Apple IPOD Neno Review

iPod was a totally newly designed and gadget and was a massive success. After this huge success of iPod 3g it would have been tough for Apple to touch the top again. I myself is a crazy iPod lover so I got curios to buy the new iPod Nano 4G from the time of its announcement. Well I finally bought one and used it is a great experience. Well fourth-generation (4G) iPod Nano isn’t nearly as dramatic an upgrade but still it has some great new features to offer which are

Apple IPOD Neno Review

• more storage for the same price
• new design
• Albeit one that looks quite familiar

Nano offers great features at very affordable price and has officially surpassed the iPod classic as Apple’s flagship non-touch screen iPod.

Hardware:
I bought the new iPod Nano with 16GB for $199. It is also coming with 8GB storage capacity for 149$. The new 4G iPod Nano comes with skip-free flash memory giving you a free to move option. Apple has also made each model available in nine different colors: black, silver, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Each color is more vivid than previous. Even the black color is a lot more shinny in the new model.
The new iPod shape which is in the league iPod 2G but actually it is very different. Coming in at just 1.5 inches wide and 0.24 inches thick, but 3.6 inches tall, the new Nano much more like the first two Nano’s rather than the previous short-and-wide model which Nano 3G. The new iPod Nano is just a smidgen taller while slightly narrower and thinner then the first two iPods. Its body is made up of a single piece of anodized aluminum. The body at the side edges, front and the back is curved minimizing the sharpness of the player so it wont hurt you in the pockets or in your hands when held by force. It has an oval shape that tapers to fractionally thin edges. Nano’s screen is also made of glass. The screen curves significantly only at the left and right edges. This is done to reduce glare by making the screen relatively more flat.
Nano 4g weighs only 1.3 ounces which makes it the lightest ever portable music player in the history. On the bad part, the bottom and the top of the new iPod is extremely sharp. Nano’s tapered sides make for corners that can be brutal if you sit down wrong with the Nano in your pocket and it can even hurt you seriously. Because f this some people which loved the iPod 3G for its pocket able shape will not like 4G much.
The 4G Nano’s vertical screen is actually identical in size and resolution to that of its predecessor at two inches (diagonal), 320-by-240 pixels, and 204 pixels per inch; it’s simply been rotated 90 degrees. On the other hand, the new model’s Click Wheel is ever-so-slightly larger than the previous one, giving you a little more than 1/16 of an inch additional diameter—all of it on the scrolling ring section. That may not seem like much, but I found myself better able to scroll long lists without my finger accidentally slipping off the ring. I also like the new Hold switch, which, in addition to being moved to the top of the Nano, protrudes more, making it easier to use.

4G iPod Menu:
The new design of iPod gave it a new vertical shape and to adjust it Apple had to make certain changes in it view. For starters, the Ken Burns effect will do a lot and will work as preview panel. It gives the advantage that it gives a r\graphical view of items which is now is now considerably smaller and can be seen at the bottom of the display. As a result, despite having a narrower screen, the 4G Nano has about 50 percent more room for menu titles and long item names while retaining the same amount of vertical space. Apple also has modified the font making it clearer the never and very easier to read. You can also modify it further by the settings menu. You can also change the preview panel settings and can even disable it completely giving more space to menus to adjust in the screen.
Apple has also modified the new Nano’s menus themselves. Not only including new graphics for several settings screens Apple has also totally reorganized all the play back settings which can only be found in only playback menus only. Other than that a General menu has been introduced which has all those miscellanies settings of the player. Overall, I found myself loved the new menu of player as it is very easy to navigate, scroll and use it with disabled preview panel.

