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Laura Dale: NX battery 3 hours max on dev kit, dock improves performance, touchscreen

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jonno394

Member
I just watched the question and I only ever see a plug in the dock itself. I was wondering the same thing. I wonder if you can charge it outside of the dock.

There looks to be a mini usb cable on the Screen itself. Personally imo it makes no sense to only be able to charge via the dock so I can't see any reason why there'd be no alternative charging.
 

Hermii

Member
I think the dock is pretty large just to be a glorified hdmi out/ charging station. Maybe there is extra cooling in it, maybe the scaler is located in the dock or maybe something else.
 

Behlel

Member
I think the dock is pretty large just to be a glorified hdmi out/ charging station. Maybe there is extra cooling in it, maybe the scaler is located in the dock or maybe something else.
Is karge because yiu have to fit safely the console inside.
 

MDave

Member
If placing the Switch in the dock improves performance because it's connected to a power source, would it also improve performance if I were to take it out and about connected to a portable battery bank? I hope so. I have a fear that devs won't prioritise for undocked mode, leading to horrible frame pacing or just plain lower frame rates. Hopefully lowering the resolution to 720p is all that needs to be done, and frame rate performance is the same as docked. I don't need to carry a battery pack around then.
 

EDarkness

Member
While not their style, I think it would cost very little extra to implement. You need no extra processing power and just a slightly more modern port it would be stupid not to do it. Imagine botw and Mario switch in 1080p hdr mode.

I'm of the belief that games will be 1080p when connected to the TV. Whatever power they need to get that done is most likely what they're targeting for the system as a whole. After that, when not connected, then I would imagine it'll be 720p or some variant of that. Without knowing what their standards are, it'll be difficult to know if they have a mandate on what resolutions should be in each configuration. I imagine they want it to be as close to the TV version as possible, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some compromises made to facilitate that. Afterall, they've been pretty adamant that this is a home console and so anything extra is just that.
 

Xhaner5

Neo Member
About the battery time.... this looks like an usb type c port to me in the bottom of the Switch console:

Even if the dock doesn't have processing to it to require a special hw-sync connector, USB 2.0 is nowhere near the requirements it would need to passthrough power, 2 USBs and HDMI.

So we can conclude that's some kind of a puppet demo unit or that the footage is actually purposelly edited.
 
It does make me wonder about the Zelda footage. It was certainly added in post, but why add in post a lower fps? Truth in advertising?

I didn't see the standard "screen images simulated" anywhere in the trailer.

I think it was just to make it look more "realistic" as in people expect a videogame to not run so fluidly, otherwise the video would looked obviously doctored, ironically.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
When I asked Emily about it a few weeks ago, she said it would be a handheld with active cooling, meaning the fan is in the tablet.

Ah, interesting. I would imagine it would still spin at different speeds between mobile and docked, especially as devs said it was performing better docked.
 

2+2=5

The Amiga Brotherhood
If 3 hours were constant it wouldn't have been really that bad, the problem is that if 3 hours are the max then the average and the minimum are less than 3 hours, also with time and use batteries lose power so the duration will slowly but constantly shorten.
 
If placing the Switch in the dock improves performance because it's connected to a power source, would it also improve performance if I were to take it out and about connected to a portable battery bank? I hope so. I have a fear that devs won't prioritise for undocked mode, leading to horrible frame pacing or just plain lower frame rates. Hopefully lowering the resolution to 720p is all that needs to be done, and frame rate performance is the same as docked. I don't need to carry a battery pack around then.

No. The leading theory is that the dock has a fan or the handheld itself has a fan and that fan will only start spinning when the handheld is docked. Another possibility would be that the handheld can use more power while in the dock because its display will be off.
 

i-Jest

Member
How...? Without the second screen?

I'm sure that huge ass screen can do the job of two. I mean it looks big enough, but I don't know the actual dimensions. If not then the TV screen will have to do. However, if it can't be done, it can't be done. It would be neat if I could play a pokemon game on the big screen again. That pokemon stadium acessory was an amazing thing.
 
