Although the (current) design was shown at E3 and those pictures told more than a thousand words, there are still some untold mysteries surrounding the 3DS. In my first feature article for Planet 3DS I’ll talk about some mysteries Nintendo left for us. In the image provided I numbered the mysteries I found.

On the design shown at the E3

Click to enlarge!

  1. First off all there is the little 3D lamp. If you aren’t watching a high res image if the 3DS image it just looks like a little green light, but it spells out “3D”. It’s obviously used to indicate that 3D is enabled. Do we really need a light for it though? and does it have another function? Like that the brightness of it is an indicator for your slider settings so you know if you can adjust them some further, or that it’s already at full strength without going to the settings?
  2. There are two rubber tabs, one big and one small. They are used so the plastic won’t scratch but why two different sizes? It will just connect on one end and probably bend the connection between the top part and the bottom part. Although it wouldn’t matter much, the 3DS will degrade a little bit quicker over time because of it.
  3. The corners here are not as round as the DS lite and the DSi (the original DS didn’t have them). Also many images show the 3DS bend 135 degrees instead of a fully 180 degrees. This seems useful while playing on a desk or a table. Of course it could just be design.
  4. There seem to be 3 mysterious holes. If the bottom two are the mics that would make it less compatible with DS games that let you blow in the mic. It would also make it less accurate for other sound recording when your in front of the 3DS since the mic isn’t directly aimed at you. It would however make it easier to record sounds from behind the 3DS (when you’re in front of the 3D camera for example). The little hole beneath the bottom screen could be for blowing into, with it size it seems a bit small for a mic though, certainly off less quality then those at the bottom.
  5. There are the power and charging lights. And then there is a third white light, mysteriously placed apart. The power button uses the same color as the DSi (blue) but the Wi-Fi color wasn’t white on the DSi. Is it just Wi-Fi, or something different (like 3G)?
  6. The D-pad is placed very inconveniently for long-time playing on it. Is the slide-pad pushed to be used for nearly all games? The D-pad will most likely be used for things like quickly selecting an item as you see on consoles.
  7. When the 3DS is closed and you look at it from the side it looks somewhat like a book! Will E-book reading be one of the major marketing points of the 3DS? You can easily carry the 3DS in one hand when you hold it on it’s side. You can use your thumb on the touch screen to flip pages and/or select chapters/bookmarks while you read on the top Screen. If the top screen allows a 800*240 resolution in 3D mode you can fit quite some text on there and have a good DPI (Dots Per Inch) value for good looking letters! E-book reading is became more and more of a hot item, and the 3DS seems like the perfect multimedia device with movie support, games and possibly E-books.
  8. The DS always had a connector for an external mic. This connector seems gone on the 3DS! Is it because it’s barely used? I think that as the 3DS seems to have multiple mics it’ll use those to locate your position by calculating where the sound comes from. Nearly all mics are incompatible with that. If only the 3DS had a 3D camera on the front it could compete with Microsoft’s Kinect.