The two things which have been praised the most on the iPod Touch are its design and its extraordinary ergonomics.

Because the thing we have to admit is that the device gives such a feeling of pleasure while one uses it for the first time, for its touch screen and interface are impressive. Far, very far beyond competing interfaces is the Archos G5.

In return, there are very few reviews and articles on websites and magazines all over the world which really bent over to study the device’s intrinsic characteristics and performances. In fact, there hardly are some that talk about the ridiculous video compatibility, which is almost limited to H.264, or things such as the infinite transfer time to fill the 16GB flash memory.

IN October, iMike had proposed a first combat between the iPod Touch and the Archos 605. Thus, I suggest getting back to the question to make a deeper analysis, a comparison more based on the main question for the Archosian world : is the iPod Touch a real Portable Media Player, PMP ?

In order to do this, I suggest focusing on 2 of the 3 main characteristics of a PMP :
 the photo features
 the video features

Intro : the screen

Against the iPod Touch, Archos has the reputation, in the PMP world, of an uncontested leader. The newest generation, with the whole range of 605s on the front, does not break the rule.

In this category, the screen’s quality constitutes a primary aspect. Luckily, both products, though very different from each other, fill almost perfectly their role ; each one having its little flaws and big qualities :

 The 605’s bigger size – 4.3” against 3.5” for the iPod Touch- and resolution – 2.5” times : 800x480 against 480x320- offer a better playing comfort than Apple’s one, which nevertheless has an excellent screen without any ungraceful pixel.

 The iPod Touch has a bright, very reflecting and luxurious-like screen, whereas the 605 has a mat and granulous one. Nevertheless, it is possible to obtain a result similar to the iPod’s with a protection screen (such as DuraSec’s ones or Exim’s, which, not content with protecting the player’s screen, also allows dwindling the granulous effect and bringing a very pleasing bright render…

 While Apple’s product is perfectly functional under the sunlight, Archos’s one is much more sensitive to it, and the screen is hard to look at when sunlight is too intense…

 iPods were already well-known for the fingerprints on their back. The Touch gets another dimension, thus becoming a never-ending source of fingerprints for Gil Grissom’s investigations… Nevertheless, it has to be pointed out that once the device is on, the screen’s excellent quality and brightness make fingerprints become far more discreet. As for the 605, it knew how to keep its sensibleness and thus the cleaning sessions are far more acceptable and easy.

With this preamble finished, let’s move on to more serious stuff…

Image manager

Archos has, with the 605, introduced a particularly intuitive image manager : image defilading with one finger, just like a book, or even a zoom by simply touching the place to enlarge for a longer period.

Apple, with its iPod Touch, brings an extra fluidity : contrary to Archos players, the horizontal motion of the finger on the picture doesn’t just launch a script to move on to the next (like in slideshows), but the picture itself follows the finger’s movement, thus making the next image appear progressively. The effet is beautiful and fluid. In one word : fascinating.

Here’s a demo video :

But how does Apple get to do this ? The answer is multiple :

Optimization of to-move pics

When an iPod Touch user starts a horizontal movement of his finger on the screen, the next pic first appears in a low-quality version, thus allowing to keep the movement fluidity, without having to care about the pic’s real resolution. The most careful among you will thus notice that the pic is blurry, when one sees them during their first movement. Once the first movement has been done and the new pic centered, it switches back to ‘normal’ resolution, and will remain like that unless the user quits this menu, even if back and forth movements are made again.

This optimization is simply ideal : almost unseen, it does not bother the user at all and allows another feature Archos lacks. The result is thus perfect.

Optimization of original images

Another feature from Apple is the zoom, and scanning of the zoomed image, which seems much more fluid than with the Archos 605. Here again, Apple has optimized the image display… But this time, bad luck for the user !

Let me explain :
 Let’s take a 10Mb pic (here, a satellite map of France, Switzerland and Italy)
 Let’s transfer it to a 605 : the whole 10Mb are copied and fully displayed. Consequently, the more a picture is big, the more the player will take time to calculate it and manage zooms and scans…
 Let’s transfer it to an iPod Touch : the pic is automatically compressed by iTunes to end up being a… 1.64Mb picture. Let’s allow ourselves the dream according to which Apple would have created THE most performing picture format on earth, which allows to divide by 6 the size of a JPG without losing any data…

Unluckily, the result can’t be appealed : the picture has simply been ransacked !

The detail level of the picture in an Archos 605 and in an iPod Touch cannot be compared at all… Where Archos keeps the full resolution of the original picture, Apple only proposes (via iTunes) to transfer a pale copy of the same picture… And this can be easily seen without zooming : some grain appears on the displayed image, which can especially be seen in uniform-color areas. This phenomenon remains inexistent on the Archos 605.

Thus, though this operation remains almost insignificant for medium-resolution pics (from cell phones, for instance), it is disastrous for amateur and professional photographs ! Here’s a little video to sum it up :

An original rotation

One of the features put forward by Apple, during its great media shows, is the possibility for the user to rotate the picture from portrait to landscape mode and vice versa, by simply rotating the iPod itself. That’s original, fluid and aesthetic. In practice, the result is globally convincing, even though three disadvantages appear while using it :
 A light delay can be noticed during the rotation ;
 The feature only works when the player is in a vertical or semi-vertical position. If it lies flat on its back, you’ll have to put it back to vertical position for the rotation to work…
 Corollary of the preceding point : it is impossible to rotate the picture via the menu or by screen-touching.

