iPod Touch compared to iPhone as development platf

Question

Essentially I'd like to know just how compatible are the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I would like to know if I could buy an iPod Touch (and thus save some cash) and develop iPhone apps on it or if I really should spend the extra money and put up with AT&T and get the iPhone.

What exactly is different between the two devices (other than the missing phone part in the iPod Touch).

Has anyone done this successfully? Or am I crazy for even thinking it?

EDIT

I've corrected the references to iPod Touch in the text so that @person-b won't strangle me..

Also, i would like to make sure that I point out the fact that I really am interesting in the feasibility of developing iPhone apps on an iPod Touch.

Answer 1

As @Chaos noted, the iPhone and iPod touch differ in their hardware features. The iPod touch lacks:

• GPS
• 3G/EDGE cellular connection (that is, it can only connect to WiFi networks)
• Compass
• Camera
• Built-in microphone (the second generation iPod touch supports external microphones; the first generation doesn't)

As for the CPU speeds, Apple doesn't publish any kind of spec for that. However, the iPhone 3GS is definitely faster than the current iPod touch, which is a bit faster than the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G. If your app is CPU-intensive, you should test it on an older iPhone.

Another important difference is the networking capabilities of the different devices. If your app never has to connect to the Internet, then an iPod touch is just fine. However, if you're using the network at all in your app, remember that WiFi connections are nice and stable and fast, but 3G and EDGE connections are slow and crappy and prone to intermittent failure. Your app needs to be able to deal with a crappy Internet connection. You don't actually need an iPhone to test this stuff, though; instead, you can write a script to artificially throttle or interrupt your development machine's network connection. Craig Hockenberry posted a good method for doing this, which you can find reproduced here.

Answer 2

One thing to bear in mind is that the second generation iPod Touch has a more powerful processor than the original and 3G iPhone. If the app you're making is a particularly CPU intense one, you may want to pick up an old iPhone to test against.

There are also a lot of used first generation iPhones out there. You don't need a plan to use them to run apps and get on the Internet via wi-fi. If you really need to test against the older iPhones, you should be able to get one used and not pay AT&T for a subscription.

Answer 3

• No GPS
• No 3G Chip
• Different CPU Speed (depending on model)
• No compass (if we're talking 3GS)
• No camera.

Other than that, the apps I'm working on work as well on our graphics guy's iPod Touch as well as on the 3G/3GS

Answer 4

The September 2010 iPod Touch has 2 cameras and a microphone. It has the same functionality as the iPhone4 apart from the phone part & doesn't have GPS.

I think it's better to spend money on a iPod Touch 4th gen than on an iPhone 4 (unless you need really accurate GPS coordinates in your app).