I love the 3DS more than my Vita personally. Nintendo's handhelds tend to have very strong libraries with plenty of variety.

And I personally think the XL is a huge improvement. I have no problems with the speaker quality. Yes, the screens are kinda bad if you come away from something like the Vita's OLED, but it's not THAT bad. The XL is actually a pretty good fit for my hands. The OG 3DS was hard to use though.

I love both handhelds, but 3DS is fine as purely a gaming handheld. It's meant for fun gaming. It does have media apps like Hulu+, Netflix, and YouTube, but that's not it's focus.

I do agree with a lot of your points, though. Nintendo is way behind on their store and their account system. That's why I never link a card with them. I just enter it every time I want to get something. I didn't know they had such a small password.