iFixit Teardown Reveals How The Nintendo 3DS Works

With three cameras, iFixit reckons “this is the most camera-laden device we’ve ever taken apart”, but what exactly is inside that Japanese 3DS? As we know, it uses two cameras for recording 3D, but also displays 3D footage through a parallax barrier layer.

iFixit explains that:

“A layer in the top LCD responds to adjustments in the 3D slider and changes the image slightly between each of the viewer’s eyes. When it is viewed from the recommended distance, the image appears to be 3D.”

Like Kotaku’s Brian reported last night, the battery is only good for about 3-5 hours of 3D gaming, due in part to the faster processors and dual LCD layers for the parallax screen. The 3.7V 1300mAh 5Wh li-ion battery fortunately does a bit better with non-3D gaming, at up to eight hours of playtime.

Speaking of the chips, iFixit found it’s running on these bad boys: a Nintendo 1048 0H ARM CPU; Fujitsu MB82M8080-07L; Toshiba THGBM2G3P1FBAI8 NAND Flash; Texas Instruments PAIC3010B 0AA37DW and Invensense ITG-3270 MEMS Gyroscope.

Head on over to iFixit for the step-by-step teardown, and to see what else they found in there. [iFixit]


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