iPod Touch Volume Control Gripe
My gripe about the iPod Touch today is that the UP and DOWN increments that the volume control keys generate when pressed are too big. In version 3.1.3 of the Apple firmware (the version I’m running at present), you only get 16 steps to go from no volume to full. This means that for my sensitive ears, I often can’t find a pleasing setting; position 6 is too soft while position 7 for example, is too loud. The push-button volume control steps are thus, too coarse.
Now the on-screen touch slider version of the volume control seems to have greater granularity (smaller steps). So when I adjust the loudness with that, I can always find “the right” level. But that’s a bit of a pain as well, because if you have the screen set to lock (turn off) afte some minutes, then to adjust the volume using that touch volume control, you must first UNlock the screen. This requires an extra touch as well as a slide just to get to the volume control to show up again onscreen.
It would be nice if Apple provided a power-save setting on the back lighting for the screen like Windows PCs have. There, the screen turns off after a user-selected amount of time, but does not lock unless you’ve chosen a screen saver and set a password on your Windows account. In that environment, to unlock the screen, you need not enter any passwords or move sliders to set the volume control. All you’d need to do is touch the screen once, and the volume control would instantly appear.
Yes, I know that you can disable the locking feature on the iPod Touch. But unfortunately, this also prevents the screen light from shutting off after there’s been no touching for while. I have in fact, set mine like this. But I’d like the screen to extinguish itself after a few minutes to save battery power. So It would be great if Apple would separate this power-conserving feature from the screen locking mechanism, and allow each of these to operate and be configured separately and independently of one another.
Still though, I wouldn’t care so much about the screen locking if the buttons on the side of the iPod Touch as well as those on the ear buds for the volume control, stepped up and down by smaller amounts. Seems like a firmware adjustment could solve this issue.
June 5th, 2010 at 11:57 am
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