Apple's newly launched iPod touch came under the scanner only recently when it was revealed that the Apple-based music player lacked the previously found ambient light sensor. Per reports, Apple has already taken note of the problem and stated that the device is too thin to accommodate such a sensor.
Apple Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, was the first to step up to answer users' queries regarding the apparent disappearance of the cheap and useful ambient light sensor, after Raghid Harake, a concerned customer, sent him a mail enquiring if the disappearance was actually true.
According to Schiller, the current-gen iPod touch lacks an ambient light sensor because the model is simply too thin to accommodate one.
Apple may have rested its case for not keeping the light sensor in the current iPod touch due to the thinness of the device (0.24 inches, to be precise), but that actually doesn't make any sense as the device's build openly shows that there is still plenty of room in the touch for the light sensors to be placed. Moreover, users would have hardly noticed any difference if the thickness of the device was stepped up to 0.25 inches from 0.24 inches. Some sites have even argued that there was enough space left in the touch for Apple to fit in a camera along with flash.
The new iPod boasts a 4-inch display, an A5 chip and an amazingly small form. However, if compared to its predecessors, it's not really an upgrade for the customers who decide to go for the device.
GigaOM, previously, was the first to notice the new change in the fifth-generation iPod touch. Kevin Tofel of GigaOM, after he noticed the change, thought that his iPod may be broken (although that was not the case). The problem, he stated, "is that I expected certain features from the old iPod touch to still be in this new model and there's one - a key one, in my opinion - that's actually a downgrade from the fourth-gen iPod touch. There's no ambient light sensor in Apple's new iPod touch."
Apple's own specs page had also confirmed the apparent missing of the ambient light sensor.
