A Black Falcon
Member
Real battery life details.
Meaning, probably:
3D games are awesome, so it'll probably be worth the big battery life hit adding 3D to this system caused, but it's definitely sad to see Nintendo abandon good battery life in handhelds like this. 3-5 hours isn't much... we need battery technology advances, badly.
Source: http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interview.html#/how-nintendo-3ds-made/1/0Umezu: As mentioned earlier, what uses the most power in a handheld gaming device is the LCD backlight, and making one screen 3D presented the problem of even more power used by the backlight. The power save mode uses a technology called active backlight. It precisely controls the brightness of the backlight according to the brightness of the screen being displayed. When the screen as a whole is dark, the backlight itself gets darker, which saves power.
Iwata: In principle, it may not be much use in a game with lots of bright screens, but if you set the backlight to bright, the more darker screens there are in a game, the greater the effect of the power save mode.
Umezu: Right. But you can't say exactly how much of an effect the power save mode is having on game processing because of the various factors that influence power use, such as how constantly the SoC is running, whether you're using the camera or wireless, and how loud the volume is set.
Iwata: Maybe you can't be exact, but how about an approximation?
Umezu: We announced the other day that the battery duration for playing Nintendo 3DS games on it is about three to five hours. When I measured it by playing several Nintendo games, with the backlight set to the brightest level and the power save mode turned off, battery duration was about three hours. But if you use the power save mode under the same conditions, it gets about 10-20% longer. And if you set the backlight to the darkest setting, the battery lasts five hours, but the power save mode makes less of a difference then.
Iwata: In other words, the brightness of the backlight has the greatest effect on battery duration.
Umezu: Right. 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.
Iwata: Yes, 3D is a battle against power use. How about wireless use? Some players may be worried about that.
Umezu: In StreetPass mode, the system isn't always communicating, so there isn't much of a drain on the battery, but games that communicate a lot through local play and online playwith the backlight set to highhave an over 10% effect on the battery.
Iwata: So it will be necessary for this system to be charged more often than for the previous systems. For that reason, we include a special charging cradle. We recommend that when players get home, they put their system there.
Meaning, probably:
Nuclear Muffin said:Reposted from the Iwata Asks thread:
So, we know how power save works now (it's basically the same as dynamic contrast on LCD TVs) and Streetpass isn't constantly communicating. We can roughly guess the battery life.
3D: 3-5 hours (4.2 hours with WiFi on constantly) (Highest Brightness is 4 hours with power save on)
2D: 8 hours (6.5 hours with WiFi on constantly)
Not as good as I was hoping for to be honest. I weep for the PSP 2!
3D games are awesome, so it'll probably be worth the big battery life hit adding 3D to this system caused, but it's definitely sad to see Nintendo abandon good battery life in handhelds like this. 3-5 hours isn't much... we need battery technology advances, badly.