IT, the future November 2012 | Page 5

The new iPod touch is the most elegant device I've ever handled—and yes, that includes the iPhone 5. It's shockingly thin, feather-light, and clad in an absolutely gorgeous wraparound aluminum body. You hardly notice it in your pocket.

Longer, slimmer, lighter, and better-looking than the 2011 iPod touch $249.00 at the new touch is available in blue, pink, red, yellow, gray, or black aluminum. At an amazing .24 inches thick and 3.10 ounces, it's almost two-dimensional and weightless. It's longer than previous touches at 4.86 inches high to accommodate a super-sharp 4-inch, 1,136-by-640 screen, but the same width as previous models at 2.31 inches wide. The new display is just like the one on the iPhone 5, and noticeably brighter than the previous iPod touch's screen. On the bottom you'll find an extremely tinny-sounding speaker, the 3.5mm headphone jack, and Apple's new, compact Lightning connector, which, unfortunately, isn't natively compatible with any existing accessories without a $29 adapter. Apple says more Lightning docks and video-out cables are coming soon, but there's no exact timeframe.

In the box you get a pair of Apple's vastly improved EarPods $29.00, and a "loop," a color-coordinated wrist strap that attaches to a pop-out button on the back panel of the player. The idea for the loop is to make the touch feel like a point-and-shoot digital camera, thanks to the 5-megapixel shooter that's been added to the back. The strap gets in the way when you're holding the touch in both hands to play games, though.

One of the major improvements here is enhanced wireless performance, which is especially important in a Wi-Fi-only device. Like the iPhone 5, the touch supports 802.11n Wi-Fi on the 5GHz band. In speed tests using the Ookla Speedtest.net app, we got double the Wi-Fi download speeds on 5GHz as opposed to 2.4GHz. That didn't have an effect on Web page load times, as the 2.4GHz network was fast enough that the touch's processor speed was what mattered there, but latency in wireless AirPlay gameplay was reduced.

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