Will battery life in handhelds just suck from now on?

We currently have a solid idea of the battery life of all three current handhelds. The Vita tops out at approximately 5 hours on regular settings, and its heads and sboulder above the 3DS and iPhone.

Its simple to see why. Newer handhelds will require more and more power to be impressive, but advances in batteries are far less common.

So are we likely to see a major advancement in battery power in the next decade or so? Or are we unlikely to ever have good battery life in our handhelds again?

For the 3DS at least there are third party batteries that can hold more charge, and that's not even getting into the ones that stick out the back of the console. Also 3DS-wise you can get about ten hours of battery with everything on minimum, and there are car chargers for systems.

I'm assuming that, since most people are perfectly fine with that amount of time, batteries will only advance just enough to keep the cap at 5 hours. I'd presume that portable chargers like that universal one that looks like wristwatch, and extended battery packs like those 3rd party ones for the 3DS will continue to be available for the people who want more.

It doesn't sound all that bad. Generally, if you're going to be taking a long trip without access to a wall plug, it's gonna be on a car ride or something, and there's always the option of car adapters.

The worst-case scenario is probably an especially long plane ride, where the plane doesn't have plugs of any sort for its passengers.

Personally, I'd be satisfied if the entire electronics industry froze performance where it is and spent the next 3 years on stuff like this.

I want longer battery life.

So I can walk around outside longer while playing Dissy.

The Vita is suppose to have a really good battery life.

...didn't the OP say it only has five hours at normal settings?

3DS is because Nintendo want to cut cost...Vita is because it just use that much juice...

Nintendo could just use better battery...Vita will really need some new battery type to be created or something...

edited 27th Dec '11 7:15:21 PM by onyhow

3DS isn't just because Nintendo wants to cut costs. It's because a longer battery life isn't really necessary most of the time and to add more battery would increase the price of the system by quite a bit, and considering that it's starting price was already high enough to reduce sales that wouldn't have been good.

Comparatively. Its good for this gen, not so much by the standards of previous.

Apparently, the Vita will have an optional external battery that will max out at, say, 10 hours.

Which makes me wonder why it wasn't built into the console from the beginning.

edited 27th Dec '11 7:32:39 PM by MrW

Because making the console technically better doesn't matter if the extra 25 in list price kills its sales. That is part of the balance the marketers have to always consider.

For the 3DS, it's also because there isn't any free space to cram in a larger battery in. The best you can do is to disable what you don't need. Usually, disabling 3D and Wi-Fi should do wonders to the battery life - for example, brightness 3 can usually go from 4-5 hours to somewhere between 5-8, depending on what you are doing.

For the Vita, well, it just uses so much power to power it, so it had to have a large battery just to have such figures. It's the problem of battery tech not advancing fast enough - there are advancements in battery capacity AND power efficiency, but things still drain too much power when you increase its performance.