The Zune HD has come from its days as the brick brown player Microsoft launched in 2006. Zune has changed its hardware, the Zune’s unique concentration is on organizing and presenting music still remains.
Design
The Zune HD has a slim body and fantastic look. Most of the Zune operations are operated by swiping or pressing your finger on the display. Three buttons have made their hardware, including a slim home button, a button for calling the volume controls, onscreen playback and power button. The Zune HD is 4-inches height, 2-inches wide and 0.3-inch thick, making it somewhat more compact than the iPod Touch.
The interface of the Zune is more informal and daring than the sterile icon grids, tight, and Rolodex menus of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. On the Zune HD, there is main-menu text that rolls off the screen, album pages with lot photos, and another main-menu called Quick-play(new content, play history, songs, photos, Web pages, radio stations that you have kept for fast access).
Features
Most of the features are concentrated on entertainment and media playback. You will find the choices for videos, music, radio, Internet, and Marketplace on the main-menu itself. Other features like audio books, applications, and podcasts are given main menu categories.
Other feature is the Zune HD’s on-the-fly playlist creation and content management. On the right off the main menu Quickplay menu keeps all newest music, along with currently playing song, and play history. If you want to pin anything to Quickplay, hold your finger on that item, and a context menu will appear asking if you want to add it to Now Playing list. Total genres, playlists, or albums can be kept in Now Playing list, and you can also save the Now Playing list.
You can display the Zune HD’s video, music, HD radio tuner TV using Microsoft’s $89 AV Dock, and photos. The Zune HD model is more video-friendly, which has 3.3-inch screen, supports movies, and an OLED display technology. Radio helped to specify the Zune HD against the iPod. Combination of HD broadcast and FM radio support makes the Zune HD the best radio used on portable media player.
Web browser of the Zune HD’s is the main feature. The browser is cleaner, complete with multitouch onscreen board, bookmarking, and navigating backward and Bing-powered Web search. You can update network sites like Face book status, view latest news, or check your Gmail Account.
Zune Software
An Apple’s iTunes music software is required for iPod to load podcasts, music, and videos. Zune HD also needs its own software to load music, videos, and podcasts. Zune software is not Mac-compatible.
Performance
Zune HD’s battery life is longer than the iPod Touch battery life. Battery life of the Zune HD is fantastic, but video quality is not good. Zune HD uses OLED screen technology which gives many advantages over common LCD, but OLED does not perform well in direct sunlight. Mutltitouch keyboard of the Zune HD is more responsive and accurate than other touch-screen mobile phones.
Zune HD from Microsoft is a wonderful device-inside and outside-that delivers one of the first low-cost and appealing alternatives to the Apple iPod.
