The new iPod touch is a great media player, beautiful and functional, but its battery life didn’t measure up to Apple’s claims, according to Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

Like all iPods, the iPod touch works smoothly with Apple’s iTunes store on PCs and Macs. In addition, the touch introduces Apple’s iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store which allows the user to buy and download songs directly to the iPod, wirelessly. [That feature is coming to the iPhone soon.]

However, Mr. Mossberg notes some problems" "For all its beauty and functionality, the Touch has some quirks and downsides. It’s the first iPod model I’ve ever tested that fell significantly short, in my tests, of Apple’s battery-life claims. It’s also the first iPod that lacks any physical buttons for controlling music playback."

The result, in Mr. Mossberg’s opinion, was that the touch felt like an iPhone that couldn’t make a phone call. The problem was that for all its beauty, for a device that’s primarily a music and video player, the lack of buttons became a problem.

"But unlike the iPhone, the Touch lacks volume-control buttons and a button on its earbuds for pausing or skipping songs. So you have to play, pause and skip songs by touching the screen. This is made easier by a feature the iPhone lacks (so far): If you double-click the home button, music controls appear on the screen, even if the screen is turned off. Still, you can’t control your Touch by touch when you’re listening to music with the device in your pocket or purse," the noted personal technology writer found.

Mr. Mossberg was also mystified by the lack of an e-mail program. Nevertheless, he admitted that Apple might have had to leave that feature out of the iPod touch to secure the positioning of the iPhone in the product line.

The bottom line, however, was the battery life. Mr. Mossberg is noted for being a fair reviewer who takes vendor supplied reviewer guidelines seriously, but he still noted a problem: "The company claims that the Touch can play music for up to 22 hours and video for up to five hours on a single battery charge, even with Wi-Fi turned on. But in my tests, using factory settings, music playback lasted just under 17 hours and video playback lasted just over four hours. Nearly every other iPod I’ve tested, including the new Nano, handily beat Apple’s battery claims," Mr. Mossberg observed.

"Despite these downsides, the Touch is a great media player, and the iPod remains the best end-to-end portable solution for playing and purchasing music and video," he concluded.