iPod Nano : Déja vu

This post is about the 8GB iPod Nano 4G that I won at the Puffin Quiz. The simplest thing for me to do would be just copy-paste my last review of the iPod, with a few changes here and there, but no, this iPod attracts a totally fresh review. So here goes…

First off, let me tell you that there’s a very different feeling about receiving an iPod, that’s very hard to describe. Apple’s worked very hard to get that sort of mentality into all iPod customers. An iPod leaves is supposed to leave you in awe. You marvel at its simplicity, and at the same time realise that it is one of the best portable media players out there in the market.

Non-iPod owners tend to hold the opinion that it’s an overpriced piece of shit.

Of course, the non-believers are right…Apple does try its best to cash into the iPod-is-next-to-God mentality, by ripping you off big time. But since I’ve won this iPod, I really don’t care very much about the price tag. Incidentally, it was around 10k, according to the price label. I’ve got a blue 8GB model. Apple tends to build a shell around you, once you’re part of the family. Once an Apple fan, always an Apple fan. iTunes is forced upon you, as the only way to manage your iPod, which of course is complete nonsense, there are a number of alternatives like Winamp and Floola, just to name a few. Anyway, back to the iPod.

I’ve always liked the way Apple packages the iPod. They try to be very minimalistic, providing just one piece of paper as a ‘manual’. The idea is, of course, is that the iPod is so user-friendly, that it doesn’t need a manual, which is sort of true. One of the most intuitive interfaces in this technological era. The iPod Nano 4G has gone back to the shape of the Nano 1G and 2G, being longer lengthwise, rather than breadthwise. This, in my opinion is a good move. I considered the first video Nano i.e. the 3G, to be rather fat and ungainly. I always liked the Nano because of the way it would fit into your palm perfectly. I was always a bit iffy about the 3G. Well, the 4G certainly corrects that. The finish is typical anodized-aluminium.

Now, all the iPods I’ve (semi-)owned – a 512 MB Shuffle, a 2GB Nano, a 4GB Nano, have been white/silver. But I have to say, seeing a Nano in deep blue is something altogether different. It just looks so beautiful, especially with the new curved design, with light striking it at different angles. One more thing, the curved and oh-so-thin-I’d-barter-my-kidney design is actually just visual trickery. The shape is like a concave lens, thin at the ends, but bulging towards the middle. The middle thickness is about the same as my old 2G Nano. The screen of course is a 2″ (diagonal) 320×240 LCD. Compared to my 2G Nano, the screen takes up much more space on the iPod, about 3/5th of the front. The clickwheel is almost the same size as my old iPod. The screen has a glass cover, but unlike my old Nano, it isn’t recessed into the body, so if I drag it across a table, which I won’t, it will get badly scratched. Also, it is a mega smudge magnet.

Now, one of the niggles – the ‘Hold’ button. Now, I’ve always identified this as a trouble spot on almost all iPods. This button, on all iPods, feels as if it’s just going to fall apart after some time, and indeed, I have seen this happening on iPods belonging to my friends. On the 4G Nano, it is a very sturdy thing. Apple’s design department has replaced the traditional plastic job with a round metal switch. It does take some amount of struggling to use this button, and this is exactly what worries me. Assuming that I accidentally use too much force, or if my finger is at the wrong angle or something like that, I could render one of the most important controls on the iPod useless. I consider it important because it is very important to save battery life. And saving battery is important because replacing batteries in an iPod is not as simple as it may seem. Theses batteries are not user-serviceable, and Apple Service Centres charge and arm and a leg for that.

Now, let me come to the actual interface of the iPod. The large screen, with the better resolution has made stuff much, much better. You can see more options on the menus. Plus, on the main menu, there’s this new feature called the Preview Panel, which allows you to see album art, among other things. One of the things I noticed was that the clickwheel seemed a bit more clunky, as compared to my old 2G. By clunky, what I mean is that scrolling, changing volume et al, are a bit more digital, less analogue, if you get what I mean. It isn’t a smooth process… Another small niggle…maybe it’s just be taking some time to get used to the new positioning of the clickwheel.

