New Apple iPods unveiled

At the company’s big press event yesterday, as expected Apple took the wraps off its revamped iPods (as well as announcing a number of other goodies, such as Ping, the social network now incorporated into iTunes).

The new iPod Touch will benefit from iPhone 4 technology (and fortunately, there’s no antenna in sight). It will be graced with a high quality retina display, with a resolution of 326dpi, along with twin cameras.

One camera is on the back, which is capable of 720p HD video recording, and the other will be front facing for video conferencing and FaceTime, as was rumoured a few months back.

And the other element that was rumoured (remember that John Lewis buyer leak?) is the 3 axis gyroscope, which is indeed included for gaming goodness. The main thing the guy from John Lewis got wrong was the statement that the primary camera would be 5 megapixels. In fact, the iPod’s snapper can only capture 920 x 760 resolution images, which is way behind the quality of the iPhone 4.

But then it makes sense that Apple would want to leave its flagship smartphone with some technological advantages over the iPod Touch.

It’s the iPod Nano which has witnessed the biggest transformation, however, having been shrunk down to a tiny square, and losing its camera as a result. The smaller screen is a higher quality display, mind you, and is now controlled entirely via the fingertip, being multi-touch capable (the clickwheel has been banished).

The redesigned Nano looks very funky, but there is the slight concern, being this small, that it’s going to get lost down the back of the sofa (or indeed, the back seat on the bus).

Finally, the overhauled iPod Shuffle sees the buttons return to the unit, rather than on the headphones where they’d been moved. It’s also reverted back to the old rectangular design.

The new 2GB Shuffle was priced up at $49, the Nano will start from $149, and the iPod Touch will start from $229.