APPLE Australia has launched a version of its 32 GB iPod Touch, the popular music player with its touch-screen control and wireless connection to the Internet. It can hold up to 8000 songs.

It is twice the size of previous top iPod Touch, although still much smaller than iPod 160 Go Classic, which holds 40000 songs. Australia offers Apple iPod Touch 32 GB to $ 629. It has reduced the price of 8 GB model $ 419 to $ 399 and the 16 GB model starting at $ 549 to $ 499.

Now here’s the rub: in the United States, the liberation of Touch has been accompanied by a new version of Apple iPhone with 16 gigabytes of storage, double the capacity of the former top model.

Unfortunately, the 16GB iPhone will not be sold in Australia because the current iPhone has no 3G technology used by most networks in Australia. Many of us were hoping Apple would like to take this opportunity to introduce a 3G model, but it was not to be.

CEO Steve Jobs of Apple said, the problem is the low battery life of 3G. Until this can be increased, there will be no iPhone for Australia or Japan, where 3G is also very popular.

The battery life problem certainly does not seem to be worrying Palm Australia, which has just launched a 3G version of its Treo 500 smartphone.