DSi Factoids

Technical details dished out by Nintendo regarding the next DS handheld. 

Last night in Tokyo and this morning in San Francisco, Nintendo revealed the next handheld system from the company: an updated Nintendo DS called the DSi. This handheld, to be released next month in Japan, upgrades the current platform with a unit featuring a smaller footprint, larger screens, an SD card slot, built-in browser, and dual digital cameras. 

Nintendo engineers shaved a few millimeters off to make the DSi slightly thinner, but it's a bit longer and wider: when closed, the DSi is 137.0mm wide by 74.9mm long, and 18.9 mm thick. The current DS Lite is 133.0 mm wide, 73.9mm long, and 21.5mm thick. With the DSi, you'll be getting a longer stylus: 92mm long vs. the DS Lite's stylus at 87.5mm. 

While both the Nintendo DS Lite and the DSi systems share identical LCD technologies for their displays, the DSi screens are 3.25 inches diagonal, compared to the DS Lite's 3.0 inches. The DSi system will have five brightness settings where the DS Lite featured four. 

The DSi will have its own unique AC adapter and will not share the same battery pack as the DS Lite handheld. But with all the extras the DSi offers, the battery life isn't quite up to the same standards as the DS Lite. At the lowest brightness setting, the DSi lasts 9 to 14 hours on a single charge depending on a variety of factors like Wi-Fi use. This doesn't quite meet the DS Lite's energy usage, at least according to Nintendo numbers where the current system lasts between 15 and 19 hours on a single charge. At the highest brightness, the usage of the DSi drops to 3 to 4 hours on a charge, compared to DS Lite at 5 to 8 hours. 

According to the spec sheet, even though the DSi won't play Game Boy Advance games due to the lack of GBA slot, it will play games written specifically for the DSi as well as current DS games. It is unclear whether there will be exclusive DSi packaging for games that are made only with the DSi and its unique functions in mind. 

The DSi will ship in Japan on November 1st 2008 for 18,900. Nintendo of America has only offered a "2009" release window for our territory.