Zune HD Teardown Reveals Better Hardware Than iPod
2:11 pm, September 15th, 2009, Leander Kahney
A teardown of Microsoft’s new Zune HD reveals that’s it’s smaller, lighter and better built than the iPod touch — plus it’s got better battery life.
“Microsoft has taken a long time to get to market with this device, and the hardware shows it,” says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, which has posted details of the teardown online.
- The highlight of the Zune HD is its OLED screen. Made by Samsung, the screen is only 1mm thick but seems plenty tough, says Wiens.
- The Zune gets better battery life from a smaller battery – likely a lot to do with the low-power OLED screen.
- The Zune is not as tall or as wide as the iPod Touch but is 0.4mm thicker.
- Unlike the new Touch, the Zune HD does not have 802.11n, only .802.11g.
- The Zune is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2600 processor, which has OpenGL ES 2.0 (sam as the new Touch) and programmable pixel shaders, according to iFixit.
The Zune HD is getting favorable reviews. Wired.com says its the first music player to match the iPod’s wow factor. “It’s a lovely industrial design, has a beautiful OLED screen, packs in HD radio and HD video out, and syncs to software that outshines iTunes in many ways,” Wired.com says. However, there’s almost no Apps in Microsoft’s App Store, no deep catalog of video, oh, and the biggie: no Mac software.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, iPod Touch | Comment on this article
fwiw… couple counter-points from today’s AppleInsider’s article:
• Zune’s OLED screen looks great in the dim light but not in the light of day. Note that the Gizmodo photos featured the Zune in a candlelit room.
• When in daylight, the Zune screen goes into overdrive trying to match the Touch and consequently it’s battery life does a swan dive.
• HD isn’t High Def on the Zune (only when you hook it up to a TV). The Zune, in fact, has lower on-board screen resolution than the Touch & iPhone
• “HD Radio” doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s just marketing speak for “Buy me, retard.”
• The Tegra chips were used in previous generation iPods. If Apple wanted Tegra chips, they’d have ‘em
• Thinner and shorter is good if your a jockey, but it doesn’t mean much if you an inferior product.
d.lete, on September 15th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
You are so wrong
Ben, on September 15th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
and also you are the only one who sounds like a retard.
Ben, on September 15th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Actually, he’s right. Technically, the Zune has substantially inferior hardware once examined past the marketing notes.
It’s too bad, in some respects, I was looking forward to seeing how Apple would respond to competition.
Nick, on September 15th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Eloquent and masterfully presented counterpoint, Ben. Your inarguable logic has totally convinced me. I’m on my way now to sell a kidney and buy Zunes for all my friends and relatives.
Vincent, on September 15th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I see a couple of mistakes in this post.
1. The Zune is thinner but .4 mm thicker?
2. Wireless N in the Touch? Not yet!
Ace, on September 15th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
@Leander: “The Zune is thinner and shorter than the iPod Touch, but 0.4 mm thicker.” lolwat? Thinner and thicker? Might be more clear to rephrase that “The Zune is not as tall or as wide as the iPod Touch but is 0.4mm thicker.”
“Unlike the new Touch, the Zune HD does not have 802.11n, only .802.11g.” And as of yet, the Touch doesn’t support 802.11n in software, so it’s a moot point right now.
@Ben: AppleInsider sounded like retards too.
nak, on September 15th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
The 2 images don’t display, so I can’t comment on the attractiveness of the design.
Bert Vanderveen, on September 15th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Actually, d.lete is correct with his points. The OLED screen is a power hog when the screen is displaing light colors/white screen. That why the Zune UI is black. That negates the OLED efficiencies unless you intend to only view dark images. The OLED also has a shorter lifespan than LCD especialy with the blue diodes. The Zune OLED is unreadable under bright conditions such as daylight because it does not use reflectEd ambient light the way LCD screen do. The screen resolution is actually lower the the resolution on the iPod Touch. d.lete is correct when he says the 720p resolution only comes into play when the Zune is used as a connected player in conjunction with an HDTV.
The HD radio is somewhat of a Gimmick. It only works in the USA which is probably why it’s only being sold in the US.
Dr.Evil, on September 15th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
@nak. thanks. fixed the phrasing.
@bert and the pictures.
Leander Kahney, on September 15th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Forgot to mention this but the weakest part of the Zune HD is the OS it use. It uses Windows CE which is pretty much crap and extremely developer unfriendly. Even MS’s own software doesn’t run well. Mobil IE exlorer sucks and lags behind the many webkit mobile browsers. Windows CE also cannot take advantage of multie or multi-core processors.
Dr.Evil, on September 15th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
@Vincent
LoL You Owned That Guy.
