Back in 2010, I bought an iPod Touch 4 as my first portable device and I’ve considered myself to be an Apple fan, to varying degrees, ever since. As a result, I was pretty excited when the new iPod Touch came out although huge disappointment followed shortly thereafter… This article is dedicated to why you should think twice before buying this product, similar to the one a few months back on the new iPad Air.

What happened? Why is the iPod Touch 7 already a flop?

Some folks, myself included, were hoping that Apple was going to release an iPod Touch like this… (Credit: Rozetked)

Two days ago, Apple silently released a new iPod Touch making it the 7th device in the series. While there was some speculation that Apple could’ve been overhauling the iPod Touch in order to create the perfect cheap device to entice more consumers to jump onto its services bandwagon, like Apple Arcade, the product we got is a tad lackluster at best. At its heart, the iPod Touch 7 is essentially an iPod Touch 6 with an Apple A10 rather than an Apple A8…. that’s it! There’s no new design, no Touch ID or Face ID and the base storage tier is still 32GB which is a tad ridiculous considering it’s 2019.

Now, with those facts out of the way and the full details being publicly available, let’s list a few points that may not be immediately obvious why the iPod Touch will be a flop (or as some people call it, DOA):

• The Apple A10 SoC in this device is underclocked to 1.6GHz from the stock 2.3GHz found on the iPhone 7
  • This follows the trend started with the iPod Touch 6th generation in which the iPod Touch gets an underclocked CPU although this time, it’s getting an underclocked CPU that’s a little under 3 years old rather than a few months old
    

    But instead, we got one looking like this (i.e exactly the same as the previous 2 generations)

  • This probably means that the iPod Touch’s battery hasn’t been enlarged and the CPU had to be underclocked in order to give it a useable battery life. It might also mean that Apple’s using binned chips that can’t reach the stock 2.3GHz frequency although there’s no information on this
  • According to Geekbench tests the performance is almost identical to that found in the Apple A9 SoC which is present in the iPhone 6S(+) and SE
• The device only ships with 2GB of RAM, rather than 3GB RAM like the iPhone 7+ which also uses the A10
  • This might mean that Apple could opt not to give it all the features of new releases of iOS
  • It also means that you’ll be able to have less apps open at the same time as apps get heavier and more demanding games/apps might simply refuse to open
• As it has no biometric security features, this means that you can forget about Apple Pay which is an NFC payment service that’s finally landing in many countries
• Everything, including the camera and screen, haven’t been updated which means that you’re getting a pretty ancient device
• The price for the 32GB model is $199 which is pretty high but the 128/256GB models go for $299/$399 respectively which translates to around €470 in Europe for the highest-end model

Perhaps the only two advantages it has is easier jailbreaking thanks to its A10 SoC and the fact that it has a 3.5mm audio jack. Furthermore, the fact that it has same dimensions as the 5th/6th generation probably means that existing cases still fit.

What should I get instead?

If you don’t want to jump ship to Android and not spend too much money, getting an iPhone 7 might be to best route to go down but do note that it has no headphone jack and only 2GB RAM

With the above points about why you shouldn’t get an iPod Touch 7, you should seriously think twice before even considering buying one for yourself or somebody else. Instead, you can opt for the following options depending on how much you want to spend:

• An iPhone SE which goes for around $100-120 refurbished on eBay or even less if you get it locally
  • This has an A9 SoC which performs almost the same as the A10 SoC in the iPod Touch 7 CPU-wise
• An iPhone 6S which goes for around a tad more than the iPhone SE and gets you a bigger screen
• An iPhone 7 which still goes for around $200 on eBay for the 32GB model but it’s still cheaper and much higher performing than the iPod Touch 7 (around 5800 in Geekbench compared to the iPod’s 4700)
• For an A11 SoC which is a major upgrade over the A10 SoC, you could also wait a bit till the prices of the iPhone 8 go down a bit but beware, that phone only has 2GB RAM

If you’re thinking about jumping ship to Android, you can also look at the great number of Android devices out there which don’t cost too much such as the Xiaomi Mi A2 which costs around €200 in Europe.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, I personally won’t be getting one and probably, neither should you. Unfortunately, the iPod Touch has been given second-class citizen status in the last few years so it’s unlikely that it’ll receive the update it deserves and if it does, the potential price hike might not make it worth it buying.

It seems that the iPod Touch is something that’ll be doomed to live in our hearts for the forseeable future until Apple either pulls it together or pulls the plug altogether…

N.B: No, Wololo isn’t turning into an Apple-centric website but this article was written to demonstrate Apple’s incompetence in the iPod Touch line-up and to make anybody considering buying one out of pure nostalgia reflect a bit about it!