You're not gonna get more powerful hardware from the dock, you guys. Might as well give up on the idea now while you can. Giving the system more power, that's not just an adjustment to the clock, while docked would defeat the entire purpose of the Switch.

EDIT: Specified that I meant hardware and not just a change to a clock!

Regardless of what you meant your comment still makes no sense. The whole "point" of the Switch is to allow you to continue your game on the go or on a big screen. Nothing about scalable hardware prevents that. If you play a Steam game on a laptop, then play the same game on a gaming PC, what's the issue? It's the same thing
 

oti

Banned
I'm guessing 3 hours max with medium brightness settings and probably 4 hours with low brightness settings and 5 with a low power mode setting for the screen. Heck even then 3 hours is more than enough for me

Low brightness would be unplayable outside though.
 

Mr Swine

Banned
If NS has a built in fan, won't that accumulate a lot of dust over the years? Will NS have a feature to blow out unwanted dust like certain laptops can do?
 

Celeras

Banned
I don't understand how 3 hours can be considered even remotely acceptable. Devices like the Edge7, packing at least double the resolution of whatever the Switch will be (assuming 1080p... but if they did something ridiculous like 720p then we're talking quadruple), can easily get 10 hours SOT on a single charge. And network signal is the biggest culprit regarding mobile battery life, something the Switch wouldn't even have to worry about.
 

Ghost

Chili Con Carnage!
To be honest, 3 hours for a game like Zelda even at 720p in a device that size is not too terrible, try playing anything decent looking on your phone and you'll be lucky to get half that.

I'm sure it will do much better at lower fidelity experiences, and as long as it charges by USB a lot of the battery concerns can be forgiven (for me at least).
 
...can easily get 10 hours SOT on a single charge. And network signal is the biggest culprit regarding mobile battery life, something the Switch wouldn't even have to worry about.

Have you tried gaming intensive 3D games on a mobile device?

You're dead within the hour.

Network signal is not the biggest culprit.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I don't understand how 3 hours can be considered even remotely acceptable. Devices like the Edge7, packing at least double the resolution of whatever the Switch will be (assuming 1080p... but if they did something ridiculous like 720p then we're talking quadruple), can easily get 10 hours SOT on a single charge. And network signal is the biggest culprit regarding mobile battery life, something the Switch wouldn't even have to worry about.

Not even touching how much Edge7 costs, but try play a game that is at least a bit graphically intensive and see how much time the battery holds then.
 

KrawlMan

Member
Not even touching how much Edge7 costs, but try play a game that is at least a bit graphically intensive and see how much time the battery holds then.

Yeah, pretty sure phone charge will plummet when playing something demanding, and not your average cookie clicker.

If I get 3 hours of visually intense gaming out of one charge I'll be pleased.
 
So I'm thinking the dock will house s hardware upscaler and the tablet will get a bump from 720p to 900p when docked due to onboard SoC them running at faster clock, and then the dock up reses to 1080
 

Scoobie

Member
So I'm thinking the dock will house s hardware upscaler and the tablet will get a bump from 720p to 900p when docked due to onboard SoC them running at faster clock, and then the dock up reses to 1080

The handheld could also have a large SOC, with some processing units turned off when undocked, since it will only need to support 720p.

When docked, extra processing units enabled, enabling 1080p - maybe with some clock increase and active cooling solution (dock push air through the unit??)
 

Novocaine

Member
As long as I can plug the screen part in to a wall socket and sit on the couch and play Animal Crossing I'll survive. Most of the time it will be used on the television.
 

-MB-

Member
Since when is devkit battery life indicative of a retail unit one? Those devkits aren't meant for consumer user cases and I doubt Nintendo would care to put in a big battery for those.
Let's wait for actual retail models to gauge battery life before grabbing our virtual pitchforks again.
 
