Report: iPod Classic To Also Get Camera?

Leander Kahney ()

ipod_classic

The iPod Classic is also about to get a camera, according to a new report in Taiwan’s DigiTimes newspaper.

The iPod Nano and Touch are about to get cameras – likely on September 9 when Apple is widely expected to unveil its holiday offerings, including a new version of iTunes.

But until now, the iPod Classic hasn’t been mentioned. The Classic is the last iPod based on a spinning hard drive, and is likely to be phased out as the capacities of flash memory increases and prices drop.

According to DigiTimes, the Classic will feature a 3.2 megapixel cameras supplied by Taiwan’s, OmniVision.

OmniVision will supply “3.2-megapixel CIS products for the new iPod nano, iPod classic and iPod touch models which will be launched in September,”  the paper claims.

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This strikes us as unlikely. The selling point of the Classic is its storage capacity, not add-ons like cameras.

4 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in Apple, iPod, News, Rumors |

  • Core

    The Shuffle will also get 4 new colors
    Check out all the new iPod stuff coming 09-09-09
    here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sDaYWAWsI4

  • Nathan

    So the iPod Classic will have a better camera than the iPhone 3Gs? I’m sure 3Gs owners will be pleased.

  • CaryMG

    I *hope* it gets a vidcamera.
    I forestalled FINALLY getting an iPod — I use a SansaClip — with this
    feature in mind.

  • Alex

    Here’s to hoping that this rumor is true. I honestly think that the iPod Classic is actually the iPod that’s best suited for a camera of any sort, and the only iPod that’s really suited for a video camera. Think about how each of the following iPods would look and/or function with a camera:

    iPod Nano: For someone with normal-sized hands, (i.e. me,) holding the Nano long enough to change a song is difficult as it is. Shooting video, or even a still photo with the Nano would require me to contort my hands to avoid blocking the lens. Capacity is another issue, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

    iPod Touch: This might seem like the best iPod for shooting video, but the problem here is that it already does too much. The iPod Touch is nothing more than an “iPhone without a phone,” and Apple knows this. Once I load my music collection, my photos, my videos, and any apps I want onto an iPod Touch, I’d be lucky to have 1GB worth of free space. Now Apple wants me to shoot video with this thing; where do they expect me to store it? Now if I had to guess, I’d say that we might see a 64GB iPod Touch, but even that’s not a lot of space once you introduce shooting (rather than merely playing back) video, and a 64GB iPod Touch is still roughly half the size of my 120GB iPod Classic from last year; I won’t even bother to compare sizes with my 160GB iPod Classic. Again, capacity is an issue once the ability to shoot video, or even still photos is added to the iPod Touch.

    iPod Classic: The iPod Classic admittedly has plenty of space for my music, my photos, and any videos I want to carry on me. I like being able to use my iPod as an external hard drive in a bind, which means I generally keep a good amount of space on it free for such tasks. What’s more, the lack of apps on the iPod Classic gives me even more free space. I can now use this free space to shoot video or still photos depending on what kind of camera Apple includes, and I don’t have to worry about filling the device by doing so. Also, if Apple were to increase the capacity of the iPod Classic, they could use the addition of the camera to justify a “thicker” iPod Classic, and subsequently give the device a capacity bump, similar to the way that they used a single-platter hard drive to justify the capacity decrease last year.

    Am I glad that every iPod will potentially receive cameras? Absolutely; if it sells more iPods, I’m for it. I’m also glad to see the iPod Classic getting some attention again though. I don’t like touch screens, I don’t like the capacity of the iPod Touch, and I don’t like the lack of haptic feedback. Likewise, the iPod Nano is too small for my music collection, I don’t like it’s physical size (too small for my hands,) and that leaves me with the Classic as my iPod of choice. In truth, I’d love to see Steve Jobs announce a 128GB flash-based iPod Classic tomorrow, citing the lack of a touch-screen as the reason such a device would be economically feasible, but I know it won’t happen. So if a camera is what it takes to keep my high-capacity iPod around, I’ll more than gladly accept one.