The guy that everyone is reporting on who broke open the Nintendo DSi and speculated had a faster CPU goes on the record here that he is just guessing because something is eating the battery life. There MAY be a faster CPU but that hasn't been proven. Here's his quote:
"Wow…it’s amazing to see how rumors spread on the internet. I can’t
overemphasize the point that my post is entirely *speculative*;
attributing the reduced battery life to a faster CPU as a fact is
overstating my post by quite a bit. I wrote it in a hotel room after
playing around with the device for about half an hour…and also, I
really doubt that the beefier speakers actually drain the power that
much, since I always play with the volume lowered and they aren’t
*that* much more powerful as to account for all the battery life
reduction. However, I will agree that screen size is not the major
contributor to battery life reduction. The DSi’s screen is 17% bigger
in area than the DSlite’s screen, so to maintain the same light flux
you’d only need 17% more power (this number scales quite well at small
changes like this). This does not nearly account for the changes seen
in battery life. See this data from
http://www.qj.net/Nintendo-DSi-hardware-specs-software-details-bigger-screen-shorter-batt-life-more/pg/49/aid/124571
Battery life (** listed by screen brightness, lowest to highest)
* DSi: 9-14 hours, 8-12, 6-9, 4-6, 3-4
* DS Lite: 15-19 hours, 10-15, 7-11, 5-8
As you can see, at the dimmest setting, the DSi gets 9-14 hours of
battery life, but the DS lite gets 15-19 hours. That’s a difference of
about 5.5 hours on average. At the second from brightest setting (which
I’d say accounts for all the screen size increase), the battery life
difference is reduced to about 1.5 hours. This indicates that while the
screen is a major overall consumer of power, the majority of the
battery life reduction cannot be attributed to screen size increase
alone. If it were the case that the screen size increase drove power
consumption, you’d see a much smaller spread in battery life
differential when the screen is at its dimmest setting. So something
other than the screen is eating power; a beefier CPU is a nice guess,
but I can’t over-emphasize that it is, nonetheless, entirely a guess."
Kevin back here again:
The thing about increased amperage in battery use is that the batteries go dead faster exponentially. You ever see things like Energizer's Lithium battery and it says on the package, "Lasts longer in high drain devices." Or similar text on different battery packs. Where Duracell has an ad out now that says their regular copper top "Works just as long, but cheaper, in 90% of devices." Because most devices use a sustained low power draw, and some devices (Like digital cameras with a flash) use a higher amp draw.
Thus, if the screens require more power, they can cause the batteries to deflate faster than the math of 17% bigger screen = 17% bigger battery drain. The math doesn't work that way.
Another way to think about is like this. Lets say you have a bathtub full of water. You put a hole in it 1" deep. The water runs out of the bath tub over time, and it takes 1 hour to drain the tub completely. That hole is like how much power you need. The size of the hole is volts, and the speed at which the water comes out of the hole is amps.
Now you need more amps to drive the larger screen. So you create a bigger hole. The larger hole gives you more amps, but it also increases the speed of the flow! So you run out quicker.
Anyway, I hope that makes some sense. The dude may be right that there is a faster CPU, but I kinda doubt it. Nintendo would come out and pimp it. Why would they hide that fact? No idea. It's possible, but not likely. Battery life is probably connected to the screen size and maybe internal changes to the battery and Wifi features.
I just hope it supports WPA now and not just WEP.
K