My expensive phone lasts more when I play movies and maybe angry birds on it than a Switch devkit playing an Ubisoft console game. What a rip, unacceptable. Come on Nintendo.
 
Since when is devkit battery life indicative of a retail unit one?
Those devkits aren't meant for consumer user cases and I doubt Nintendo would care to put in a big battery for those.
If anything, I'd have looked at it the other way. Why penny pinch on batteries for a small number of units to be used by developers? If the design of the base unit in regards to a certain volume being allocated for the battery remains the same, they probably just run into a physical limit easily. Though if I recall the Wii U Gamepad's stock battery didn't take all the volume, for cost and weight purposes?
 
How long do N3DS and Vita batteries last?

The Vita and 3DS had roughly the same battery life of 3-5 hours, though the Vitta's standby battery life was superior. XL had another hour or two.

New 3DS/XL and the Vita Revision basically added an extra hour to their respective battery.
 

alcabcucu

Member
Thanks for your answer. I have a N3DS and I've never cared to check its battery life.

So all in all, Switch batteries will last as much as PSVita and 3DS did back in the day. Not a good thing, but neither should be a surprise.
 
I don't understand how 3 hours can be considered even remotely acceptable. Devices like the Edge7, packing at least double the resolution of whatever the Switch will be (assuming 1080p... but if they did something ridiculous like 720p then we're talking quadruple), can easily get 10 hours SOT on a single charge. And network signal is the biggest culprit regarding mobile battery life, something the Switch wouldn't even have to worry about.

Lmao.
 
Thanks for your answer. I have a N3DS and I've never cared to check its battery life.

So all in all, Switch batteries will last as much as PSVita and 3DS did back in the day. Not a good thing, but neither should be a surprise.

Dev kit. Don't take this as the final say on how the console will be in its final form.
 

Xhaner5

Neo Member
Emily Rodgers said active cooled, what I wonder is if the fan is in the tablet or the dock.

Maybe the dock is so fat because it has a fan in it, blowing air in the bottom vent of the Switch and up out the top. While mobile the seemingly large heatsink if it goes from top to bottom would provide decent passive transfer to air being open on both sides, and while docked the docks fan would let it run at full clock speeds.

If all that is right it's remarkably close to what I wanted and envisioned back when the NX was rumoured to be a tablet. A thickish tablet with a pass through heatsink that would be cooled on the dock.

Yep, I thought of that as well, everything mobile tries to make the outside case as thin as possible, even 3.5 mm headphone jacks are many times rounded around because the case is even thinner than the jack, but in the dock case, you can see how much space is there between the USB ports, if it's all empy why would they need it that big.

We can conclude something, if there is a SCD of any kind, there has to be a special hw link connector on the bottom of the Switch tablet, along with HDMI and USBs

Even if you have to buy SCD as a separate brick, it will need that special connector, so it has to be hiding somewhere, it's not going to be USB, the connector would need to allow many many GB/s of throughput and no USB is capable of that.

Now whether dock only has cooling and no SCD could be the case as well, but yeah the cooling channel would then be routed underneath the switch, that would be intake, and the exhaust on the top, makes sense and it's the only possible choice, the sides can't have any holes they are for controllers to snap on to, the bottom is all covered up, so the Dock has to have an opening inside it's hangar. okay it could be on the back side where the labels are it may not need to be on the bottom.

Some people even said oh if the dock will make Switch to upclock it's hardware that will split community, hah I mean that's the point, I'm not interested in a mobile console, if the dock doesn'thave SCD I'm not buying the console, since even if it's upclocked it won't get near PS4, upclocking won't magically increase RAM size or Caches, so I'm not sure why are some of the mobile people so selfish they want it all for themselfs, it's meant to be a hybrid that's why it's called Switch.

I don't think we should expect anything other than a resolution boost for the TV, if the developers have it programmed from the start(depending on the game).

