I had recently purchased a Nintendo DSi. After being the proud owner or an original G1 DS, two G1 DSlite's (white and black shell) and a G2 DSlite (blackblue shell). Naturally, I opted for the Nintendo DSi. At first, I was impressed, later on, I was more impressed. The one issue that caught my eye was battery life. In all reviews, there were bad marks on battery life. After I had a full charge on my DSi, I found that my battery life was drastically less. I had played for nearly two hours before my warning light lit. I looked at the battery gauge and sure enough, one bar left. I then navigated the system menu and located the WiFi options. I disabled WiFi, performed a reboot and my LED was blue again. I even played for another two hours before the battery emptied. My thoughts, the WiFi is always "on" unless you turn it off unlike the DSlite and DS. I also believe this may be for future services similar to Nintendo24Connect. I have since then seen battery life of up to six hours with mixed WiFi and non-WiFi use. If you are seeing low battery life, why not disable WiFi unless you need it and test your battery life then.

I didnt have too many problems with battery life. I usually turn the brightness settings on low if I want to play longer.

I've find it concerning that Nintendo made these changes to the DSi that makes it more power-hungry, but actually reduced the size of the battery from the DS Lite. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. The DSi is mostly empty space on the inside. They even had to create a separate board for the DPad because the mainboard didn't extend far enough. So why reduce the battery size?

As it happens, the new battery appears to be similar to the original DS Phat battery pack. Perhaps there was a business or architectural reason to go back to those packs. Certainly I get the impression that the new ARMs are lower-powered than the DS Lite predecessors, so maybe Nintendo felt the larger pack unnecessary. But the short-term result is shorter battery life.

On the bright side, a future firmware update could potentially extend battery life. By performing smarter activation/deactivation of the WiFi, Nintendo could potentially add hours of battery life back into the system. In the meantime, though, I will be surfing the 'net with the power cord firmly attached.

Strange that they would have the Wifi running at all times, if that is true. I haven't tested it yet myself, but I don't see how that makes sense when you are running a normal DS game. That would even further complicate the fact that the DSi's main system and OS can connect to different types of networks (like WEP) that old DS games cannot access, even when inserted into the DSi, due to the wifi code being stored individually on each title that uses it.

i noticed that myself -- the wi-fi light was lit for no reason while i was playing a game (with no wi-fi features) after messing around on the internet with my DSi, so i disabled it and found that my battery lasted longer on the next charge with wireless disabled. it reminds me of bluetooth on my phone; with it enabled, the charge doesn't last as long.

True true, it is disheartening, yet you cannot look at overall physical size to determine power strength, especially in lithium batteries. It usually rests in the amount of cells the battery contains. As far as the future, one of the biggest improvements that DSi has, is the fact that it is upgraded on firmware. Hopefully they can reduce the battery drainage...Oh well...I can easily order a new battery when I burn up my current one...

By "size" I was referring to capacity in addition to the physical size. According to the specs I've got, DS Lite has a 1000 mAh battery. The Phat had an 850 mAh battery. Yet the DSi has an 840 mAh battery.

Doesn't that seem odd?

the wi-fi concept of it eating the battery life is way wrong. if you turn your dsi lite down to the 3rd setting you get about 9 hole hours out of your dsi. i recomend everybody have the lite set at 3

Good recommendation, but having wi-fi active will still take a chunk out of your battery life, no matter what the brightness is set to.

Great advice!

I find that the battery does go really quick, but only really when I use the music player on full blast with wireless on and brightness on max. But that's just me.

hehe i have the light at 1 currently and so i didnt have to charge my dsi the whole day

if you guys dont know wi-fi activity just means a lite will be turned on but if its off then you cant go on picto chat and it only takes the power of a lite bulb to run

i think you guys are thinking of the DSi connecting to the internet continuously but thats not it at all becuse you have to go to options then search for an accses point it dose not automatically find the nearist hotspot.

I have one question about turning wireless communication on and off. Right now I have it turned off, so does that mean that when I play e.g. Animal Crossing it can't connect to another DS because the wireless communications are off (only DS to DS)? I didn't have the opportunity to test it yet so I'm asking you guys

Wireless Communications includes both Wi-Fi Connection functions and plain old DS-to-DS functions. you'll need to make sure it's enabled before you start playing, or (if Animal Crossing behaves like Mario Kart did) you won't be able to connect. you'll also notice that if you attempt to use Download Play, Pictochat, or the DSi Shop without your Wireless Communications turned on, it'll give you an error message telling you to change that option first.

Hm. That kinda sucks in my opinion. It's just a waste of battery life. That way, I can't spontaneously decide if I want to connect to another DS or somebody wants to visit my town.
Thanks theblackdragon

if you have a ds lite remeber that there was no option to turn the wireless off yet it never runned down the battery life did it.
like i said it only takes the power of a lite bulb to run and its not a option that lets you connect to the iternet continuously like the iphone 3g dose. so feel free to turn wireless on

I still think (without any kind of proof, it's just my thought) that activating WiFi in the options really just means it's able to be used - meaning: it's the same thing like on the old DS: it's off when it's not used but can be used when any game activates it. However, if you're deactivating WiFi, it CAN'T be used. This could be (and in my opinion that makes perfectly sense) to be a protection so you don't accidently activate it while being on a plane or other place where you shouldn't use any wireless devices. That's my guess, cause everyhting else wouldn't make much sense. But on the other side it's Nintendo we're talking about here ...

So I tried it out just for the heck of it, and I found out exactly what I thought would (not) happen. Turning off WiFi on the DSi has no real effect on battery life. I played around with mine until the battery was drained on the same brightness and volume setting as before, and it lasted about as long as it did before. All it does is make you unable to access the net. Period.

The DSi's wifi connection is only in use when the wifi light is blinking, the same as it is with the blinking DS Lite's power light. When it's solid it just means it's ready for use. Nothing more, nothing less.

Oh that's great. Then I guess I can leave WiFi on Thanks for testing Pegasus!