The iPod touch has been a huge success, selling more than a hundred million units ever since the first model debuted in 2007 alongside the iPhone. Well, fast forward a decade down the road, the iPhone continues to be one of the main anchors of Apple's success in the hardware department, but not so much for the iPod touch. In fact, the iPod touch continues to fade into oblivion, where at one point, it is pretty much the iPhone without a SIM card slot, making it a wee bit slimmer. Having garnered six generations under its belt, when will the iPod touch 7th generation model hit the market?

iPod touch 7th generation release date
The iPod touch 4th gen was released on September 1, 2010, taking two more years before the iPod touch 5th gen made headlines on October 11, 2012. From there, it was pretty quiet on the iPod touch front for close to a good three years, where the iPod touch 6th gen finally made an appearance in July 15, 2015. Hence, speculation based on past releases might point to a remote possibility of the latest iPod touch generation to make an appearance only some time in 2018. It would not be surprising at all should Apple take the route of releasing the iPod touch 7th generation alongside the highly anticipated iPhone 8, taking into consideration how nice it would be to mark the 10th anniversary of both devices' debuts this year.

iPod touch 7th generation rumored specifications
Some folks figured out that the iPod touch 7th generation should arrive with a microSD memory card slot in order to further increase its storage capacity, as opposed to what all the previous iterations have come with -- or rather, without. We do not think that it is likely Apple will follow such a request, since they would not want to risk the sales of the higher capacity iPod touch models by offering a lower capacity model with memory expansion capability, considering how cheap microSD memory cards are these days.

However, it would certainly not be out of place to see Touch ID make an appearance on the iPod touch 7th generation. There should also be an improved camera on the upcoming iPod touch as part of the continuity of its evolution, perhaps even a dual camera configuration that is similar to the iPhone 7 Plus would do the trick in order to keep up with the times.

Apart from the lack of Touch ID, the iPod touch also misses out on 3D Touch, NFC, GPS, an earpiece speaker and a noise-cancelling microphone in terms of hardware and capability compared to a regular iPhone. All of that might be set to change if Apple truly wants to bring out the iPod touch 7th generation, especially the inclusion of a GPS function based on a slew of patents that were granted to Apple last year.

We can only sit back and play the patience card, since we do not really know what Apple has up their sleeves. However, do expect the iPod touch 7th generation to debut alongside the 10th anniversary iPhone 8 (rumored to be in Q3 2017) due to the momentous occasion. If you would like to let Apple know what you want to see in the next generation iPod touch, why not leave them a message? Should the iPod touch 7th generation hit the market, it will be nuts if it breaks the $1,000 barrier that the iPhone 8 is expected to retail for.