I'm not sure I agree. The thing about my GB, GBA, NGPC, PDA, phone and camera is that they will work for a decent amount of time when I pick them up now, even if I haven't touched them for weeks (maybe not the PDA, actually, but earlier models used to and it has kind of moved in a PSP direction). If something is in constant use then it is easy to keep it charged and to keep track of the charge levels, but if it is in occasional use then it is less easy, in my opinion.
However, I suspect it will not be important at retail because it is simply not visible.
I think it is a pretty lamentable trend in PDAs to go for more and more multimedia and power at the expense of decent battery life, but no-one can see that beforehand, all they see is the great screen, and the amazing apps, etc, so the old monochrome Palms that ran for 3 months on 2 AAs are completely obsolete. Yes, it's much nicer to have a high-res colour screen, but I don't think the cost/benefit has been fully thought through.
The same thing is true of laptop PCs. It's very easy to buy a multimedia model with built-in DVD-RW and 3D graphics and power oozing from every pore. Then you find it gets about 3 hours use on its batteries and realise you could have done without all the useless extra crap in exchange for a PC that is actually portable. But it's too late then, you've already bought it and used it, so like 90% of all laptops (Note: I made that figure up, no actual research was involved
) it spends all its uptime plugged into the wall.
So, what I'm saying is that I think the battery life is a serious problem but that it won't make a significant difference to sales.
