mm jack on the base (all those rumors about Apple hating the 3.5 mm audio jack, I assume can now be put to rest, at least in my case). At 123.4 x 58.6 x 6.1 mm and 88 grams, I am the smallest and the lightest iOS device present in the market today. I can be easily used with one hand and can fit in the tiniest of pockets, barring the coin pocket (duh!). In fact, I am so slight and light, some of you are going to be terrified I will fall out of a pocket and you won’t notice. Just keep me clear of water and dust, though. I do not have certified resistance to those two. But wait, my story is not all about my four-year-old brother. I may look a lot like it but I come with a few different organs, which make me a better, stronger version. For starters, I am powered by Apple’s A10 Fusion chipset, the same one you saw on the iPhone 7, and on the 2018 iPad. Yes, I know it is not the fanciest or the latest one around, it still is an upgrade from the one my older brother had, the A8. Plus I ship with iOS 12, so that is different, too. That also means that you can install most iPhone apps on me as well and they will run just dandy. And yeah, I will be getting iOS 13 as well, come the “fall.” There is also a very strong AR element in me, and well, my parent insists that I have moved on from being just a media player to something like a gaming device. Am I going to be slugging it out with the Nintendo Switch (or the soon to come, Switch Lite)? I don’t know. But you can pretty much play most of what you can on an iPhone on me – at least on paper. Apple Arcade, my parent’s gaming service, will work just dandy on me too.
A lot of my other innards, however, are very similar to my brother from 2015. I also come with an 8-megapixel main camera with f/2.4 aperture and a 1.2-megapixel sensor with f/2.2 aperture is present on the front for selfies and FaceTime. Not the greatest on paper, I agree, but then as I keep saying, I am not a smartphone, folks. I also come with support for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. And battery life with up to 40 hours of music playback time and 8 hours of video playback time. Yes, I know my design is slightly, well… very outdated. Blame it on my brother – I have his looks, after all. If that does not tell you my design ordeal, nothing will. Some of my ancestors were called the “iPhone without the phone” but there is no way in which I can be mistaken for anything but an iPod touch (although I do support iMessage and FaceTime) – I am much smaller and shaped very differently from my uncles, XS, XR, and Max. In fact. I have everything that is considered to be a design disaster today – those thick bezels, a small display, matte back, the super old home button. Mind you, I do have something that the new iPhones do not – the 3.5 mm audio jack (gasp, please.)
But for those who like petite devices, I actually can be a good option. My small size makes me really easy to hold and use and honestly, with all the huge smartphones around, having a small media device around never really harmed anyone. And well, if my tracks record is anything to go by, I will give you far lesser concern for the battery than my iPhone uncles will. Of course, I am affordable as well – I come with a starting price of Rs. 18,999 ($199 in the US) and I am available in three variants — 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB. But am I the device for you? Does it make sense for you to upgrade to me if you have an iPod touch already? Well, wait for my review on TechPP. Till then, let me just go and enjoy my new life. Toodles! Yeah, it is good to be back.”
