Image credit: RussellHeimlich.com

I recently upgraded from my original Zune 30 to a Zune 80 thanks to a phenomenal sale price online. I love its smaller body, longer battery life, and of course the more than doubled capacity.

Aside from non-tactile feedback, I also dislike touch-based controls on portable devices due the the additional battery drain the technology introduces.

After trying out the new touch-sensitive, swipable squircle for a while, I ultimately turned it off in favor of sticking with traditional 5-way d-pad control. I operate the MP3 player blindly in the car, tracking forward and backwards in songs and skipping tracks. I didn’t want to inadvertently jump around or alter the volume level just by keeping my thumb on the squircle.

I was experiencing some unresponsiveness and unintentional (often opposite) behavior sometimes. Why won’t it read my clicks? Why is the volume raising instead of skipping a track? Why’s the track restarting instead of skipping forward?

I’ve since figured out the mystery. It turns out the Zune Pad’s touch setting only deactivates swipe gestures. Otherwise the touch-sensitivity is still active, and in fact determines the action taken when the squircle is depressed. In fact, I don’t it’s a traditional 5-way d-pad at all; I believe there’s a single microswitch under the big button. The Zune uses it’s touch sensor to determine whether your finger is in the up/down/left/right/center zone when the button is depressed. If you press any direction with a fingernail, nothing happens since there’s no skin contact to send electrical signals. And if you put a finger on one direction but press the opposite direction with a fingernail, the action activated is the one where your skin is making contact with the pad.

Clever implementation…but sometimes annoying. Fortunately, my battery life is phenomenal, though I haven’t put the unit through a multi-day endurance trial yet.