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.

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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!
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Music
The P2 can support MP3, WMA and OGG (UMS only), so I guess that makes the player a bit rigid when it comes to format support. It supports drag and drop though. The sound quality is good, even if the highs are bit louder than they should be. Absence of frills like the Coverflow can be a downer, but a good 7-band EQ setting makes up for it. It also has FM, which the Touch doesn’t.

The Touch, on the other hand, plays AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV. So that’s way more than the P2. However, it doesn’t allow simple drag and drop, so that kills the experience. Plus, there are no manual EQ settings. The sound quality is good and the Coverflow feature rocks.

Conclusion: The iPod’s sound is unbeatable, but the absence of drag-and-drop is a real blow. So the two players are even.

Screen Resolution and Video
The P2 comes with a 3-inch LCD screen, capable of displaying 30 fps in 16:9 aspect ratio. The display resolution is WQVGA (480 x 272), so that makes it lower than that of the Touch.

The Touch features a 3.5-inch multi-touch display that offers a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels at 163 pixels per inch. The display is beautiful and the video options are far better than in the P2. It actually allows you to tap the screen and reach the portion of the movie that you want to view.

The Price Factor
The Samsung P2 costs Rs 10,900 for the 8GB, while the iPod Touch costs Rs 17,000 for the same capacity. The considerable price difference is mainly due to the premium that Apple charges on every product it launches. Feature-wise, both players run neck-to-neck, so if you’re on a tight budget, you might find that any advantages the Touch has is evened out by the price differential.

Overall Conclusion
The Touch takes the cake with the kind of interactivity it offers, and the extra tricks it has up its sleeve. A bigger screen, multi-touch display, Coverflow, pinch and swish effect… these are some of the things that make the Touch totally worth it. While the absence of drag-and-drop is a pain, this is where the P2 scores. So, if budget constraints are a problem, the P2 is an ideal option – but if you can afford it, nothing in the market can beat the Touch!