Nintendo, Valve, and anyone else really has no excuse not to make the battery user accessible. The devices aren’t water resistant and never will be since they need active cooling. A back cover with sliding locks like a laptop that gives access to the battery as well as the fan would be a great addition to future devices. Easy to replace the battery, easy to clean or replace the fan. It would ease a lot of my own anxiety about the longevity of these devices.
while they are at it, might as well make the ram and disk easily upgradeable.
You’re making me miss my PSP. Battery compartment easily accessible, I believe it took SD cards too. I modded mine too play other handheld systems like gameboy.
This got me to look up iFixit’s guide to Switch battery replacement. It’s better than some of my devices, but as soon as a replacement involves spludgers and adhesive it crosses a “yuck” line for me, going from something that looks kinda fun to sort of dreading that I’ll break it.
For contrast, past Nintendo handhelds made this a doddle, even in the post-AA era: here’s the New 3DS battery replacement guide. The DS Lite even had a little battery door.
Good. Not only for longevity reasons but also because for video game consoles specifically it’s an enormous PITA to have a cable strapped to it for an external charger or battery pack.