I agree becuase this is nintendo we know since Wii, but I am totally open that I'm biased a bit and hope it has a SCD, otherwise it's a hard sell for me and other hardcore old cats, but as I get older I need more challenge, I hope first parties won't be so easy it's getting ridicolously too easy, Retro Studios needs to make it harder whatever they're doing, not for the initial game, but I always loved the Hard Mode in Metroid Prime, I hope with better HW they can put Nightmare mode ontop with more enemies I'd so much love to see that, infact if we get a metroid prime remake with remastered audio and textures to heat everybody up before the next big thing i'd be sold.

And you see I don't talk much about battery, but I can relate, I hope you guys get extra external battery attachements quickly after it goes to sale, I have Samsung Galaxy S5 already I only need the camera for misc stuff otherwise I don't need any other mobile devices since I play only a few games on the PC as well.


She was making enquiries on whether you can use an external gpu via USB C.

She was also trying to link whether switching to external graphics would cause a delay the same way the Switch has a delay when being docked. I guess ultimately trying to insinuate that the dock has an external gpu that connects via USB C, and when you dock the Switch it has a brief delay while switching to the external gpu.

She really needs to stop with that.

Any "delay" when docking is likely just the normal hdmi handshake time when connecting a device and changing resolution.

I'm confident that Nintendo only has one Nvidia SoC on the system, that has different power states and clock frequencies. Any perceived performance difference when portable is down to the SoC downclocking. Although again I'm not necessarily convinced of visible performance differences in games, a game like Mario Kart wil run at 60fps regardless, the only difference in my mind will be resolution. I'm doubtful games will have better AA, textures etc when docked.

Yes the delay may just be the HDMI negotiation, meanwhile the clocks and hw refresh would be all done silently on the Switch, but it has to wait for HDMI negotiation to figure out what the max specs of the TV are so the HW adjusts it's output signal.

Yes, no way, even if there is no SOC on the Dock, only RAM, it would need a super fast special link.


The positive thing with the Switch could be that Nvidia have designed a powerful SoC that wouldn't normally make sense in a portable only device due to the heat and battery considerations, but when docked it wouldn't apply, and then when portable they'd simply reduce the clock frequency to fit inline with a portable device. The other advantage would also be that the Switch is actively cooled, so the SoC could run at an even higher frequency than if it was in a portable only, passively cooled device.

Interesting, that could make sense with the press release announcement of notifying "scalable processor" ... but people get fooled by the word "custom", it's always custom with consoles, it doesn't mean necessairly more powerful.


When I asked Emily about it a few weeks ago, she said it would be a handheld with active cooling, meaning the fan is in the tablet.

I think that's plausible because devices with passive cooling usually don't have output or intake channels like this, they just have ribs or dots on a larger area, seems like a fan could be inside, or wait, it could go again with the other side that it's meant to be as a fan exaust but the fan being in the dock and channeled through there only when docked, like the earlier ideas suggested.


As I said the reason tablets and phones aren't more powerful isn't really because the technology isn't there, it's more down to heat and battery concerns.

While docked those concerns wouldn't apply.

Higher clock speeds when docked is pretty much 99% in my opinion. It makes perfect sense. Battery life or heat isn't a concern at that point.

All I'd say is that doesn't mean "overclocked" though, as that technically means that it would be run beyond manufacturer specifications. It's more that when the device is undocked the SoC is "underclocked"

Yes that's right, John Carmack with his GearVR experiments, i've been listening to his keynotes and tweets, he's always been saying about heat and battery when it comes to GearVR, and of the android OS not allowing him to maximize all the resources, he was trying to put max power and overheat all cores and he had trouble with all the background processes trying to meddle with the VR app and slowing it down, he jokes he wanted Samsung to make a special piece (cheat) of HW command that when activated from GearVR it would throw all the OS system processes and background apps on one underclocked CPU core to get the heck away so he can squeeze more out to get better VR experience ... *evil laugh*

Ofcourse let's remind that people shoudn't use "overclocked" term, that's not right at all, the Switch will run with elevated clocks, or "boosted" clocks, or "Max Performance" mode, or "max power" which will be normal, overclock signifies something done out of bounds of the original intent, in this case the Max Power mode will be intended and ofcourse covered by warranty.


