The Sum ‘n’ Substance:

Thumbs up: Sleek and compact design; great value for money; nice sound quality.

Thumbs down: The FM radio and camera are still in their baby steps; scroll wheel not up to the mark.

Inside the trunk: 16 GB storage capacity; 2.2 inch screen; video recording at a resolution of  640 x 480 pixels and 30 fps. In built rechargeable battery; video play back.

The whiz kid speaks: Apple is clearly dominating the market in terms of media entertainment with the launch of the ipods, iphones and all their variants. They now want to improve their feature list by adding a FM radio and a camera to the new 16 Gb Nano range.

Razzle Dazzle: The nano carries forward the iconic ipod design with just a few tweaks here and there. It has the colour range of the rainbow and now sports a slightly bigger 2.2 inch screen. The body panels are glossy and sure shot way to attract finger prints. At the back there is a tiny camera and microphone that looks like it’s forcefully attached, like a sticker.

Inside dope:
Apple has installed a camera that has the shooting capable of 640 x 360 pixels and is equipped with 15 silly special effects that add ‘zazz’ to your life. Now, the camera is located at the lower left on the back panel, which means that there are very few instances when your hand will not be touching the lens of the camera or the microphone. After many trials you will realize the only way to not touch the camera is by holding to delicately by its sides. It doesn’t matter if you shooting in portrait mode or landscape mode, you still have to catch it in that fashion. Apple has yet to figure out a way right from the most basic part of the camera, the location. They could not stick it to the top left or right, because the screen is there and they cannot but it in the center because Apples logo would need to be relocated.   In a test, shooting a video with the Nano’s camera was quite a bit of challenge. The picture quality lacked resolution and was very grainy.

The other add-on was the FM radio. The collaboration of an analogue tuning dial and the ipods scroll wheel is the basic idea of how the radio tuner is supposed to operate; while the idea seems great on paper, it did not function really well. The scroll wheel lacked accuracy in selecting stations. Apple should have included a digital tuner. The only decent feature of the Nano was the ‘live pause’, where the current station is stored in a buffer so that you can pause or rewind.

The camera and the FM radio were supposed to be the show stealers of the ipod Nano, but both features seem to have fallen flat on the face, badly.

Leaving these two features aside, your left with a brilliant MP3 player that offers awesome sound quality and lots of other fun features too, like an animated menu, games and a pedometer. Even the videos seemed vivid and colours were naturally displayed on the small screen. It has an in built lithium-ion battery which had a decent battery life.

Nitty gritty: With the new add- ons, apple seem to be trying too hard. There is no grace and etiquette, something all ipods are famed for. The add-ons just made a beautiful ipod look a tad shabby. Why would they put these features on it, if they all did lack in performance, looks and ergonomics. That being said, if you look at it from the mp3 angle, the sound quality was crisp and clear. The user interface was the typical ipod, brilliant. If you want to try something new from an mp3 point of view, try the new Nano. It will give you an insight in to what apple is trying to achieve, although with this model you may be left vastly disappointed. Either way, there is plenty room for alterations.

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