The FM radio application will reportedly be able to function in the background to allow user to listen to radio stations while other tasks are being performed, although it remains unclear whether the radio functionality will be a standalone application or integrated into the existing „iPod“ music application. The application will also reportedly extend song tagging capabilities to integrate direct iTunes Store purchasing.

The holdup on this app is that Apple is trying to integrate the Mobile iTunes Store purchases into the functionality of the program. For instance, if you like a song you are listening to on the radio (and that station supports tagging and you are in the US), you will be able to push a button and see the song (and all of the information around it) in the iTunes Mobile store.
The Broadcom combination Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chips used in the iPhone and iPod touch have long also had the technical capacity for FM radio reception, with the chip found in the latest iPod touch theoretically also capable of FM radio transmission, although Apple has not as yet taken advantage of these capabilities.

The speed tests conducted were similar to ones run in June on the iPhone 3GS, and while the new iPhone running Apple’s just-released iPhone OS 3.1 was not included in the latest comparison, the new iPod touch appears to even be slightly faster at some tasks than the iPhone 3GS.

But it’s not just in benchmarks such as these where the new iPod wins out. Just as the iPhone 3GS was faster than the iPhone 3G at everything, the new iPod touch feels much faster at any task you throw at it: applications launch (and quit) faster, Web pages load more quickly, processor-intensive games and programs perform better — you name it.

We’ll be testing the latest iPod touch’s performance — compared to both the previous touch and the iPhone 3GS — for our official review, but it’s clear that Apple has beefed up its newest touchscreen device.

Gioga23 notes [Google translation] that the iPhone 3G and iPod touch, despite not having built-in video cameras, are able to utilizing the iPhone 3GS video trimming feature when running iPhone OS 3.1.

E-mailed videos can be saved to the user’s Photos application, where they can then be opened, trimmed, and saved as edited copies. While the feature’s utility is somewhat limited due to the devices’ inability to shoot video, it could see some usefulness for users who receive a video clip while on the go and would like to pass a shortened version of it along to others.

When comparing the teardown images to the leaked iPod touch with Camera images from radio show Covino & Rich, it becomes obvious that internals of the leaked images line up convincingly with the internals of the third-generation iPod touch. Meanwhile, they are both distinct from the internals of the second-generation iPod touch. Such a finding is beyond the realm of coincidence, which means that this image of a camera-enabled iPod touch was indeed a real Apple prototype:

It’s not entirely clear why the camera was dropped from the iPod touch, though rumors suggest Apple is still interested in adding a camera to the device.