if it got 8 hrs, that'd do me by great for those long flights/journeys.

That is great news!

I wonder if the boost in battery life is coming from Nintendo adding a larger battery into the Joycon sides. From a design POV, if you needed to boost the battery life, that would be the best way to do it.

You keep as much space in the central unit open for air flow to keep the system cool.

Just buy a $8 USB-USB C cable. Most planes these days have a USB charging port, you could play for 12 hours straight or whatever if you wanted to that way. 

5 hours of non stop gaming would be great. I am hoping to be able to stream music over 4G to a Bluetooth headset or Speaker for 8 hours a day, while being able to recieve calls and text, and have enough juice to game during the 1 hour of breaks I get. If I can do that everyday, and only have to plug in when I hit the car for the drive home then I will be more than happy.

The 12th of January can't come soon enough. I hope I can finally be rid of these P.O.S. Me Too ios and android slabs once and for all.

Just have thats max for New 3DS XL, most likely on lowest brightness settings and without WiFi connection.

I don't see it doing calls and texts along with wireless music streams tbh. I think Nintendo want it to be a hyrbid gaming console. Not a tablet that already exists for Skype and music.

So final dev kits not being changed means Tegra X1 power correct?

I'm sure they will sell batteries with extra power sepparately, to try and reduce costs on the base product. But if it has a regular AC adapter, I suppose 4-5h of battery might not be as bad as we thought, if we can just connect it to any plug.

I'm expecting no more than 4-5 hours from the Switch tablet when undocked.
If they can manage to get 8 hours out of it while keeping the price to that rumored $250-300 range, that'd be fantastic!