Essentially an iPhone sans phone and camera — served as a feature-rich iPod and the least-expensive way to explore the revolutionary "multitouch" interface that made the iPhone so famous. The "iTouch", as it’s sometimes dubbed, had the interface, operating system and most of the hardware of the iPhone
The original iPod Touch lacked email and applications(other than Web apps via its Mobile Safari browser), and it had other deficiencies, as well: no volume buttons, no speaker, no camera and no Bluetooth, although it featured WiFi networking, along with USB. As a media player, this iPod Touch was limited to 8 or 16 GB of storage vs. the iPod Classic’s 80 or 160 GB capacity.
Today’s second-generation iPod Touch improves a bit upon the original hardware, but it was the 2008 introduction of Apple’s iTunes App Store that has turned the device into a full-fledged mobile computer with tens of thousands of third-party applications available. To date, the iPod Touch is the only device other than the iPhone that works on Apple’s mobile application platform. And that is the reason to buy one