The highly anticipated Nintendo 3DS handheld gaming device is set to launch in the US in less than a week, but the system's impressive new feature set, much of which revolves around the device's portability, is currently being overshadowed by complaints of a short battery life that hinders users from experiencing those features for more than a few hours at a time without having to plug it in.
Nintendo officially estimates the battery life of the 3DS to max out between 3 to 5 hours of consistent 3D play, and a slightly longer duration on 5 to 8 hours when playing DS games on the device. However, even the latter seems to pale when you consider the 10+ hour game play duration that the DS Lite battery offered.
Much of the rapid power-consumption issue that will be experienced by 3DS owners is due to the energy required to render 3D images on the top LCD of the device.
"[The 3DS] has to deliver separate images to the left and right eyes. Which means that in 3D the amount of light delivered to each eye is halved," 3DS system designer Ryuji Umezu said in a recent interview. "In order to make it look just as bright as usual, you have to increase the brightness of the backlight, which increases the power used by even more."
"What's more, with the backlight set as high as it will go, battery life changes about 25% according to whether you're playing in 2D or 3D," Umezu added.
Nintendo has decided to try to soften the blow of reduced battery life from previous DS generations by offering a convenient charging cradle which is included with the purchase of a new 3DS. Don't expect the recharging process to be a quick one, however. The official recharge time that Nintendo quotes for the device is 3 hours and 30 minutes, which means that you'll have to have device plugged in nearly as much as you'll be playing it wirelessly.
While the features of the 3DS are still impressive, the need to plug in so frequently will undoubtedly get old quickly. We are, after all, a generation of consumers that have been spoiled by ever-increasing duration on notebook computers and devices like the iPad, which sometimes goes days without needing a charging cradle.