Wii U graphics are fine for me, I don't need this illusive dock to turn Switch into PS4 Pro territory. Just make it all smooth and give me 1080p. That's really all I want out of the dock.

With more room to spare, you don't need to think it in a way of piling up the graphics, but you can have more things happening on the screen, even with Metroid Prime which should be kept true to it's genre, I don't think it would be bad by using up the available power to display all kinds of things in the background, not all on the number of enemies or action, I don't want to turn it into some kind of a SeriousSam esque, but when you get into a big room, the ones were a battle usually breaks out, or one of those where only once in the progression moves out, you could have one big fight with no problem on 1080p@60 - and with boss fights you'd just have more opportunities in spicing up the whole room, the level of detail, all that that goes with metroid prime, you have all kinds of missiles, bombs, lazers, all that counts as objects on scree, I think there's a big fps drop when some of those artillery bombs land and there's a lot of smoke, yes, smoke, steam, fog, a ton of particles, that's a big resource hog. And the view distance, at least not so much in Metroid Prime when it's not meant to be open world and that's not a bad thing in this genre, they would not be forced to always confine the game path with huge rocks on all sides, and things could go on over there, not necessarily player accessible or controllable, but maybe we could see things like the Pirate Frigate crashing, or at least the cutscene of it, and maybe you'd be able to see better from some viewpoint, in MP1 you can only see like one small side of the Frigate. And the whole MP3 intro in space, you don't need to make MP into Starfox, but you can show that cutscene that much better if you have more processing power without turning the game into something else.

In MP3 you have that planet when it's suspended up in the atmosphere, on Elysia, but they did a good job making that with the static background, the whole thing is just 2D image, the dust below and the clouds above, there's no dynamic anything, I'm okay it's not needed for this type of game, but surely it does make it a bit better if they CAN do it. So even if it's not the focus, I rather have gameplay top notch, however, when the gameplay is perfect, all the other things still count because they "add ontop" and that's what raises the whole feel of the game to make it from a great to a legendary status, when all those things come into play, the audio as well, audio's much more important that people think because it's something that plays in the background and if it's not good you'll notice, if it's good you'll just not think about it, and if the bitrate is great it makes it even better, many games skimp on audio quality, because it somehow seems like it's less important.

All these things could be applied when they fit, without dictating the gameplay or affecting the FPA genre.

Super smash bros could turn that into 120FPS haha, for professional tournaments. For example, certainly this is not a joke, the new UHD recommendations like Rec 2020 do have 120p in mind. And hey, the Rec 2020 color space or HDR/WCG is like the best example of what I mean, stuff like that can be applied over the old IPs without affecting their original gameplay feel at all, only improving them, so this is what more GPU room offers.

It ofcourse all depends on the director and the supervisors to really have all the details in check and really not , because with all these extra power, generally speaking, it's easy that developers could get spoiled and just totally change the whole direction, kinda oh see we can do this and that now, and it's kinda a game that get's designed around some kind of a graphical demo, which is not optimal.


Interestingly, that picture should kill any speculation that there's some sort of extra processing hardware in the dock. To support the kind of bandwidth between the dock and the console that a coprocessor or GPU would require you would need some sort of wide, many-pin connector along the bottom of the console, and you can't see anything like that in the picture. USB-C isn't going to cut it.

What is the white bar on the bottom then, it could be a female connector with white color inside of it and you can from that picture only see a tight angle, I can even see the pins if true. Now yes, i'm biased toward a SCD either in Dock or External Sold Separately, but it does kinda look like a barcode as well, so not sure, the image is not high-rez enough.

