A single factor that can be remedied via 3rd party battery replacements is not as dire as the factors that plagued the DS and DS Lite.   I'm not making light of the short battery life of the 3DS, simply that comapring it to the whole of the problems on the DS and DS Lite are not justified.

Actually, I think it is justified, based on the fact that battery life has been a major issue in just about every handheld's success. Not claiming it's the only factor, but it's something that can't be ignored or marginalized.

And relying on third parties to fix the problem didn't help the PSP get over its battery life image.

About the time that I buy the 3DS.

Simply put, it's not enough to warrant a new SKU by itself.

2012: New Nintendo 3DS Lite....now wiith longer lasting battery.  Only $249.99

Do you see that working well?  I don't.

I think could be 2013. the good question will be what they will redesign appart the battery life?

For me appart that, everything else is fine in my 3DS. Actually if they make it smaller or thiner, it will be hard to carry once open.

Or maybe they can had better cameras down the road with 2 camera inside for 3D video chat. The other option could be that the revision is a 3DS XL.

For all the people saying that the battery is a reason for a revision, but i'm sure nintendo (or some other third party) could just make a battery replacement and save so much more money

Lower price would be another selling point though. And they might even have a price cut before, the way the DS did befor the Lite.

But that's nothing to gauge when or if a new SKU is even warranted.   

Besides, that was just a $20 price cut.  AND the DSi ended up with a $20 price tag higher than the actual DS launch price almost 5 years after launch.   I'm not suggesting they won't ever bring down the 3DS price but with historic precedence to work with, it's not a very stable metric to work with in terms of SKU speculation.

I would say 2013 or 2014 depending on how well the 3DS sells. There are things that can be fixed with 3DS so it's not like they have no reasons not to. A few examples; touch screen needs to be back to DSi size, battery life needs improving, weight could be reduced, it needs some on-board memory (preferably several GB's) so you don't need an SD Card for everything, camera's need a slightly higher resolution and a zoom function and the 3D screen needs to be improved upon. They could also add a second motion sensor so the 3D effect could move with the system so you don't lose the sweet spot (I saw this done with an app on the iPhone/iPad, something i anyway).

They use the SD card as onboard memory now.  This works much better than onboard memory in that it's upgradable and transferable to other devices.

Camera resolution only needs to match that of the screens.   It's just a game system and not meant to replace your $150  12 mp point and shoot.

How exactly does the zoom function and parallex barrier screen need to be improved upon?   They both work just fine as far as I've seen.

How can you have seen that work on a system that doesn't have a parallax barrier screen to begin with?  The 3DS already has an accelerometer and a gyroscope built in.  You don't need another motion detecting sensor to accurately detect motion at all angles, speeds and accelerations.  And the cameras themsellves can even be used for motion tracking as evidenced by that 3D DSiWare game Rittai Kakushi E Atta Koreda.