When you play a song, instead of being greeted by a white screen with a small portion of it being taken up by album art, and the rest being info about the song, now the album art is predominant, taking up around 8/10th of the screen space. The only reason Apple could do this is because of the resolution as well as the screen orientation. Anyway, it looks good this way. The song name is displayed in small letters at the bottom. Also, now you can choose the shuffle mode by pressing the center button 3-4, and using an iPhone-style slider, which I think is a very good idea. Lyrics also look much better as compared to my old Nano 2G, with album art and song name accompanying the lyrics.

Genius is also a pretty good feature…just select any song, and let your iPod make a playlist of similar songs. It isn’t always right, but then, nobody’s perfect, right? Just press the center button 2 times and use the slider. Remember that this feature will only work if you have updated Genius for your iTunes library, which you can only do if you have an account on the iTunes store (doesn’t matter if it’s Indian or US).

I think it’s time I mention that this time around, Apple has put an accelerometer in the iPod Nano. Cover flow takes full advantage of this, and if you tilt your iPod 90 degrees, you’ll enter Cover Flow mode, which shows all your albums. I personally don’t use this too much, because it takes up a bit of battery, which I’ll explain later. Another accelerometer funtion is the Shake to Shuffle function – possibly one of the most addictive features. When your Nano is not on Hold, just shake your iPod to shuffle all songs. In fact, I’m so addicted to it, I put my iPod in the pocket of my shorts and just do a little jig! Honestly, it works. Please, just make sure you have strong seams in your pockets, otherwise you’ll have a nasty time trying to explain to an Apple salesman exactly how your iPod smashed itself into itsy bitsy pieces (which it won’t, because it does have some structural strength).

One other niggle I noticed, was to do with the screen. It’s a very nice screen, with the backlight. But I’m a battery freak…I don’t want my iPod to die prematurely. So I like to disable the backlight, and just do with ambient lighting, tilting the iPod in the right direction to see what’s on the screen. Thing is, on the 4G Nano, this simply won’t work. I don’t know if it’s to do with the curved glass on the screen, or if it’s Apple’s new strategy for planned obsolence of iPods, but I simply have to keep the backlight on, albeit for only 2 seconds. But the thing that really winds me up is that in my old Nano, I could enable an option on my Main Menu, from where I could simply turn off or turn on my backlight temporarily (as long as I needed it). Apple seems to have disabled this option, which means that to do anything with the backlight, I have to go into the settings. This has confirmed my suspicions that Apple wants iPods to die young, so that you have to buy another one. This is only real problem I have with the Nano 4G.

Since this is a Nano which plays Videos as well, the Main Menu also contains a Video option (d’oh). In case you didn’t know, you can customise what options are included in the Main Menu in the Settings. Anyway, as always with iPods, converting videos into H.264/MP4 is the only hassle (apart from keeping duplicate versions of files on your PC). The iPod Nano is pretty good with videos, and if you categorise them the right way as Movies, TV Shows or Music Videos, it’ll be even easier. The iPod also allows you to adjust the brightness while playing a video, which I think is a good thing. But one major problem is that the backlight stays at that brightness even after the video stops playing. What’s more, the backlight timer is reset to 10 seconds, which is really annoying.

Before I forget, the iPod has a couple of games as well, of which I found Maze the best, because it uses the accelerometer. Sorta like the little mazes you can find on top of a pencil box!

Audio quality is top notch, as usual. In fact, there’s something extra special about the iPod earphones/audio output. The earphones look visually identical to the ones I got with my last iPod, but they sound much much better…dunno if it’s got to do with the earphones or the iPod, or the fact that I haven’t listened to music on iPod earphones for almost 9 months now, but the music sounds amazing.

In conclusion, I think it’s an iPod, which it is. Period.