4th gen shuffle does not update play counts

Just bought a 4th-generation iPod shuffle, set it to auto-sync a smart playlist, took it to work and listened for a good 8 hours, got it home and synced it … Nothing. It's as if the shuffle simply forgot that it had played a whole bunch of songs.

I restored the shuffle in iTunes, reloaded it with some songs, played a few, synced again, and this time it worked! The play counts updated as they should.

Then I took it on a little errand run, got it home and synced it … Nothing. It's as if the shuffle simply forgot it had played a whole bunch of songs.

The difference? I'm not sure, but I think it's because I paused the shuffle at least a couple of times before a sync with no play count updates, but when the play counts *did* update, it was after a stretch of listening with no pauses.

That said, it seems to me that it should remember what's been played and send those updates to iTunes. The 2nd- and 3rd-generation shuffles did with aplomb. Did I get a busted iPod? Or is this intermittent failutre to update a known behavior?