Zune HD vs. iPod Touch: Who will win?

The days are being counted down slowly, and most people can’t wait until they get their little hands on the upcoming Zune HD. But there is still a reasonably big question that many people are asking themselves. Will the Zune HD be able to take down or even take on the iPod touch? One thing’s for sure, the iPod touch is up for some severe competition.

Microsoft has done a great job with the new Zune HD with the overall design and features of the Zune. With the Zune HD rumours being leaked all the way from April until now, there should be enough pieces of the puzzle to have a good comparison between the two.

Pricing

A few days ago Amazon leaked the pricing for the Zune HD pre-orders. The 16GB Zune HD will set you back $220 while the 32GB model will cost you $290. Microsoft knows that it will have a hard time trying to compete with the iPod touch, so it set the price $79 lower than the 16GB iPod touch and $109 lower for the 32GB version.

Screen Display

The Zune HD features a 3.3 inch OLED touch screen display, 0.2 inches smaller than the iPod Touch’s. But the Zune HD has a slight advantage over the iPod touch, featuring display technology that doesn’t require a backlit light to function, therefore sucking less juice out of it.

Connectivity

It comes with Wi-Fi including music streaming; while the iPod Touch can’t exactly do it straight from the box, it can stream music over Bluetooth (A2DP). The sort of Bluetooth technology the Zune HD will incorporate is yet to be found out. Compared to the iPod Touch, the Zune HD boasts the HD radio tuner and the ability to connect it to TV’s (via a dock sold separately) and play High Definition video files.

Applications & Music

Apple has thousands upon thousands of applications for the iPod Touch and more growing every day. The chance that Microsoft has of switching customers from the App store to the Zune Marketplace seems quite dim. This is not saying that it will be a total failure, but it needs the community. Who else makes those applications for iPod Touch? If Microsoft can get the Zune to have as many applications and as many app developers as Apple have, there should be no reason why the Zune HD can’t take over.

Apple sells its songs individually, while Zune Marketplace will use a subscription method which in our opinion is a much enhanced way of selling music. For the gaming part, even Nintendo has been put to shame with the iPod Touch’s gaming applications that are out now. We can only hope that the powerful NVIDIA Tegra processor in the player will be better than the existing iPod Touch’s or at least as good. Fingers crossed that it will be a good gaming platform.

Internet Browsing

The Zune HD will also have included an Internet Browser, a specially designed version of Internet Explorer Mobile. But again, it has to compete with Safari Mobile that is praised for its swift page rendering.

Conclusion

Both the Zune HD and the iPod touch have their advantages and their disadvantages. They are very similar indeed, although because of the slightly lower price range and slightly improved features, the Zune HD should have a smooth road ahead. Little is known just yet about the battery life just yet, but one thing is for sure, Apple watch out, there’s a new media player in town! As for the rest of us, we can hardly keep our mouths shut about the Zune HD, only a few sleepless nights left folks!