The Landscape:
The new iPod Nano 4G has got a vertical display which very suitable for layers which has long menus. Playing is a bit problem in the new iPod Nano as most videos are more wide then they are tall. But Apple got this problem covered by simply playing the video side ways so you will have to rotate your player 90 degrees to watch the movies. Now rotate to which direction that’s a very interesting thing in the new iPod. For this purpose Apple has introduced a new device called accelerometer for resolving this issue. It senses the Nano’s orientation and adjusts the display accordingly. The screen of the new 4G iPod Nano is curved on the shorter axis but is perfectly flat on longer axis. So when you rotate your Nano to left or right whatever suiting you the video quality of the wont be affected there will be no left or right distortion in screen. The screen is also a it yellowier then the previous model. The glass material used to built the new Nano’s screen acts like a magnet to finger prints.
In the previous models the accelerometer was used to create a cover flow while scrolling through music or other menus when turned to horizontal position. In addition to Cover Flow is that it will give an alphabetic overlay of the menus which will make finding an artist or a particular sound track very easy.
Three brand new games had been introduced in iPod Nano 4G which are Klondike, Vortex, and Maze. You can again enjoy playing these games with accelerometer’s affect. For example in the Maze games you have to pass a ball trough a Maze so and experience of playing this game in landscape mode is more then in landscape mode and Apple has reworked the older Vortex to add a portrait mode; whether you see the portrait or landscape view depends on the orientation of the iPod. Klondike can only be played in landscape mode but its menus can also be browsed like every other menu is landscape mode. The new Nan can play any 3G model game very easily in landscape mode.
The only problem is that the Click Wheel rotates but do not works in the landscape mode because it is only designed to work in portrait mode or vertical mode while watching movies or playing games. The Menu and Play/Pause buttons are located on the left and right sides of the Click Wheel, with Back and Forward on the bottom and top. This can be confusing when trying, for example, to skip chapters in a movie. It’s also an issue with games; in fact, when launching older games, the Nano displays a screen showing a Click Wheel rotated 90 degrees (in other words, with the Menu and Play/Pause buttons on the sides), noting the “new button layout for this game.”

Shake it and Change it:
The accelerometer gives you another advanced feature that is shake-to-shuffle. That means if you are listening to music on your new iPod Nano and you are tired and sick of listening to a playlists or the songs in sequence then while listening simply give your iPod Nano a vigorous shake this will do for you. Your iPod Nano will be changed to Shuffle Songs mode and skips you to a random track. If you keep shaking in a row then it will play a brand new track you just stored through the computer via USB cable. Unfortunately, once you shake you go into the shuffle mode and it will play random tracks not from the current running playlists or artist but from the whole memory.
Well on the good side you need to give it a considerably forceful shake to go into shuffle mode. I tested it by attaching it to my arm and I started running to se what happens. Running with the Nano attached to my arm or waist didn’t jar the player enough to activate the feature. Once or twice I accidentally dropped it on the carpet from two feet or so but it didn’t switch on the shuffle mode. In addition, the feature is disabled whenever the Hold switch is enabled. You can also disable the shuffle mode completely from the settings menu.

Smarter than your average Player:
The most advanced and very unique system iPod Nano 4G has was also present in Nano 2G and running iPhone which is the Genius iTunes-8 which is basically an automatic playlist creator and music recommendation software tool. Once you’ve set up Genius in iTunes, iTunes syncs its Genius data to your iPod. It is a very interesting and amazing tool. If you are listening to a song and want to hear more songs like it like from same artist or album or the Genre you will have to activate the Genius function of your player which can be done by simply pressing the centre key while listening your music press it and hold it until the Genius option comes in the top bar (You can also access the action menu while browsing songs; alternatively, you can access Genius during playback by pressing the Center button to cycle through the onscreen options until the Genius option appears.) Genius can create a 25 track playlist on the information based on the song you are listening to.
I you like a play list created by the Genius you can save it easily. It will be saved with a default name which will be the name of the song on which it is based on and can be renamed again easily and will be displayed in the playlist menu. Genius playlists also contain a Refresh option that creates an updated playlist based on the same original track which will add new tracks to the playlist. Any addition to the playlist will be based upon the music, files and the contents saved on your iPod.
Saved Genius playlists are automatically transferred to iTunes whenever you sync the iPod; conversely, any Genius playlist you create in iTunes can be synced to your iPod (which also copies the songs in the play list). Note that if you refresh a Genius playlist on your computer or iPod, the next time you sync, the newer version will replace the original on the other device. Interestingly, if you refresh both versions before syncing, the next time you sync you’ll end up with both versions on both devices.