Battery Message Board

The official high-capacity battery for the Wii U GamePad is now available in the U.S. The $32 part increases the GamePad's battery life from between three and five hours to a luxurious eight. For a solution that doesn't involve unscrewing the GamePad, there's always the Nyko Uboost. Read more...

Thanks to hackers, the words "portable console" and "removable battery" used to spell "nightmare" for Sony. The battery of the PSP famously offered hackers an easy back door into the console that until then required hard-to-find exploits in games. It's no wonder the PSP Go was a closed system. So what about its younger brother, the PS Vita?Read more...

Evil Controllers, makers of controller hacks such as the evil d-pad and the accessible Adroit "switchblade" controller, have recently taken to Kickstarter to fund a lithium-ion-powered Xbox 360 controller mod. The battery can keep the same charge for weeks, according to Evil Controllers CEO Adam Coe, though the Kickstarter page also lists an expected battery life of 10 hours of non-stop use. The updated battery charges over a provided mini-USB cable as well as Microsoft's play n' charge cord.

A $50 pledge to the project nets donors a backplate for their Xbox controllers with the battery included. It takes a fairly large donation, $150 and $200 to be precise, to receive a fully-modded Evil Controllers gamepad. The project's funding goal is $15,000, which Evil Controllers hopes to reach by December 2.

If the short-lived battery built into the PS Vita is a hang-up for you, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida shared some news with IGN which will either reassure you, or redouble your rage. "If you have not noticed we just announced the peripherals for PS Vita, as well," Yoshida said, "and one of the peripherals is the external batteries. "So if you're flying from New York to San Francisco, or vice versa, you have no concerns if you have an additional external battery."

The only thing to be concerned about, it seems, is the cost of such a peripheral -- if it follows the concerning price model of the Vita's memory cards, it could be cause for concern, indeed.

Yet another gaming peripheral manufacturer is getting into the 3DS battery life extension racket -- following in the footsteps of Nyko's Power Pak+, Hyperkin is planning to release a 3DS attachment this summer which promises to double the lifespan of the handheld. The battery, which attaches to the bottom of the device, also includes an improved grip and an LED indicator to show how much longer you can get your Nintendogs on before you need to recharge.

The Hyperkin PowerPlus battery attachment will ship sometime this summer for $19.99, the same price as Nyko's 3DS battery expander. You'll have to make your final choice based on form factor -- for instance, the Nyko battery seems to snap onto the back of the handheld, while the Hyperkin pack seems to give the 3DS a loving embrace. Only you can decide which one is right for you.

With its official reveal comes official specs. According to Sony Ericsson, the Xperia Play (aka "PlayStation Phone") includes a 1GHz Snapdragon processor with an embedded Adreno GPU graphics processor to enable "smooth 60fps" mobile gaming. And if the specs are to be believed, the Play will be able to game for "up to 5 hours and 35 minutes" -- making it a better performer than some of Sony's other handheld devices.

The device will be available in black and white, and will come with a 5.1 megapixel camera. If you plan on downloading a lot of games, remember this: the device will have 400MB of on-board phone memory and a 8GB microSD memory card. Finally, Xperia Play will be one of the first devices to support Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread, when it launches this Spring. For more specs, click past the break.

A 1UP report quotes Sony head of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida saying that the NGP handheld will have "about the same [battery life] as the original PSP." The PSP's battery life varies considerably from around 3 hours if the UMD disc drive was whirring away, to much longer if played off flash storage. Sony's official estimate for average PSP operation time is 3-5 hours.

Meanwhile, Eurogamer has Sony Europe honcho Andrew House saying the device will have a "good, solid battery life because of two factors." The dual delights of life extension are apparently the card-based media (instead of UMD, which requires moving parts) and the OLED screen. Those potential power savers are joined by energy-sapping features like a four-core CPU, 3G, and other factors, helping explain the PSP-like battery life.

One of the remaining questions about the 3DS hardware since its debut has been will it destroy your eyes how long will the batteries last? After all, DS hardware revisions have generally upped the battery capacity, even when increasing the size of the screens (the DSi XL claims up to 17 hours!)

That's not the case with the 3DS. Nintendo revealed the final hardware specs at its Nintendo World 2011 event, announcing that the 3DS will run for 3-5 hours when playing 3DS software, and 5-8 hours when running DS games. We guess it does take a lot of power to run three displays (if you count the dual rendering required for 3D as two displays) and maintain a wireless connection. This is precisely why the device ships with that charging dock -- which, by the way, will charge the battery in about 3 and a half hours.

[Thanks, Vallanthaz]

Induction-based charging is always a crowd-pleasing trick (at least among this crowd of one). It feels vaguely magical to lay a device down on top of a mat and watch the little battery light turn on. CTA Digital's new Non Contact Induction Charging Pad will enable DSi and DSi XL owners to enjoy the convenience of setting a thing on top of another thing. By replacing your battery with the special battery included with the kit, you'll be able to charge the device through contact with the charging stand with four lights (not five) to indicate charge level.

The device is available now from Amazon and other retailers. We're personally going to hold off for a while, as we often do with third-party charging products, and make sure there aren't any fire-related issues.

New online shooter using Epic's engine.