Review & test Ipod nano

Introduction

iPod nano
Manufacturer: Apple (product page)
System requirements: Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later, USB port; Windows PC running Windows 2000 SP4 or Windows XP SP2, USB port
Price: US$199 (2GB), US$249 (shop for the iPod nano)

As we all know, Apple's iPod has dominated the digital music player scene since its launch in 2001, much like an aardvark busting through a termite mound. As hard-drive-based players have gotten smaller and the price of flash-based players has dropped, Apple seized on the opportunity to dive into the flash-based market with the iPod shuffle. It was a wildly successful move for Apple, which has grabbed close to 46 percent of the flash-based player market since its inception. However, there were still many reasons for users not to get the shuffle—namely, the lack of a screen and sophisticated controls. The task for Apple was to create a music player that was somehow a marriage between the minute size of the iPod shuffle and the versatility of a regular iPod.

Last Tuesday, Apple's solution came in the form of the iPod nano, a mini-mini-version of their current iPod color line. That's right, it's more miniature than the iPod mini, and the display is color! It's clear that these two superior elements are the reasons why Apple decided to do away with the original iPod mini line; however many consumers are upset that the iPod nano's storage capacity is smaller than what the iPod mini used to be. At 2GB and 4GB, though, the capacities are higher than the current iPod shuffle line and the pricing falls right in line in between shuffles and regular color iPods.

A brief word about sound quality: the iPod nano uses the same audio codec (the WM8975) as the 4G iPods. The first and second generation iPods used the WM8721, while the 3G iPods and iPod mini used the WM8731L. Since the iPod nano uses the same audio codech chip as the 4G, U2, and iPod photo players, its sound quality will be nearly identical to those other players.

Opening the package

The out-of-box experience was nothing less than expected from Apple: excessive, high-end, and oh-so-delightful. When purchasing our 2GB black iPod nano for this review, it even came in a "commemorative" iPod nano bag.


Opening the slim nano box was pretty much the same as opening any other iPod, and the contents were laid out in a similar manner—simple, elegant, and organized.


It's when you take the iPod nano out of the box that the true experience begins. That thing is really, really nano! Photos don't even convey how small and light the iPod nano really is. In fact at first, at 3.5" x 1.6" x 0.27" and 1.5 ounces, it almost seemed too small and too light for me in my hand. The thinness is marvelous from an aesthetic and engineering standpoint, but my first thought upon holding it was don't break it. We'll get to exploring that thought later, though.


The iPod nano is so thin that it slips effortlessly into the coin pocket on a pair of women's jeans, with room to spare. It certainly makes the "thousand songs right in your pocket" example a reality, especially to women who have very little pocket space and are much more adverse to carrying bulkier electronics in those pockets than men. The iPod nano barely shows a profile in the pocket and it's easy to forget about its presence after carrying it around for awhile.


The iPod nano comes with all of the standard accessories, including the standard white iPod headphones (some people have poined out that providing black iPod nano with white headphones is a bit of a fashion faux pas, but I'll leave that rant for a different time), a USB cable, and a dock adapter for use of your iPod nano with a standard iPod dock. However, the nano's dock adapter must be too complex for us two lowly engineers, because getting it to fit with either of our regular iPod docks was (and still is) truly perplexing. After nearly thirty minutes of fiddling between the two of us, we finally gave up on the nano dock adapter altogether. Worry not, however, as the iPod nano plugs just dandily into a regular dock without the adapter—it just sits straight up in the middle of the designated iPod area instead of being flush with plastic all the way around.

Update: After publishing this review last night, we had several readers contact us with information concerning the so-called "Dock Adapter." Dan Frakes from Playlist Magazine provided us with the most information and it came straight from the marketing folks in attendance at the special event. According to Dan, the "dock adapter" is meant to be to be used with future iPod accessories so that they will be able to connect to practically any new iPod. In a utopian world, this would mean that your new iPod would instantly be compatible with any new accessory that offered support for the "universal dock adapter." See this Apple Knowledge Base article for more info.