But come on people, who says this is the final look, the WiiU Gamepad also changed quite noticably, buttons moved, curves, geometry, sticks, etc.



Laura asked on twitter how external Graphic Cards work with USB-C on a pc, so Switch could really use USB-C or she working on something different.

Look, people, there is no way USB Type-C is used, it's not even USB3, it would have to look like this:

6e7QLhr.jpg


It's not enough even for just HDMI output even at max, not even mentioning input passthrou - The USB-C is used for charging and to connect devices, extra battery packs, possibly some kind of pairing if that doesn't already work wirelessly.



Emily Rodgers said active cooled, what I wonder is if the fan is in the tablet or the dock.

Maybe the dock is so fat because it has a fan in it, blowing air in the bottom vent of the Switch and up out the top. While mobile the seemingly large heatsink if it goes from top to bottom would provide decent passive transfer to air being open on both sides, and while docked the docks fan would let it run at full clock speeds.

If all that is right it's remarkably close to what I wanted and envisioned back when the NX was rumoured to be a tablet. A thickish tablet with a pass through heatsink that would be cooled on the dock.

Those 2 wide holes could be the ventilation channels, simply placed on the back side vs on the bottom side as I originally speculated, but they don't look like holes, it probably covered by an anti-dust mesh (long post already so I cut your image out)

EDIT1:

The IR pointer thing is probably real (but anything "real" in such situations we need to read as 99%) I was about to make the suggestion at some point but forgot.

http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/...ight-joy-con-offers-ir-pointer-functionality/

EDIT2:

Okay, after all this, I'll share my wildest idea yet, what if the JoyCons sides are modular, or more appriprately, extendable, not the JoyCons it self having a SCD, but that you could buy separately, extra "JoyCon shaped" Expansion units that you would attach on the sides when you don't need the JoyCons since you're docked, and you could buy ones with more RAM for example or more CPU, but I think for simplicity they may come with a SOC, of 1 ARM CPU with 4 Cores, and let's say 1GB of more RAM and sold for 30 dollars for example, so the SCD connector could be hidden in there where the JoyCon attachments are, but more deeper inside the rails, but the JoyCons wouldn't use that extra high-speed bus, they would just use their own input connector also in there that we can't see.

We could be in for those Expansion pack & Rumble Pack times again. The joycons could actually be purely wireless without needing the input connector, but im not sure how well will that go with hardcore tournaments if the lag issue isn't fully optimized. The Pro controllers could have an option to be wired through their USBC and to the Dock external USB port.
 

Xhaner5

Neo Member
So that's what that is, right ? may not be nothing new but I just didn't saw it mentioned anywhere.

jOSoIrh.jpg


If they're not for BC and not for some "you can still use old controllers" , they could be for JoyCons wired tethering for devs, which means JoyCons are wireless which we know already, but are they purely wireless when attached to the Switch as well, not sure.
 

830920

Member
Better battery life than I expected to be honest. Not sure why anyone assumed anything more given its size and probably somewhat respectable performance.
 

spekkeh

Banned
Yeah, pretty sure phone charge will plummet when playing something demanding, and not your average cookie clicker.

If I get 3 hours of visually intense gaming out of one charge I'll be pleased.
I think playing a Gear VR game, the charge will last you 45 minutes tops, lol.
 

spekkeh

Banned
So that's what that is, right ? may not be nothing new but I just didn't saw it mentioned anywhere.

jOSoIrh.jpg


If they're not for BC, they could be for JoyCons, which means JoyCons are wireless which we know already, but are they purely wireless when attached to the Switch as well, not sure.
Devkit is fake tho
 
I really hope the battery life is not true 3 hours is not great and is using a pro controller like i will likely be doing this would reduce that geatly I sure as hell hope i can buy a charger other than the dock for at work also.

Do we have the dimetions of the device yet?
 
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