iPod Touch - any opinions?

[dluby]

Hi, my wife is heading from little old Ireland to the States at the end of this month.  To ease her conscience of leaving me with our three kids for eight days, she's thinking of buying me an unlocked iPhone!

Do any of you use the iPhone and is it worth the hype & cost? Have any of you used them unlocked?  Is the complete functionality of the iPod Touch contained within the iPhone?

Failing the purchase of the iPhone (for whatever reason), what do you think of the iPod Touch 16GB model?  I already have a Creative Zen Vision:M, but I find the choice of accessories is very limited in Ireland and the iTouch looks so cool.

Thanks in advance

Damian

[Carol Haynes]

What is the point of a phone with a limited battery life? You have to send it back to get a new one at ridiculous cost.

I don't want to start the whole Mac discussion again but there are other phones out there that do pretty much the same stuff but are cheaper, more functional and don't cost a fortune.

The biggest bitch in the US has been about the huge bills run up by the iPhone constantly connecting to servers to check emails etc. if you do get one make sure to turn everything off that can connect without you knowing (unless you fancy bills in the thousands of Euros).

[jgpaiva]

For me, the biggest problem with the ipod touch (and consequently with the iphone), is the fact that you can't use it without looking at it, because it doesn't have a keyboard.

Probably i'm just being skeptical, but i think that having a touch screen isn't as fast as having a keyboard, specially in terms of SMS writing and such.

[Renegade]

I think LG has a good alternative for the iPhone. Check them out.

[f0dder]

Remember that if you unlock the iPhone, you will have to be very very very careful when updating it, if you don't want a very expensive paper weight. Personally I'd stay clear, two other big reasons being cost and the whole touch-touchy thing that jgpaiva also mentioned. Heck, I even (often!) send text messages from my cellphone while not looking at it.

If I was going for a MP3 player (and I probably will in a few months), SanDisk Sansa models look very appealing... free of the apple crud, and supports SD Micro expansion cards (in addition to the built-in up to 8gig flash ram).

[Lashiec]

Remember that the iPhone is everything BUT a phone. If you want a mobile phone, there are much better alternatives out there. Unlocking such device is like playing the russian roulette: you may win, but the risks are far too great. Also, is quite expensive, both when you buy it and when you use it, with terrible contracts and all that. Think of the iPhone as a glorified Blackberry, I think that's the closest thing to it. On the other hand, there are tons of apps for it, Apple is releasing the official SDK for it soon, and iPhone users love the device. You could also consider something like a Nokia N810, despite being a different thing, it shares quite some things with the iPhone in philosophy, Ars Technica reviewed the thing recently.

As for media players, I like the Sansa e2xx models, the one that f0dder mentions. There are also other alternatives that look quite attractive to me, like Cowon's iAudio (a bit expensive, if you ask me), or the Meizu line of MP4, recently brought to my attention in Hydrogenaudio. They are affordable, and pack a lot of functionality, much like the iAudio. In that field, they're better than the Sansa.

I don't know what to think about the iTouch, though. All the functionality is available in the iPhone, it has a paltry amount of space... to me, it looks like a loser in the Apple line of iPods.

PD: The Zune is also coming to Europe.

[Deozaan]

Avoid! 

[icekin]

iPhone doesn't even have 3G while phones half its price come with 3G these days. Of course, that's only a big deal if you use 3G.

[jgpaiva]

Now that's surprising... I didn't know that about the iphone lacking 3g. Thanks icekin!