If Iwata says it won't last as long, it won't last as long. Just how much of an issue this is will depend on by how much, but I have a feeling this will be an issue.

anything above 10 hours is unecessary... how often would that be usefull?

hey i'm gonna take a 20 hours without a stop at hotel trip every month.... without being the driver of the car and without a power plug in the train/plane.

not likely...

8 would be fine, but 10 hours is what I want

As often as you forget to bring your charger on any sort of weekend or longer trip. For example if someone goes home to their parents on the weekends from college/university.

And let's not forget about kids, who are never the driver and the purpose of a handheld console is to keep them quiet in the back of the car.

3DS is always on, is always searching for wireless hotspots, and draws power in a lot of ways that the DS and even the PSP don't.

As long as you get the options to turn off some of these optional niceties, the battery life probably own't be at PSP levels.

Exactly... if I go away for a couple of days I take a charger with me anyways./ If it can handle 5 hours with full screen brightness and no Wi-Fi then its great for me

Short battery life is probably 8 hours by their standards.

Anyway you have two good options if wall chargers won't cut it:

• Car charger.
• USB charger.

For when you are out and about if you don't want to carry a mains charger with you. But I never go anywhere longer than the battery life of my mobile without taking a charger and the same applies to a handheld I guess.

3DS matches DSi in terms of battery life. But if you have a DS, the best way to go is always the DS lite. 19 hours of battery life with the screen on it's lowest brightness and 40 hours of battery life if you are playing a GBA game. Awesome ^_^

Btw, what on earth is this cradle everyone keeps talking about?

I bought one of those from a third party manufacturer, it was junk. Perhaps if Nintendo were to make an official car charger I would be willing to buy another one.

Watch any of the 3DS trailers from the recent conference and you'll see it.