this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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I'm not a switch expert but can think of a reason why it might do this.
The system might show it's battery level to you as 100% to 0% when it might actually be draining from 100% to 5%. That last 5% might be used as a sort of internal Uninterruptible Power System .
When the system boots up it might be doing some things where a power failure could have severe consequences like bricking the unit if the plug was pulled out and there was no battery.
The system might use some swap space like storage or have some key variables kept in RAM which needs to be written out to non-volatile memory before the chips are powered down.
For example let's say it hibernates and it doesn't or incorrectly writes the wrong instructions pointer address When the system poweres up, it might try and execute game data instead of instructions and not recover.
Nintendo wouldn't want to handle heaps of complaints of bricked systems due to exceptional circumstances like a power outage if it let the switch play off mains alone.
That's my theory, I could be wrong and I'm sorry it's frustrating you.
I would seriously question the competence of Nintendo developers if their system cannot survive an unexpected shutdown. Computers losing power unexpectedly has been a possibility for server and desktop computers since those form factors were first created.
Sure, maybe some clever code cowboy decided that since the system will always have a battery, their OS can be optimized around never losing power. That reasoning should have been rejected, with prejudice, in a code review. Batteries fail and the older they are, the less charge they hold. Even if the battery is still good, the connection between it and the rest of the device can wear out or come loose.
I wasn't trying to say that fault tolerant practices like journaling file systems wouldn't be used, but to use an analogy, the system knows that when it's low on power and tired to the point it needs a recharge, it can stop and lie down deliberately rather than keep running until it drops and maybe fall over and hit it's head.