Nominally Nintendo recommends that you play plugged in at all times if you're on WiFi, or so i remember from the DS Phat instructional booklet

I wonder how many of these people whinning about the battery life are looking forward to a NGP.

Battery technology hit a brick wall several years ago. Nothing much ahs changed since the original DS came out.

The only way to increase battery life is to

A) have a huge battery (most likey this is the case with PSP2, the thing is massive)

B)have more efficient compontents, this comes from die shrinks and more efficient backlighting. Since NGP is using an OLED, I bet the power consumption is much much less for the screen compared to 3DS, meaning all the power is being drained by the CPU GPU.

If Nintendo released an OLED screen for the 3ds in a future revision (can still be same resolution) the battery life would probably be better. However since OLED is already expensive, and 3D is probably worse, they had to pick a regular LCD backlight over OLED to keep the cost down. In 2-3 years when I expect a revision, OLEDs will be much cheaper and they might put one in.

i wonder how many of those people who are new looking for excusesnow, ranted about PSP's battry life just a few  years ago.

My DS phat would just last for 2 or 3 hours playing Mario Kart local multiplayer.

It drains a lot of battery. But even so, 4 hours average battery life is not enough.

I like to charge my DS and take it with me on camping weekends or something like that. A 3DS can't do that with just 4 hours of life.

That too, but NGP's battery will not beat that as we know, so it's pointless to whine about battery life when you're looking forward to a completely ridiculous piece of battery consuming tech.

of course everyone, myself included, wants a batter that last forever, BUT there is on thing that lets me accept this.

This is JUST a video game system.

This is not my phone.  If I do end up playing for 4-5 hours and my battery does die and i'm not where i can charge.  then oh well, i have to stop gaming.  My life doesn't end, my game didn't restart, there are save features nowadays.  LIfe will go on.

Now if hte 3DS or the NGP were my phone then I am god knwos where witha  dead phone.  Same as above i "CAN" live, but having a dead phone is a much bigger nuisance and problem than having a dead video game system.  THus why i don't like playing what phone games like to say are games.  it sucks to have a dead phone, a dead game system, meh whatever.  i think having played for 4 hours ina  day is fine enough to not start complaining.

That's all fine and dandy, but what I really want to know is how much power StreetPass uses. If Nintendo wants to make the use of StreetPass widespread, they better make sure that it doesn't drain all your batterylife.

And four hours for something like this seems too low for me. But again it all comes down to how much power the WiFi uses in order to really tell.

I dont see a point in that really high light setting. Mine is usually one or 2 max notch above "NO LIGHT" because it doesnt strain my eyes that way. I'd say 8 hours is alright for hmm some monster hunter runs. Can't wait.

I agree with you concerning Cobretti's sentiment, but

Couldn't they just use the A/C adapter if they're stuck inside all day? It's what I do with my DSi.