DSi and batterylife

[divx118]

The birthday of my son is coming up and he wants a Nintendo DS. A DS I can buy here (Netherlands) for 120-130 euros, but for 169 euro I can buy a DSi. So I want him to buy a DSi, because of the browser, cams, SDcard slot and the slightly bigger screens. What I am concerned about is however the battery life. Is it that much worse then a DS. Does anyone here have experience with it?

Thanks,

Maurice

[mitchelln]

One thing you should be aware of with the DSi is that Nintendo have introduced region locking with it. Games bought in the UK, for example, will not work on a Netherlands DSi.

This may not be a problem for you of course!

[divx118]

One thing you should be aware of with the DSi is that Nintendo have introduced region locking with it. Games bought in the UK, for example, will not work on a Netherlands DSi.

This may not be a problem for you of course!

I am aware of that, but it will not be a problem !

Maurice

[divx118]

I ordered the DSi and received it today.
My first biggest surprise was what 17% bigger screensize can make a huge difference atleast IMO. I am charging it now and am going to play around with it later this evening .
For the battery, I looked at what the price was for a spare. It is only around 9 euros, so if the battery life isn't enough I will get me a spare. So I can exchange them if one is empty.

Maurice

[divx118]

The DSi works great.
The batterylife is ok, if you leave the wifi enabled you can still play with it for about 4 hours.
I downloaded "Asphalt 4: Elite Racing" from the DSi ware shop. (You get a 1000 points if you register the DSi) The speed of the game is much better then comparable games for the DS. The faster CPU is for sure an improvement.
If you use regular DS games the CPU will run on the old DS speed.
The browser is OK, it is the opera browser like in the archos and wii. The loading of big pages can be a bit long, but for checking mail it works really well. Unfortunatly no flash support.
The webcams are nice to play with, but with 0.3 Megapixel it is a step back. For the small screens on the DSi it is however good enough.
Hopefully the homebrew scene (don't confuse this with piracy ) will take off. There is already some progress from the guys who hacked the Wii for installing a homebrew channel on that. Take a look here http://hackmii.com/2009/07/dsi-mode-homebrew-anyone/
Offcourse these are only the first steps and it will take a long time before there is anything like a homebrew channel for the DSi. For the Wii it almost took 3 years.

Maurice

If the last lines are against the forum rules, please tell me and I edit them out.