Hardware
The iPhone 4 and 4s have a very premium design with their glass and aluminium sandwich bodies. Apple put a similar design on the fourth generation iPod Touch with its glass front and aluminium back. It does feel very good and premium in the hand, but it does not feel as premium as the recent iPhones do. The iPhones offer some welcomed heft to the handset by having the glass front and back, and with the aluminium band on the sides. The iPod Touch does not have the extra piece of glass and therefore does not have the extra heft. We enjoy the 7.2mm thinness of the iPod Touch, but it feels a little too light and some extra weight would be welcomed. The curved corners, thin design, and gentle sloping back make for a great feeling design for the iPod Touch. The glass screen does not pick up scratches easily, but it will crack or breka if you drop it without a case on. Our iPod Touch has stayed in an OtterBox Defender (the best brand for cases ever) ever since it was bought and has had no scratches on the screen. The aluminum back may feel great in the hand, but it picks up scratches very easily. Our first iPod Touch was never dropped without its OtterBox Defender on, but it still picked up a few scratches. The unit we reviewed was previously owned by a different person and has many scratches, but few are visible in all types of lighting. Our few nitpicks we have with the iPod Touch's design are that it is a little too light, it does not have the same great feel as the iPhone 4 and 4s, and that the back picks up scratches too easily.
The fourth generation iPod Touch has basically the same selection of ports and buttons as the previous generations. On the bottom side, there is the 30-pin port, headphone jack, and speaker. The top side is empty except for the lock/power button. The right side is completely barren, but the left side houses the volume up and down buttons. The VGA front-facing camera, 3.5inch 960 x 640 Retina display, and home button are on the glass front. On the back, there is the 1.3MP rear-facing camera, Apple and iPod logos, 8GB/32GB/16GB/64GB logo, and the FCC logos. Overall, the fourth generation iPod Touch keeps most of the design cues from the previous generations, but the aluminium back scratches easily.
Fourth Generation iPod Touch Hardware Gallery
Display
The fourth generation iPod Touch was the first iPod Touch to feature a Retina display. Not only is this iPod Touch to feature a Retina display, but it is also the first device other than an iPhone to feature the Apple-branded display. The 960 x 640 display could be considered a qHD display, but this is so much more. The pixel density is phenomenal at the 3.5inch size and we wonder how Apple could fit so many pixels in a small screen. Color reproduction is excellent, blacks are as dark as ink, whites are white, and viewing angles are unreal. You can have the device at almost completely flat from your line of vision and still see the correct colors. The only difference between the iPhone 4 and 4s's display than the iPod Touch's is that the iPod Touch's display is not an IPS display. The lack of IPS technology in the display means that you do not get the same extreme viewing angles as the iPhones. There are still great viewing angles, but the display starts to wash out at ninety degree angles. Apple has been saying that 3.5 inches is the perfect size for mobile devices (until now with their 4 inch iPhone 5 and fifth generation iPod Touch), but we think that 3.5 inches is a little small. We have medium-ish sized hands and we consistently press the wrong button because of the small size. We personally prefer larger screens because they are roomier and display content better, but 3.5 inches is perfectly fine for the average consumer. The display is overall fantastic, but some people may want or need a larger display.
Performance
The fourth generation iPod Touch runs on a single-core Apple A4 processor that is clocked at 800MHZ, and it is accompanied by 512MB of RAM. This is the same processor that was also found on the iPhone 4. The processor seems underwhelming on paper, but in actual use, it is very fast. Scrolling through pictures was quick, scrolling through apps was a breeze, and there were only a few occasions that we encountered hiccups. Performance over WiFi was also as quick, but we still encountered the same occasional stutters. When we first bought out iPod Touch, performance seemed to be more reliable and quick than it is now. We experience more app crashes, stutters, unresponsiveness, and hiccups than we did when we first received it. These are not big differences, because this is comparing no problems to slight problems. These performance issues may be only with out unit or it could be the amount of content it consumes. The fourth generation iPod Touch offers great performance for the average user, but it will not wow any tech geeks.
