At First Touch…Wait…That's Not a Phone?

Adobe Door with Flanking Flowers, originally uploaded by carolsLittleWorld.

Since it’s the middle of the month, and the middle of a month long journey into iPhone images, I have received several comments, emails, and the like, and I thought it might be nice to respond.

Many of you are asking technical questions (“what app was that?” or “how did you get that look?”) but some of you are lamenting the fact that, alas, you cannot afford an iPhone or that you use a different carrier that does not allow iPhones on their network. Maybe some of you have long-term mobile phone contracts and do not want to break them. Fear not for we at Carol’s Little World are here to help.

For starters, many of the cell phone apps are also available on the Droid phones. I’m sure Droid phone photography is just as fun, maybe even in some ways more fun, than iPhone photography, so that’s always an option you can explore if you are on a different carrier (or just want to use a different phone.)

For those of you who just do not want a mobile phone camera but want to play along, there’s another viable option out there. The latest version of the iPod Touch is basically the same as the iPhone only without the phone bit. What does this mean? Allow me to explain.

The iPod Touch is a device that looks like an iPhone, has apps you can download like the iPhone, has the same camera as the iPhone, and the like. The one difference? It’s missing the phone bits. It retails for about $150-$300 and, while it does not offer the 3G network like the iPhone does, it does have models available with Wi-Fi and, perhaps more importantly, it does not require a service contract. Of course, there are a couple of catches, for starters, only the newest (newest of the new) models of the iPod Touch devices has a camera so getting one at some uber-cheap price might be out of the question, at least for a little while. They are not yet quite in the discount bins, but watch for the prices to drop over time, as new devices get introduced. Also, because it has Wi-Fi but not 3G, you will probably have to piggyback it off of something like a home network and this might tap into your ability to upload/download photos. It’s very easy to upload iPhone apps to Internet hot spots like Flickr, for example, not so much with the IPod Touch, although this will depend on where you live and how much Wi-Fi is available around your location. For those of you who have a home router, a home network, or live near a Starbucks, this is probably a non-issue anyway.

Finally, like most iPhones (the 4 model like I have included) some of the apps were not written with the iPod Touch in mind so they might not work as well, might crash, etc. The Hipstamatic comes to mind here-it’s a wonderful app, but it sure can crash a lot on anything other than a 3G iPhone. I would guess the iPod Touch users will have just as much trouble with it as the rest of the iPhone4 users will, although this will remedy over time, as the apps are slowly being ported up to the newest versions of everything. Every day brings a new release, with new updates to the iPhone apps and every update brings a new “little fix” for something that had been driving us crazy so, while it’s true we can actually drop some pictures and the like, this doesn’t really bother me all that much. I see it as a situation in which things are getting better, and look forward to the days when the apps will be a bit more seamless. It’s just the price we pay for being early to jump on the new toy bandwagon I’d say, and leave it at that.

All things considered, the iPod Touch might be a viable option for those who want to play in the photo world of the iPhone without the long term commitment of an iPhone. Basic translation: it’s the iPhone without the phone bits.

I’m actually considering getting one to use for music and photos so that I can use my iPhone for, well, a phone again.

Until next time…