New touchscreen iPod for Christmas

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

On February we reported some rumors about a possible touchscreen iPod after Apple filed a patent application about a touchscreen device. In the recent weeks these rumors have increased in intensity and we are now presented with two possible scenarios for the touchscreen iPod.

The first comes from a conversation that Gordon Kelly of Trusted Reviews had with a company that develops iPod products. According to the article Kelly learned that the sixth generation iPod will be available in December and it will be controlled using a touchscreen.

The user will just need to touch an area on the screen to make it appear a virtual click wheel. It's not clear how big the virtual control will be but since the touchscreen fully covers one side of the iPod size should not be a problem.

The second scenario for a touchscreen iPod is described by Russell Shaw on his ZDNet blog. Shaw analyzes the latest Apple patent application published and concludes that the next generation iPod will be controlled by various triggers along the edge of the bezel. In addition to reproduce widescreen movies the device will also be able to take pictures.

Various triggers on the sides of the screen will make it possible to select various features (like photo browsing) or to quickly switch from one activity to the other (for example from taking pictures to listening music).

We do not know for sure how the touchscreen iPod will look, but its certainly getting interesting since every update adds new features to the rumored, highly anticipated touchscreen device.