Gadget Wars: Samsung P2 vs iPod Touch

It’s time for my favorite feature topic, a one-on-one shootout. This time I'm comparing the effervescent iPod Touch with the meaty Samsung P2, so that the truth can be brought out. Both players come from established manufacturers of repute, and both are totally touchscreen. For obvious reasons, we shall compare the 8GB versions.

Form Factor
The P2 is definitely smaller than the Touch, but this also means it has a smaller screen. It comes equipped with a 3-inch TFT LCD, has dimensions of 52 x 100 x 9.9 mm, and weighs only 85g. There are no buttons and it comes in three colors — white, black, and wine red. It’s a good-looking player, though I must admit the Touch seems sturdier and a bit funkier.

The Touch, naturally, builds on the original iPhone design. It’s a bit narrower at 110 x 61.8 x 8 mm and weighs 120g. It's quite easy to slip it into your pocket without any unsightly bulges. The screen is half an inch bigger than the P2's, at 3.5 inches. There’s only one button on the face, which brings you back to the main screen. While the front of the player has a glassy effect, the rear has a sturdy aluminum finish.

Conclusion: The Touch looks gloriously dashing and that gives it that extra edge.

Touchscreen and UI
The touchscreen of the P2 isn’t very responsive and comes with its own share of quirks. I think the sensitivity of response acts up quite often. This means you have to be steady and patient while using it.

The Touch features one of the most innovative touchscreen interfaces I've seen. The Touch is equipped with a multi-touch display, which means you can use more than one finger. This enables the player to offer features such as "pinching" pictures to enlarge/reduce their apparent size.

The touchscreen capacitors are arranged in such a way that it can sense changes at each point along the grid. So each point on the grid generates its own response allowing the machine to recognize multiple touches. So the player responds to nothing but your fingertip.

Conclusion: The Touch has a better touch response ratio, and the UI is much more interactive.

Features
The P2 offers good EQ settings, along with manual controls (unlike the Touch). It supports the A2DP profile and (again, unlike the Touch) you can pair the player with a mobile phone and make/take calls directly from the player.

The UI of the Touch is very interactive and offers features like CoverFlow – a new way of treating album artwork. The idea is presumably to offer much more than music. You can save contacts, and to top it all, it has motion sensors that detect a slight tilt. So if you need to change the screen orientation while viewing pictures, just rotate the player. Unlike in the P2, the Touch lists the letters A-Z vertically on the right for easy reference.

Conclusion: Where interactivity is concerned the Touch wins hands-down. However, the P2 has some cool additional features such as Bluetooth capabilities. Then again, the Touch has Wi-Fi!