No 3G is certainly no reason to offload online functions to a smartphone. The non-3G Vita does that just fine on the same device. Now it's your turn to explain why a 2012 mobile device has a more complete feature set than a 2017 mobile device.

Could you play your Vita online outside? Didn't know that. Certainly forgot how Sony got sued for it, and lost.

I'm getting real tired of the "its 2017" argument, so much so that it is getting juvenile and the only outcome is people wanting to say that Nintendo is incompetent. It should be pretty obvious and logical why they did what they did. First, it is their companion app. They have been moving to mobile for some time now. Second, almost everyone has a smartphone in 2017. Unburdening the Switch itself (which is bound to wifi anyway) from those features should be pretty obvious. Lastly, other than voice chat being cumbersome, whats the big effing deal? Battery life? Having to pick up your phone?

Sounds cool, but I don't have a phone. :(

Yep, agreed. I like the "companion app" idea for games like Splatoon 2. Buying some gear while you're away, and check some stats is nice. But voice chat is not something you can lock under a mobile app. I don't use it a lot, but it's really bothersome.

Nintendo is incompetent when it comes to this. Nothing makes sense. I'll give you the argument that it helps when people are outside. But than why isn't it built into the system too. So when people who don't use it outside, don't do this dumb shit. If the system can't handle any of this for whatever reason. Than guess what. Nintendo is incompetent in software/hardware design. This is all moot. If I'm gonna use my phone. I might as well just facetime/whatsapp/discord/skype/1 million other programs my friend and skip the middleman.

Yeah, i'm done responding to anyone this thread. Juvenile crap like this makes me jaded.

I can play with my Vita outside thanks to Smartphone WLAN tethering. Why can't the Switch do exactly that? Without the need to constantly pick up your phone to look at it. Why do I have to use two devices for something that every other device can do on its own? How is that serving the experience? Why is the Switch in functionality so much inferior than a $100 handheld from 2012?

I'm not saying Nintendo is incompetent. I'm saying they're incredibly greedy. Being incompetent is the nicer alternative.

Yeah sure. You don't give any realistic reason why this is a good option. You just insult people. If it's battery drain. The normal local multiplayer drains the battery the same too. If it's a design limitation. Then Nintendo failed to care for basic stuff. This only helps a few people that can't make their phones act as a hotspots. Even than. If they have public wi-fi that would work fine. So again why? If you like playing with a set amount of online only friends. You are most likley going to be in a discord channel. I'm not even arguing for it to not exist. This would help that small niche. Just have it on the system too and be done with it.  

I think it'll be so much fun when you're playing a competitive match and suddenly someone calls and you lose the voice chat for a while XD.

I don't really see a single reason why this voice chat implementation is good in any way.

It's good because thanks to the offloading a few games more can run at 60fps in portable mode.