 

Usage

Usage of the iPod nano is exactly the same as using any of the hard-drive-based iPods. The click wheel is solid state and touch sensitive, but the various buttons on all sides of the wheel depress slightly when pressing them, giving the user that oh-so-necessary force feedback. The user interface is also the same as you would expect to find on the current iPod color line, but with three new and very interesting features.

The first new feature is the addition of world clocks. Only available on the iPod nano, you can now set however many clocks you'd like in various cities around the world and then see the time in multiple locations at a glance. Seemingly trivial but surprisingly helpful is the fact that the clocks turn black when it is night time in that particular locale while remaining white during the daytime in another locale, which makes for even easier interpretation of the times. You can also set alarms in various time zones, set the clocks to change at Daylight Saving Time (or not, if you're into that sort of thing) and sleep timers in different cities.


The second new feature is the Stopwatch. You can now press a button and start using the iPod nano just as you would a regular stopwatch, with the ability to pause and even hit the "Lap" button to keep stats for each lap. When finished, you can look at the stats of your stopwatch session and if you had been keeping track of laps, the iPod nano shows you statistics for your laps such as your best lap time. The nano saves your stopwatch stats for multiple sessions, even after you exit the stopwatch on the nano, which can be useful for recording data for multiple people or multiple sessions of your own and then analyzing the data at a later time.


Finally, the last new nano feature is the presence of the Screen Lock. We're not 100% clear on what the purpose of this is, ourselves, but interesting nonetheless. There is a preferences screen where you can set the code for your screen lock, and another screen where you lock it. Once the iPod nano is "screen locked," no one can access anything on it unless they enter the correct code via a graphical combination lock that you turn by, you guessed it, running your thumb around the iPod wheel like you would to scroll through songs. This seems a little bit excessive and unnecessary, but it's cute and does the job. (Sounds just like something Apple would do.)



It's interesting to note, by the way, that both the Stopwatch and the Screen Lock both made use of the brushed metal that seems to have conveniently disappeared from iTunes 5.

Since the iPod's interface is nearly identical to the regular iPod's (save the three nano-only new features), it seems unnecessary to go into detail about how it works. However, the nano being our first iPod that has photo capabilities, we'd like to quickly go over how that part of it functions with the computer.

In order to transfer photos to the iPod on the Mac, you can do so in the exact same way that you do for music through iTunes. If you have the iPod nano plugged into the computer via USB and go into the iPod preferences in iTunes, there is a tab for music where you select whether you want to automatically update all songs, update certain playlists, or manually update. Very similarly, there is a "photos" tab that functions in exactly the same manner, except pulling your photo albums from iPhoto.

There, you can select whether you want all photos to update to the iPod, update only certain albums, or update manually. After iTunes has finished updating songs and photos on your iPod, you can unplug it and view the photos on the iPod by selecting the "Photos" menu and then selecting the album name you want to view. You can then see little thumbnails and scroll through to select one to view, or select the first one and hit back/next to view the ones before and after it. You can also scroll through the photos at "full" size with the volume wheel.

As we conclude the discussion of the photo capabilities, we'd like to point out that using the photo feature on the iPod nano seems somewhat pointless due to the smallness of the screen. It felt a little like looking at postage-stamp-sized photos on your cell phone, except our cell phones actually have larger screens than the iPod nano and the photos were higher resolution than photos taken from a camera phone. Although it's a nice extra feature to have on the iPod nano, the photo element is probably better used and appreciated on a full-size iPod.

 

Stress testing

What does it take to destroy an iPod nano, and what's inside this tiny package? We wanted to answer both questions and strangely enough answering the first allowed us to answer the second. We could take our turns at purposely rendering the iPod nano broken, and then when it had endured more damage than it could handle we'd end its misery with a respectful autopsy. Now, we know that destroying the iPod nano makes some (strange) grown men want to cry. Rest assured, you can still buy one yourself, and the local priest said all iPod nanos go to heaven.

Because of our initial apprehension about the breakability of our tiny new friend as well as reading about similar apprehension from many potential iPod nano buyers online, we decided to abuse our precious little nano for the sake of science. We wanted to stress test the nano in various real-life situations where iPod users have proven themselves to be a little less than genius in the past to see how the nano could handle the abuse. To break the nano in the most scientific manner possible, we would need 5 or 6 nanos and a high-tech laboratory built for this purpose. Unfortunately, all we had was a single 2GB black iPod nano and a giant parking lot, so we had to make do. What we get is a great idea of how much abuse this little guy can take.

