Can Ipod replace now a denshi jisho?

Hello,
let me preface is with the following: I am a serious Japanese learner (have done 3 years of college education, spend a few summers in Japan). I am now going to do field research for a year in Tokyo (will mainly research Japanese govern. documents + newspaper). Now I am looking for a tool that would help me.
I've noticed that recently dictionary applications for Ipod/Iphone seem to be of good quality and can qualify as fullfledge Japanese dictionaries. E.g. there is Eijiro, Jim Breen's Edict with EdPPocket, Japanese, SlovoED, Wisdom etc. and of course apps that are completely free of charge such as Kotoba.
For more info:
you can google various sites -- I am not allowed to post a link here, but google e.g. best dictionary japanese Iphone apps.
Now it seems that I could buy an Ipod simply to use it as a Japanese translation tool and enjoy its own functions by the side - rather than going for a traditional Denshi Jisho.
I do have worries though: while Ipod/Iphones do have a hand-written recognition software, I am not sure if fingers can be ever as precise when looking up a complicated kanji than a stylus? Anyone can comment?
Secondly, I'd like to have a dictionary which contains examples and sample sentences but also one which would allow me to illuminate a word and direclty look it up in a sentence. Not sure this is still possbile.
If there are any users are there who know Japanese well and can comment on the use of Ipod/Iphones as translation tools, please let me know what you think!!!
Thank you very much.
btw. I don't mind buying dictionaries online for 20$ or 30$ for Ipod as long as it's a good dictionary.

I use an ipod as an electronic dictionary. Actually I have 3 Japanese dictionary apps installed on it: Kotoba (J/E), Codefromtokyo's Japanese (J/E), and 大辞林 (J/J). They do the job. (I also have a ton of music on it, some games, and a reader to use with free Japanese e-books from Aozora.)

Japanese is the dictionary I use the most at the moment, as it has more features than Kotoba, and I'm not good enough yet to use Daijirin except as a last resort. Japanese has example sentences and you can jump to definitions for words within those sentences by clicking on them. I haven't seen example sentences in Daijirin (not sure if they don't exist or I just haven't come across them), but you can jump to words in the definitions.

The main problem with handwriting recognition for kanji is that the ipod/phone doesn't actually have recognition for Japanese. However, it works for Chinese, so it's fine for those kanji which are the same in Japanese.

I don't need a stylus to write the kanji. My fingers are fine, even for complex characters. However, if the kanji is written with a bad stroke order it will confuse the handwriting recognition. That's true for just about any electronic dictionary, though.

Inertia, thank your for your response.
that is really helpful. I've heard that Japanese is good and that you can jump to defintions for words which appear in example sentences. That sounds really good.
a reader to use free Japanese-ebooks? that sounds great, could you say more about that and also what type of a reader is it?
As for inputing kanji through the Chinese recognition software: how often does it actually happen to you that you can't input a kanji in this way?
so overall I gather from your reply that you'd recommend Ipod/iphone, right?
It seems to me that I'd use the Ipod (not iphone..too expensive) for my daily routine tasks in Japan while my MacBook for my research work.

Here's the page for the ibunko reader site
i文庫 - NagisaWorks.
and a detailed review that someone wrote in English
http://www.touchmyapps.com/2009/08/05/ibunko-the-app-stores-best-reader/

As for being unable to look up a kanji because it doesn't exist in Chinese... this happens with annoying frequency, maybe as much as 20~30% of the time. Or maybe it just feels that way? As a last resort, you can look up unknown kanji by radical. Personally, I rarely need to take it that far, as there are a variety of ways to look up words. The ipod/phone has a Japanese IME so, for example, you can look up 大学 by typing 大きい and 学ぶ and removing the hiragana.

In general I'd recommend the ipod as an electronic dictionary for daily use. The available dictionaries might not be good enough for high-level work in specific fields like medicine or science, but I think most people wouldn't notice.

This thread is interesting. I have an electronic dictionary that I bought a few years ago, so I mostly use the web-based dictionaries when I'm using my iPod Touch. I wasn't aware that there were dictionaries available for download and purchase.

By the way, which Chinese character set are you using for your input? I have the traditional and simplified Chinese handwriting input, so it covers close to all of the characters I would need, although most of the time I just copy and paste from websites (or I don't look up the word... that can get labor-intensive and annoying). Anyway, for 大学 you'd need the simplified set (traditional is 大學). It gets to be a problem when there are characters that were simplified differently in Japanese and on the mainland, but I'm not sure how many of those there are. I'd be interested to see examples of ones that you've had problems with (I know you'd have problems with 権, 観, 歓, 勧, for instance -- SC: 权, 观, 欢, 劝; TC: 權, 觀, 歡, 勸).