The newly released iPod touch is for all intents and purposes an iPhone with reduced functionality. So should you buy one or wait for the iPhone?

In the comparison stakes, the iPod Touch misses out on Bluetooth, phone capabilities, a camera and has a lower quoted battery life. However it is available in 8 and 16GB versions, whereas the iPhone is only available in 8GB capacities. These exceptions aside, the two are essentially identical. You get 802.11b/g networking which can be used for hitting the internet and accessing iTunes while disconnected from your PC.

The iPod Touch uses the same interface as the iPhone, which is startlingly beautiful and usable. Each task has only one way of being accessed, and these straightforward and intuitive options are all designed to be used with a finger. Instead of using the iconic iPod scroll wheel, the iPod Touch has only two buttons; a power and home button. You navigate the menus using contextual touch sensitive icons.

In the middle of the screen in the home menu you also get shortcuts to Safari and Youtube (which both use Wi-Fi for access) as well as a contact list, calendar, clock and settings. From here, you can scroll through options by dragging a finger across the screen. This also works in Safari, where web pages can be panned in any direction and zoomed by using two fingers and spreading the image to zoom out or squeezing it to zoom in.

At the bottom of the screen are four shortcuts to iTunes, iPod, videos and pictures. The device plays back anything you can throw at iTunes, and has a quoted battery life of 22 hours for audio and 5 for video. This will change depending on your use of the internet. You’ll be ding a lot of it too, partly because of the excellent input and page navigation system, partly because of the excellent implementation of tabbed browsing and partly for the novelty.

Apple just knows how do design properly. From the UI to the form factor, it’s perfect. But also very expensive, and the iPhone, when released in Australia, will provide all this and considerably more functionality. The choice is yours.

We are currently running battery life tests and will have a full review in the next issue of PC Authority.