As for Archos, it proposes for its 605 a only-touch functioning : slide up to make the pic rotate clockwise, slide down for anti-clockwise rotation. Though this feature is not as impressive, it is nevertheless pleasant. It has also to be pointed out that a specific menu allows to do the same operations in a more conventional way.

In the end, both products offer almost the same ergonomics since the 605 automatically displays pictures in their largest dimension : horizontally for landscape pictures, vertically for portrait ones. Thus, both the iPod Touch and the 605 will make the user rotate the device in order to see pictures on their best angle…

A basic but classy slideshow

The iPod Touch offers a slideshow with 5 different transition modes. Two of those really deserve to be praised for their effect is very good (wave and cube). As for the 605, it offers three more, but the visual impact is far behind compared to the two already mentioned ones. Nevertheless, contrary to the Touch, it is possible for the 605 to define a random mode.

A quite fastidious synchronization…

Notice that these several optimizations make iTunes reencode each image from your library to a sub file in this same library…

Let’s take this example : my holiday-1GB picture gallery : 75 files with 2182 images inside.

 I launch iTunes and configure my gallery as to-synch library
 The reencoding is automatic ; on my humble-4-year-old PC, this operation takes 23 eternal minutes…

 And then the automatic synch begins : 8’16” of supplementary wait…

Operations’ balance :

 My library has doubled in terms of repertories and files, and is now 2.35GB, which allows us to notice that iTunes’s reecoding process produces, with the same resolution, images less compressed than JPG…
 More than 30 minutes to put these pics in the iPod Touch. Compared to it, the same 1GB copy takes only 4 minutes with the 605S (hard drive) and 13’40” with the 605F (flash memory)…
 Nevertheless, the iPod Touch transfer rate is quite convincing : 2.72MB/s against a very weak 1.22MB/s for the 605F… As the 605S, it is far beyond with 4.16MB/s.

Image list

I was due to evoke the fantastic fluidity and reactivity of the image list, which works as the other menus do : by a simple slide with the finger, the list flows with an inertia effect quite agreeable. Once again, Apple’s talent is at his fullest.

Unluckily, this visual leisure does not really constitute an ergonomics advantage. Who has never reeled with the finger for more than 20 seconds to go through a 2000 track list in an iPod Classic or Nano ? The system may be efficient, but doesn’t support extensive lists…

This disadvantage of the sacred reel also exists with the iPod Touch system : to go through my 2000 songs, it is necessary to be very good in finger-sliding ! It is funny for 5 seconds, but becomes annoying very quickly when it has to be repeated for several seconds…

So : ergonomic system ? Not really. Just like the old-generation reel, it is only likable for the funny feeling it provides. And, in the end, that’s what catches most of the clients !

Image manager : conclusion

In the end, we can ask ourselves whether this light ergonomic plus compensates the several disadvantages… The iPod Touch seems in fact ideal for a little number of low-res pictures, but becomes easily annoying for an intensive use of high-quality pics. Thus, amateur or pro photographs… pass by and avoid.

Video manager

After this long –and interesting, I hope- review of the pic manager, let’s move on to the video manager.

To watch movies, series, broadcasts or podcasts, a real PMP is due to be the most open, for the user to avoid the fastidious reencoding task, which may only need a few minutes for music, but will take hours for video…

While Archos offers a large range of compatibility, in part for its fee-paying-plug-in policy (Cinema and Podcast), Apple goes on with its own one which started with the previous iPods, i.e. a simple restriction to its predilection format : H264, along with the MPEG-4.

So, the most popular formats, such as Divx and Xvid are out, as well as VOB files (DVD extraction) which allow full quality… Compared to the music world, it would be like rejecting mp3 ! In the end, the experience is bitter… Here are the messages you will face most of the time :

Let’s be clear : except for podcasts, don’t expect to watch videos on your iPod without passing through the reencoding task. Moreover, Apple made no mistake about it : the video menu is called - and rightly – “Video Clips”… At least, the message is clear !

In my personal case, my whole video library was rejected ! I had to get the HD podcasts from our brother iTrafik, to finally get to watch a video…

In the end, these constraints are simply unacceptable for a PMP. And contrary to the pic manager, here the iPod doesn’t have any particular shiny thing : a simple double “tap” on the screen to switch between full-screen mode or normal mode. This feature has been in Archos players for a long time now…

Conclusion

Even if using an iPod Touch is a full experience on its own, buying it for a multimedia use is to be thought – less for the pics manager, which remains very agreeable, than for the video manager, which is near ridiculousness.

There also are the audio and internet features, which I didn’t analyze here. Maybe I will someday in another article… ;-)

Finally, this product shows that Apple didn’t want to completely enter the PMP world, unless they plan to impose H264 as default format for every computer… The worst is that, with their marketing power, they would be able to succeed !