-
I think that the Zune is a gimmick, Why? Because how many HD content you can handle with 16 GB, a movie maybe?
But the worst part: it uses IE mobile, God please helps us.
Also it’s design is terrible (IMO), so 80’s.
Microsoft just did it again, damn.
a BROWN BRICK, on September 15th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
@ ace, wrt no wireless n in the Touch….
you’re right, but there’s a caveat: the wireless n is actually in the new Touch at a hardware level, just not yet software enabled.
d.lete, on September 16th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Nice analysis, but at the end of the day (and fiscal year) it is the customer who determines what the better hardware might be.
I will stay tuned for your defense of Betamax and CPM.
Erin's Dad, on September 16th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Anyone who considers the word “retaard” as either socially acceptable or a valid demonstration of intellectual superiority is a sad excuse for a person. Crawl back into your holes and stay there.
imajoebob, on September 16th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
@d.lete If it’s not enabled, then it’s not really there. Perhaps in the future, but we live in the present.
Ace, on September 16th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
@ imajoebob: there’s only one “a”… but my apologies, I can understand why my comment was offensive to you.
d.lete, on September 16th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
As a card-carrying Apple Fanboi I would like to say that it’s just refreshing to see a Mac site praise a good piece of Microsoft kit. I still suspect Microsoft could do even better than this if it tried. The XBox 360 proves that and the XBox Live UI is really nice too.
Apple has bucketloads of vision but it needs competition to keep it sharp.
Having to compete against Apple is great for the rest of the industry.
It’s great for us as, finally we’ll all get fancy gizmos that we can actually use.
Hurrah!
(oh, and I’d love to see Apple tackle gaming, too)
sambeau, on September 17th, 2009 at 6:03 am
@d.lete:
“The Tegra chips were used in previous generation iPods. If Apple wanted Tegra chips, they’d have ‘em”
Nvidia announced the Tegra product line on June 2, 2008, so I doubt Apple has ever used Tegra processors for iPods.
accolon, on September 17th, 2009 at 6:42 am
@accolon
Nvida baught some company and used their chips for tegra.
Jesper, on September 17th, 2009 at 6:55 am
@ a colon
before posting your doubts, perhaps you should take a moment read the article I’ve cited.
d.lete, on September 17th, 2009 at 8:05 am
uh, the tegra SoC has NEVER been used in the older ipods. some parts of the system may have been used but trust me, no ipod has ever had an nvidia gpu in it. the gpu in the zune hd is the only pmp that i know of that has SM3.0 pixel shader support.
dave, on September 26th, 2009 at 10:02 am
by the way… the gpu in the zune hd is basically a geforce 6600.
dave, on September 26th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I knew Samsung was involved in process. Samsung is the only manufacturer that can mass produce OLEDs. Wake up Samsung, instead of providing OLED to Microsoft, why don’t you make a MP3 player yourself using your own designed OLED screens. WHy are you helping microsoft increase marketshare, when that increased marketshare will eventually EAT away at Samsung’s Marketshare. You are playing a dangerous game. And Samsung, you are going to lose. I don’t see Apple GIVING selling their OS to other manufacturers. What are you doing?
And the samething with the icrap. You samsung are giving you RAM and Processors to APPLE at Effing DISCOUNTS. WTF? Do you want to be in the mobile business game or not? If you do, then you don’t see your own chips to other companies at discounts. If you want to make money, and have a hardware advantage, you keep the chips and let the other companies try to compete with you. Otherwise, trade the hardware technology for Apple’s software know how.
Anway, I am very disapointed in Samsung. You guys have geniuses in Korea, but you can not figure out how to increase marketshare and make $$$
joe, on October 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Wow, unenlightened, narrow minded morons abound here. Sorry, I dig the HD, and tbh I dont care if you mac heads dont like it. Keep giving the evil empire your money (cos apple truly is the evil empire, try manually upgrading a non hackingtosh system, without a MAC Genius (HAHAHAHAHAHA) there to take your money) and sit back with your self proclaimed “superior product”. Spend another 1600 bucks every 3 years to buy a system that will function for another 3 years before they bring out a new OS that makes your old boat anchor obsolete. My PC will run all manner of systems, and when they are too old for the latest windows software I’ll put linux on them and get another 3-5 years use outta them.
Tossers
Citizen Blue, on October 19th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
What a dumbass. If you are buying a zune hd, why would you even think about wanting mac’s shity software. If that is a big concern for people then all those people are complete retards.
scott, on October 24th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Dumbass, heh. One of the mitigating factors of NOT BUYING AN IPOD IS THE SHITTY SOFTWARE. The Zune 4.0 software is slick and intuitive to use.
Paul, on November 16th, 2009 at 12:03 pm