Even though the iPod Touch is super thin at 7.1mm, it still offers great battery life. With moderate use, checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Engadget every half an hour, letting it sleep for five hours, and then resuming it, we managed to get two-three days of battery life on a single charge. With heavy use, checking previously said websites every half an hour all day and streaming short videos, we managed to get one day of battery life. All of this is also while the screen is at thirty percent brightness, and when airplane mode is on when not connected to WiFi. Apple claims that you can get forty hours of audio playback out of this iPod or seven hours of video playback, and we saw numbers very similar to that. The battery life is decent for the size of the iPod Touch, but it would be nicer if the battery could go longer.
Camera
The fourth generation iPod Touch's VGA camera is not going to make anyone a photographer or give you a nice picture. This VGA camera is the best VGA camera we have ever seen, but that is not saying much at all. The only way you can get a decent picture out of this camera is if you have the absolute best lighting. Most of the pictures we took either have a noticeable lack of detail, have way too much noise, do not reproduce colors well, or all of the above. If you plan on taking pictures at night, forget about it. Night pictures are the noisiest, biggest pieces of garbage pictures that you will ever see. Video, however, is a very different story. Even though the iPod Touch only captures 720p video, we have seen admirable results from it. In most situations, the videos will come out nice, offer good color reproduction, and focus well. There is the noticeable lack of detail from it not being a 1080p video, but the camera still offers a reasonable amount of detail. Overall the camera offers nice video capture, but takes terrible pictures.
Fourth Generation iPod Touch Camera Pictures Gallery
Software
The fourth generation iPod Touch was released with iOS 4.1, received an iOS 5 and 5.1 update, and now runs iOS 6. iOS 4.1 looked nice, but looked very old once we experienced iOS 5 and its new set of features. On every incremental iOS update that Apple has put on this iPod Touch, performance has always been smooth. iOS is one of the most popular operating systems in the world, and it is just getting better with iOS 6. In iOS 6, Apple has improved upon many iOS features and added many social network features.
Another very handy feature with iOS 5 & 6 is iMessage. iMessage is Apple's WiFi and data only texting alternative. You can send text only messages, pictures, and videos. All you need for it is the email address of the other person's Apple ID. If you know a lot of people with Apple devices, want to use data over text minutes, or only have an iPod Touch, iMessage is fantastic. It is incredibly useful, convenient, and easy to use. It displays when your message was seen, sent, and tells you when someone is responding (if their and your settings are configured to do so). We found that we consistently turned to iMessage over regular texting on our phone. If you do not have friends with iOS 5/6 devices, want to use text minutes over data consumption, or prefer texting, iMessage will be rendered as an intuitive unused feature.
In iOS 6, Apple also included some more subtle design changes. That black on grey bar that came up in certain apps? It's gone. All apps now have a black notification bar. We like this subtle, new feature and it makes apps with black headings look abyss-like. Apple has also refreshed the music app. When scrolling through your songs, artists, or genres, it now has a ivory/marshmallow look to it. While this does look refreshing and smooth, we do not like it because it seems to "happy" and heavily contradicts the UI when playing music. When playing music, there is now this grey on black look with aluminum/chrome accents. This looks very nice and is very slick. The most annoying change with iOS 6 is the fact that Apple changed the notification bar to a clear blue, instead of black all the time, in their apps. This looks weird, bad, and completely clashes with the rest of iOS. Another problem with iOS 6 is that all the devices that received it did not get all the features. The iPhone 4, iPad 2, and the iPod Touch Fourth generation did not get Siri or flyover while the newer Apple devices did. We think that this is just another way of Apple pushing you to buy a new device. This is not that big of a deal, but it is definitely worth a mention. We are pleased with what iOS 6 brought to the table, but we think that Apple made a few bad design choices with it.
Fourth Generation iPod Touch Software Gallery
Wrap Up
Apple made an incredible device with the fourth generation iPod Touch; it is quick, has a premium design, a fantastic screen, and all of the great features that come with iOS. There are only a few problems with this personal media player, only after two years of being on the market. Some of you might have heard about the Android media players like the Samsung Galaxy Player and the Sony Walkman Z series, but they are much worse than the iPod Touch and could not stand a chance against it. As for the brand new fifth generation iPod Touch, it is better than the fourth in every aspect except for price. The fifth generation iPod Touch starts at $300 for the 32GB version, while the fourth now starts at $200 for the 16GB version. If you could spend the money for the fifth generation, it's your best media player. If you do not need the better camera, design, and performance of the fifth or could not spend the $300, the fourth generation iPod Touch is great and your best bet at a media player.
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