To simulate everyday accidents that could result in a broken iPod, we came up with a few situations that we felt would ultimately leave the nano lifeless:

1. Sitting on the iPod nano
2. Dropping it while jogging (4-6mph),
3. Dropping at various speeds: 8-10mph (slow bicycle), 15-20mph (fast bicycle), 30mph (slow car), and 50mph (fast car)
4. Dropping the nano from various heights.

Our first test consisted of placing the iPod nano on a solid wood chair and sitting on it, as people are prone to do from time to time. As you can guess, this "test" yielded basically zero damage results—so little, in fact, that we didn't even take pictures.

For our second test, one of us held on to the iPod, jogged about 20 feet and dropped the nano onto a sidewalk. This proved pretty uneventful as well and the nano didn't even skip a beat:


Then, one of us jumped in the car and we started on the higher-speed tests. We drove a slow 10mph around a tiny roundabout and released the nano out of the driver's side window. The nano didn't really slide that much and just fell the to ground. The results for the "slow bicycle" test were duplicated for the "fast bicycle" test. The nano didn't slide much and again, just fell to the ground with some slight scratches.

The nano was still working fine, so we took it up to 30mph and performed the same drop. This time it slid pretty far and surprisingly endured only cosmetic scratches, mostly on the front of the player:


Because of the distinct lack of expected damage from the first two car drops, we sped up to 50mph and launched the nano on an impressive slide and tumble that, again, really only scratched the surface:


Next we tried dropping it from a "considerable" height. The height we dropped it from was approximately 9ft (ie. one of us standing on a stone bench at the park). This was the first point where the iPod started to operate abnormally. The display was seriously bugged out, but the music continued to play and navigating via the scroll wheel still worked as expected:


At this point we were astounded that the iPod nano was still working properly, albeit with a broken display. Because we had honestly expected the iPod nano to break by this time, we were forced to depart from our planned schedule of destruction and try and run over it with the car. Surely, we thought, it could never withstand the crushing power of German automotive engineering.


We placed the nano in the path of the car and drove over it with both front and rear tires. Driving over the nano produced sickening crunching noises which coincidentally sounded a lot like an LCD being crushed. After the first hit and run, the iPod's display was not cracked but was showing some nasty vertical lines. Shockingly, the nano was still playing music and the controls still operated as expected, as we were still able to skip ahead, go back, pause, and play music!



What were we to do now? Baffled, we did the only thing we could think of at the time: we ran over the nano again! This time the screen went totally blank, but the band played on.

In a final act of desperation, we decided to expose the iPod to a catastrophic event that would certainly destroy it. Lacking a really high place to drop the nano from, we decided the throw the nano as high as we could, say 40 feet into the air, and let it land—hard—on the concrete.


Alas, the iPod nano finally gave up the ghost. In addition to the display showing nothing and the backlight being perpetually stuck on, the music finally subsided. The nano had journeyed to the Land Where Consumer Electronics Are Eternally Blessed.



It's dead, Jim.
Since it was dead, we thought we'd open it up and see what made it tick...

 

Autopsy

With the iPod nano dead, we were ready to figure out what made it tick while it lived. Fortunately for us, the case was very nearly popping open from all the abuse, which made getting inside a snap. When we got home, we tore into the casing which was held together with a bunch of metal clips attached to the polished metal back.

The first thing you'll notice with the rear case removed is the "speaker" that's integrated into it. When the case is completely closed, the speaker touches two contacts on the flat speaker, which produces the clicker noise.


Removing the circuit board from the front part of the case is a bit more difficult due to the copious amounts of sticky glue-like substance (glue?) used to secure it in place. There are also a number of white plastic clips on the LCD assembly that attach to the main board and hold it into place.

With the main board removed, you notice a few things. The scroll wheel and LCD attach via some Foxcomm connectors whereas the battery is soldered directly to to the board:


Next, we removed the LCD and scroll wheel from the board and took a moment to admire the amazing engineering that must've gone into this device.


