New Nintendo Switch Model Promises Better Battery Life

[Tsing]

Nintendo is releasing a new model of the Switch (HAC-001-01) in August that is supposed to offer 4.5 to 9 hours of battery life. That's certainly an improvement over the original console, which offered only 2.5 to 6.5 hours of playtime.

Nintendo didn't specify how they achieved this, but recent FCC listings point toward a new NVIDIA Tegra SoC and updated memory. There are no performance differences in the revised model, however.

New Joy-Con colors were also announced today, as if there weren't already enough.

 

[Grimlakin]

That makes sense here. New chip built with smaller traces needs less power. To keep performance the same and not create a disparity between versions they simply scale the clocks the same and eek out even more battery life. This lets designers plan and design for one platform. I don't see an issue here. Seems like a win all the way around.

 

[Brian_B]

At first I thought this was talking about the Lite: It could also be that they stripped a lot of crap out of it - such as the ability to dock (and run at higher resolutions), removable controllers (and the need to support their internal batteries), etc.

But I actually clicked on the link for once, and it's a new version of the original Switch. Makes me wonder if nVidia gave them some respin, or if it's just reengineering around (maybe a lower power LCD screen or something), or maybe just a more efficient battery pack.

 

[Grimlakin]

This is the SOTA maintenance to make sure their gear stays current. Instead of abandoning the old they just took all the benefit and kept the clocks the same.

With the new tegra cpu and such... of course now I have to wonder about overclocking headroom!