It turns out that the rumor of a new Nintendo DS was indeed, true, and the new model is called DSi. The general design has remained the same, but some major changes have been made to the new model, including the rumored camera.

The camera appears to be a 3Megapixel model, which is better than what you get on most mobile phones even in race to have the most pixel dense camera crammed into a mobile phone. However, it doesn't seem like Nintendo added a flash or a self-portrait mirror and we doubt that the camera has auto focus.

The two screens have been increased from 3-inches to 3.25-inches and both are now of the touch type. The overall size of the DSi will be 12 percent smaller and 2.6mm thinner than the DS Lite. This means that the GameBoy Advanced slot had to go, but with support for an SD card slot, this might not be a big deal for most.

The DSi also has an unspecified amount of internal memory for storage of various applications such as the built-in Web browser which as far as we can gather is Opera. Other applications will be downloadable (via built in WiFi as per the DS Lite) from Nintendo's DSi online store and you get 1,000 Nintendo points (Wii points renamed) bundled with the DSi. Applications will come in four different categories, free, 200, 500 and 800 points.

The speakers and audio features are also meant to have been improved and the DSi records sound in the AAC format and audio as well as pictures can be stored on SD cards. The DSi will at least initially only be available in white and black/grey, but as with the DS Lite, we'd expect Nintendo to announce new colors over time.

The DSi will go on sale on the 1st of November in Japan for ¥18,900 or about €128/£101/$179, but we'll have to wait for localized pricing and availability in other parts of the world before we know how much of a mark up the DSi will have over the DS Lite, but it seems quite reasonable for the new features that have been added.

Update: The official DSi website is now up in Japan and you can find it here and it also turns out that there's a second camera (that black little dot in the hinge), which we presume is meant to be used for video conferencing.





Pictures courtesy of Impress