Seriously, seeing now I jumped the shark about that glasshouse thing, for that I am sorry.

But my point is, most batteries take that long to charge, so you (we) just have to accept it - or what can we do, daydream about our 20 hour battery life that could be recharged in 30 seconds of the gameboy?

Sucks, but that's what we have.

That shouldnt be a problem for me, no complaints here

enough for me, and you can charge it while you play

why so much complaints?
*reads their usernames*
oh right, ok, life goes on

I don't understand. Can you take the batteries out and charge them separately, or does the whole thing have to be charged at once?

I do the former with my Wii-mote and it works really well. Two sets of rechargable batteries, just rotate them. I rotate between two PS3 controllers as well (when one is being used, the other is charging), but I don't think I'd be able to afford two Wii-U gamepads (can you even get two?), unless they drop in price by the time I get the console.

No USB play-n-charge kit is unacceptable, Nintendo.. especially with the low battery life and high ratio of charge time to battery life.... sigh...

I hope you can plug-n-play with an AC adapter, at least.

I was laughing at the battery developers thing, not even touching that glasshouse comment.

 I can daydream that Nintendo would be willing to tighten their profit margin to accomodate a better gaming experience on their console!

And that handheld (and smartphone too since we're on the subject) manufacturers were willing to put more money into better batteries. 

If it's like the DS/3DS (which looks like it is) it's quite easy to replace the battery, but not practical, you need a screwdriver. Other than that it's like a cell phone battery.

But the real problem here is where to recharge the battery outside the gamepad, as there's no especific charger for it, so yeah, two gamepads are needed, which is not really a good solution. Maybe down the line there'll be a battery pack, that comes with a charger.

You must plug the AC adapter into the controller and charge everything at once.  The batteries were not designed to be recharged externally.  A couple of people have mentioned 3rd parties creating larger capacity batteries, but those will also have to be charged in the same way.  And the only downside to the larger capacity batteries is that they will most likely cause the back of the Game Pad (where the battery cover is located) to stick out a bit.  This may not be an issue, though, depending on how someone's hands fit the controller.

Not a problem for me, but I can understand why this might bother some people, but like other users said, third parties will just make a larger battery life and if you don't like that just play with a pro controller.

Yeah, I feel pity for the poor anonymous battery makers (now I'm picturing them funny too). They probably make the best ones they can - but then here come's apple and doubles the power of their processor and resolution of the screen! They must all go... "damn! back to the lab!"

The problem is this trend will continue for a long time, imo.