My wife and I have the 3rd generation iPod Touch and are very happy with them. The one thing that I have been missing/wanting is having a built in camera. I recently saw the photos taken by a friend's iPhone and was blown away by how good they were. Almost all reviews have said the iPhone built in 5MP camera is excellent. Like many others I watched Steve Jobs present the new iPod line today and was very excited to hear that it had all the features I was looking for. Retina display – awesome. Front and rear cameras – yes! Finally.
I was all set to order 2 from Amazon the minute Amazon had them listed. But .. while looking thru the Apple website I came across the specs for the rear facing camera. It is only .7 megapixels. Less than 1 megapixel. What? I thought that can't be right. I contacted Apple and the rep, who had gotten many such calls it seemed, confirmed that the iPod touch has a very different camera (.7 MP vs the iPhone's 5 MP) . Bummer. I looked around and found a hands on review of it …. and they said the sensor itself, besides being lower MP, is also not nearly as good as the one in the iPhone. Not terrible but certainly not good and no where in the same league as the one in the iPhone.
The camera was one of the 2 main things people asked for. The other being the Retina display. My assumption is that Apple didn't want to affect iPhone sales and purposely dummied down the camera. Shame on them. They want us to pay 0 to 0 for an iPod with a terrible camera.
I first predicted that w/ the Retina display and the camera that this would be a smashing success, a huge seller coming into the holiday season. I suspect when people get them and see how bad the photos are, they'll be returning them to Apple. Or like myself, not upgrading.
I realize this review should be for a product I own, but I felt it was important for people to know about the camera before they ordered it. If photos aren't a big deal, and you'll only email them or post them on facebook, then .7 MP is probably fine. If you want to print any of the photos you take, or even have room to crop the photo, you won't get enough resolution to do that.
That being said, the Retina display does look awesome, but is it worth the extra dollars over the price of the 3G model? Only you can decide that.
I hope this helps all of you make a wise decision about your purchase.
I bought my cheapest itouch at cheapestitouch.net
