Since the DS has dual screens, it is only fitting that it also has dual cameras. You can use one to focus on yourself and the other to take pictures of others. The cameras are actually a great addition that is designed strictly for fun, as fitting for Nintendo. The 3 megapixels is adequate quality for playing with the pictures. If you have adequate lighting the pictures are pretty good.

The camera is very easy to use. You can bring up the camera by using the Left and Right shoulder buttons, shown in Figure 8. You can then press one of these buttons again to take the picture or you can use the onscreen buttons to take the picture, to switch cameras, or to go back to your previous location, as shown in Figure 12.

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Figure 12: On-screen camera.

After you take pictures, you can play with them. The DSi has 11 different lenses that can distort, mirror, add/or remove color, and do a wealth of the things. You can doodle on a face, add objects, add speech bubbles, make a person look angry, etc. You can even compare two faces. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get the pictures out of the DSi. You cannot email them or upload them to a photo site from the DSi. You can, however, take out the SD card and move them to your computer. You can also put the SD card in your Wii and play with them more or send them to your friends on the Wii Photo Channel.

The DSi also has enhanced sound capabilities. You can record your own voice or any sounds of your liking and play around with the speed, pitch and other effects. You can add sounds like electric motors, trumpets, and parakeets. It is surprisingly captivating. However, the sound clips are limited to 10 seconds and we wished for longer clips.

You can also play music on the DSi. Just move your music to your memory card on a computer, and insert the card into the DSi. Unfortunately, the DSi only supports unencrypted AAC music files. If you have an iPod and play only AAC files, this will not bother you. If, however, if you have a collection of MP3, you will have to use iTunes or another music editor to turn your music files  into AAC format before the DSi will recognize them.  What a pain!  MP3 has become the most recognizable and most widely-used music format. It’s a shame that Nintendo doesn’t know that.

Although there is no ability to adjust the music with an equalizer, the music sounds quite good through the DSi or through its stereo headphone/microphone jack, which is found on the front side of the DSi, as shown in Figure 13.

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Figure 13: The front side of the DSi.