Yeah I never ever play that long in one go anyway, so I honestly don't care much.

At the end of the day Nintendo chose power over battery life this time (just like Sony did with the PSP) and for a dedicated gaming handheld that's only a problem during a long flight or road trip or a lengthy blackout or something. These events don't happen that often to justify investing more in putting a better battery in there or downgrading the 3DS' horsepower to boost the battery life.

No, not really. It's because battery tech has been at standstill and gadgets demands more and more power.

Until we get some battery breakthrough, we're very much stuck with short battery life.

Yeah i guess. I just got a smartphone and playing around with it rapes my battery. It's frustrating. Particularly because I need my smartphone to at least be on standy 9-5 (and preferably in the evening too if I'm expecting texts from friends) and I'd imagine that charging the battery frequently (like say every day or every two days) is not good for the battery's long-term staying power. If I don't touch that bloody thing, it'll last the work day on standby without consuming much juice. But god forbid I ever want to game on the thing, do some 3G/Wi-Fi browsing or use some apps (the reasons why I got a smartphone in the first place). That drains the battery fast.

It's actually the main reason why I use my phone for just... phone. It sucks to need it and have the battery die out.

I understand that the 3D slider is actually a software-mediated input. That is, you set the 3D slider to zero, but it's up to the game deciding what to do out of that rendering-wise. The game can

a) reduce the distance between the "virtual cameras" to almost zero, rasterizing two very similar images for antialiasing. I suppose that's what RE does, unless it's more akin to case (b). In this case, setting the slider to zero won't save you GPU "cycles", nor battery power.

b) change the rendering pipeline to achieve different video effects, or a better framerate. There was for example a rumour that DoA would work at 30fps with 3D enabled, at 60fps with 3D disabled. In this case the 2D rendering mode can be as much GPU intensive as the 3D one, or even more.

c) really care for your battery power, switch to a less intensive mode where the GPUs just render one image and use it for both eyes, with a reduced consumption for the GPU part.

Still, the energy consumption by the GPUs pales when compared to the screen backlight one. That's what is really going to kill the battery, and the fact that the parallax barriers will intercept half the light doesn't change with the 3D (software) settings.

Which is why there are reports that the battery life isn't really dependant -or depends really very little- on the 3D settings. Now, the screen backlight settings, that's what is really going to make a difference.

I get the reasoning Galaki, but I feel like that is kind of a copout.  Previous handhelds have had better batteries, and the games have been just as good or better than they probably will be on this system.  It just seems like you're trying to make the best of a non-ideal situation.  But like others have said, if you don't use 3D (which again seems like a sucky concession to have to make seeing as it is the basis of the system), the battery will be longer.

I ahev a total daily commute of 4 hours with my new job so the 3DS is pushing it. I'll probably just buy a Kindle instead and read.

People are forgetting that's with wifi enabled... not just 3D -_-' also IGN has been the only one to report "as low as 2.5 hours" just about every other source I've seen said 3.5 to 7 where 3.5 is with wifi on and 7 is wifi/3D off and brightness low.

Also to compare:

 Battery Life
Nintendo DSi: The lowest brightness (9-14 hrs), low brightness (8-12 hours), medium brightness (6-9 hours), high brightness (4-6 hours), highest brightness(3-4 hours)
Nintendo DS Lite: The lowest brightness (15-19 hrs), low brightness (10-15 hours), high brightness (7-11 hours), highest brightness(5-8 hours)

http://kotaku.com/#!5057883/lets-compare-the-ds-lite-and-the-dsi

3 - 6 hours for the PSP with wifi disabled and 2 - 2.5 with it enabled 

http://www.gamesnsounds4u.com/bv01239.gif

This is all for some perspective since people seem to be making a big deal out of it

You've obviously never played Pokemon. I'd literally have my Game boy on for like six to eight hours straight during the Yellow and Gold era. I was going through AA's like a chain smoker goes through Marboros.