The first thing we noticed was that this 2GB version's internals were somewhat different from the 4GB disassembles we saw online a few days ago. Apparently in the 4GB version, instead of soldering the memory directly to the board, they soldered it to a daughter board which attaches via some sort of connector. In fact, on the 2GB version, the base circuitry for the daughter board is in place, with only the connector missing:


Also interesting is the use of Toshiba memory chips on the 2GB model instead of Samsung chips on the 4GB model. It was announced earlier this month that Apple would be snatching up nearly 40% of Samsung's entire output for upcoming products. Was Samsung's contribution still not enough to feed Apple iPod production? For whatever reason, Apple is not using Samsung's flash memory on its 2GB models for the time being.

The specific chips being used are Toshiba 1GB, model number TH58NVG3D4BTG00. They don't appear to be listed on Toshiba's website, but these chips are somewhat similar.


Another interesting design choice was to move away from Synaptics as the supplier of the touch-sensitive wheel. From our inspection of the circuitry of the touch wheel on the iPod nano, it appears that Apple has designed this one from scratch. In fact, our Apple journal, Infinite Loop even pointed to a report by AppleInsider that talked about just this sort of shift in Apple's quest to shave costs:

The iPod's navigational controls will be one of the first components to see such changes, sources have told AppleInsider. By October, Apple is expected to abandon Synaptics as its supplier of iPod scroll-wheels for its white iPods in favor of an in-house solution.

​

While AI was off the mark about the exact nature of the iPod models, they were dead on about the shift in technology. Apple's new touch pad has integrated membrane-style momentary switches and is controlled by a Cypress CY8C21424 Mixed-Signal Array with On-Chip Controller.


Most of the other components are run of the mill as far as iPods go. The heart of the iPod, the PortalPlayer chip, was upgraded to a slightly newer model (the PP5021C-TDF), the audio codec is the same Wolfson Microprocessor (WM8975G) found in the current generation iPods, a new power management unit by Phillips (CF50607), a batch of 32MB of Samsung SDRAM (534-K9WAG08U1M) replaces the old Hynix chips, and the LCD is of unknown manufacturer but it's a 16-bit color, 176x132 1.5" model.


Click for enlarged picture
Conclusion

The iPod nano is clearly intended to be Apple's new best-selling iPod product, as the iPod mini used to hold that title but no longer exists. And honestly, given all of the improvements that the iPod nano has seen over the mini and even regular-sized iPods, we can see it hitting that point in the very near future as Christmas decorations start showing up in stores sometime in mid-October.

Diehard iPod users who have gigs upon gigs of music will probably still avoid the nano because of its relatively small storage capacity in comparison with standard iPods. After all, the gap between the highest-end iPod nano and the lowest-end iPod is rather large—4GB vs. 20GB—but of course, with only a US$50 difference between the two, this strategic spacing is right out of Apple's playbook. However, iPod shuffle users and previous (or even current) iPod mini users may be very tempted to get an iPod nano now, given all of the new and shrunken bright & shiny features.

Or, if you're like us, you're one of Apple's most favorite customers of all: iPod adders. No matter what you already have, you'll want to add an iPod nano to your collection.

The nano is nearly perfect; it is amazingly small and packs almost all of the features of the iPod photo and a few more. If it weren't for its lack of Firewire, lack of compatibility with older accessories, and no current support for video output, I don't think we'd hesitate to give the nano a perfect ten. Those shortcomings drop the iPod nano's score a couple of points to a solid eight.

Pros:

• Very light and tiny, sits very easily in hand and pocket
• Extremely durable
• Cool new nano-only features (screen lock, world clock, stop watch)
• US$200 for 2GB iPod with a color screen and all the bells and whistles is a good deal compared to US$130 1GB iPod shuffle.
• Great battery life (14hrs)
• Charges over USB

Cons:

• Tiny screen means it's hard to enjoy looking at photos
• Smaller storage capacities than the iPod mini it replaced
• Transfer over Firewire not allowed—USB only
• Dock adapter documentation
• No AV output
• No remote
• Incompatible with mini and normal iPod accessories that require the remote connector.
• Battery is soldered in

 

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