Zune Thoughts: Zune HD Rumours: Possible Price Points and Insanely Awesome Battery Life?

Another week, another couple of rumours about the forthcoming Zune HD. First up, price points: the 16 GB and 32 GB capacities seem all but confirmed at this point, and now Electronista has some information about the price point of the 16 GB Zune HD being between $249 and $279 USD. The price point make it a little less expensive than the 16 GB iPod Touch, which is a good move for Microsoft. No word on the pricing of the 32 GB Zune HD, but I'd guess we'll see it in the $349 to $379 realm. There's also a rumour about a 64 GB Zune coming "down the road", which isn't shocking - this is all about the price point of Flash, nothing more. Microsoft could release a 128 GB Zune HD, but it would probably cost $899. So for all of you who have full Zune 120s, this is not the device for you.

Moving along to the issue of battery life, we have (supposedly) a Microsoft employee who likes to blab to a fellow named Ryan Rea (Volvoshine), and the result is a claim of 5x battery life over the current iPod Touch. The iPod Touch 2nd gen unit is rated for 36 hours of audio or six hours of video. If the 5x factor proves to be true, on paper at least we'd be looking at 180 hours of audio or 30 hours of video. That seems virtually impossible - I'm expecting to see some battery life gains by moving to the OLED screen and the Tegra chip, but 5x? I'm calling hoax on this one. I hope I'm wrong, because that kind of battery life is game-changing, but when something seems too good to be true, it usually is...