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Features
The iPod touch draws 99 percent of its features from the iPhone. While iPhone owners have zero incentive for buying the touch, the rest of us now have a way to get our hands on many of the iPhone's features without costly and contractual AT&T service plans. The bad news is that the iPod touch does away with more than just the iPhone's phone capabilities--it also gives up POP/IMAP email, built-in speakers, microphone, camera, Bluetooth, and a handful of widget applications such as stock monitoring and weather forecasting. Remaining features such as a Safari Web browser, YouTube video portal, photo viewer, music player, video player, and iTunes Wi-Fi music store still place the iPod touch on the cutting edge for portable video players, however. In fact, at the time of this writing, the only product that can even compete with the iPod touch's combination of a Wi-Fi-enabled Web browser, wireless music store, wide-screen video playback, photo viewer, and audio player, is the Archos 605 WiFi.

One of the few notable features that put the iPod touch ahead of the iPhone is the ability to output video and photos to a television using an optional Apple AV cable, Universal Dock, or qualifying third-party video accessory. Another advantage the iPod touch offers over the iPhone is the ability to manually manage music and video content in lieu of setting up automatic content syncing rules within iTunes. We are a little disappointed that the iPodtTouch is the only iPod that does not support a generic USB storage mode, but we doubt many users will be upset by this.

Audio format support is unchanged from previous iPods. The touch supports standard and purchased AAC, as well as MP3, Audible, WAV, AIFF, and Apple Lossless. Video format support is likewise unaltered from the H.264/MP4 files playable on 5G iPods, as well as the third-generation iPod nano and the iPod classic. The touch supports video resolutions up to 640 by 480 at 30 frames per second.

Safari
The Safari Web browser found on the iPod touch is more or less the same great browser found on the iPhone, minus a few features. For instance, without the iPhone's email application or phone capabilities, email addresses and phone numbers found on Web pages will no longer launch email or dialing options. Web-based email, such as Gmail or Yahoo mail, work fine in Safari, but without the ability to copy and paste text, manually entering in email addresses found on the Web can be frustrating. Just like Safari on the iPhone, Flash-based Web objects are still disabled, including embedded video players and music players.

Despite these few limitations, using Safari on a small mobile device like the iPod touch is still fun and useful. The intelligent touch screen keyboard and multiple browser window management are a big plus.

iTunes Wi-Fi
Both the iPod touch and iPhone allow users to browse, preview, purchase, and download music from the new iTunes Wi-Fi music store. The store is limited strictly to music downloads--no movies, TV shows, podcasts, or games--at least, not yet. You'll have to hop onto an available Wi-Fi Internet connection to take advantage of the wireless music store, but once connected, you can search for any artist, album, or song in the iTunes catalog, as well as browse by genre, top sellers, featured artists, and new releases. Store purchases require you to enter your iTunes password as a security measure. Once the download is complete, the song is immediately available to listen to and will transfer to your computer's iTunes music library the next time you sync the device. The feature seems to work without any kinks. Even interrupted downloads pick up once a Wi-Fi connection is reestablished.

Apple has also announced a partnership with the Starbucks coffee chain that will allow iPhone and touch users the ability to access a Starbucks-branded version of the iTunes Wi-Fi music store when the device is used at participating cafes--without paying to use the hot spot. We doubt that anyone will purchase the touch based on this added functionality, but it bears mentioning.

Wish list
Complaining about the iPod touch's lack of FM radio or voice recording features feels like complaining about a Porsche's lack of cup holders. Still, there are some missing features on the iPod touch that we would have enjoyed. High-capacity SD memory card expansion is at the top of our list of most-wanted features for the touch. We could easily forgive any PVP's limited built-in memory capacity if the option of SD memory card expansion was available (the Archos 405 or Creative Zen are perfect examples of video players that give us the option to expand).

We'd also love to see embedded Flash support in the otherwise fabulous Safari browser. Whether video content from sites like DailyMotion or Viddler or music from Web radio sites like Pandora or Slacker, embedded Flash media content is a big part of the Internet media experience. And while we're being picky, we also want the iPhone's notepad application, iTunes game support, and stereo Bluetooth transmission. The ability to use the touch as an external storage drive like the iPod nano and iPod classic would also be a plus.

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