Ranting Kenya

I finally got my hands on the iPod Touch at Best Buy the other day. It was a rather impressive device. I didn’t have any headphones, so I didn’t check out sound quality or anything like that.

My first impressions were that the screen was impressive. I have seen posts showing the superior screen of the iPhone, and I could see the iPod Touch’s screen limitation, but it was nevertheless a good looking screen.

The text entry was difficult for me on the narrow screen. The first time I tried to enter a url, everything that was typed from my left thumb was one letter off. I continued typing trying to “trust it” but it was way wrong. The wide keyboard was way easier. I did get better however in a few minutes. Not good, but better.

Scrolling through lists and using coverflow was surprisingly awesome. I was skeptical before, but it’s quite efficient.

But seriously, how awesome is the web browsing on that device. I personally have a Motorola Q. I’ve used Microsoft Deepfish, and the regular IE. Safari on the iPod Touch blows it out of the water so completely, I can’t even compare them. Some of the sites I visited loaded very quickly, others less so. I think the WiFi was a little sketchy in the Best Buy so I’m not convinced that the slowness was necessarily the iPod.

If I had any gripes about it, it would be that moving from some of the applications back to the home screen was sluggish at times, also switching from landscape to portrait or vice versa wasn’t as snappy as I would’ve liked.

All in all, when the iPhone comes to a carrier in Canada that is good (i.e. NOT Rogers), I will seriously consider it based on the iPod Touch. The web browsing alone is enough to sell me. The integration that I’ll be missing (potentially) with my computer and Windows Mobile 5/6 is the lesser evil when compared with the impressive web browsing.