Gaming DS, DS lite or DSi

Mikemk

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The original DS (typically called DS phat) is the original.

The DS Lite is a nicer design, thinner, and weighs less. The GBA slot is modified so that custom addon cartridiges can fit flush in the device. Also there's different screen brightness options, rather than screen on or screen off. I think the build quality feels higher, but I'm not sure. No actual hardware changes, only cosmetic.

The DSi is an upgraded version of the DS. It has double clock speed in supported games, more RAM, a camera, an internal drive, and (I think) SD Card support. You can (not anymore, store is shut down) download DSiWare applications, which are smaller games installed on the device instead of cartridge. The list of physical and digital games are not the same. Some DS games will take advantage of the DSi hardware even though they're not natively DSi game.

The 3DS is the next generation handheld console with significant improvements. It has backwards compatibility with the DS/DSi, and GBA through hacking (No GBA backwards compatibility on stock console unless you bought when it first came out).
 
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FAST6191

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DS. Baseline DS. Might support some irrelevant hacks that nobody cares about these days as we have DS slot flash carts.

DS lite. Has adjustable brightness levels (there are some somewhat rare later models of original DS you can install a custom firmware onto to get brightness adjustments as it used the same chip as the DS lite. See flashme, which also works on the lite and gives you the option to do some extra things with wifi and skip the health and safety screen if you want). Smaller in size, screen considered a bit nicer, GBA slot smaller so full size GBA things don't fit flush, some flash carts (albeit not the modern fancy ones, not that it matters so much for GBA) are made to fit the reduced size though.

DSi.
New hardware. Has DSi exclusive code to take advantage of it, though nothing anybody really cares about in the commercial games world (a best some camera minigames and the ability to use WPA encryption for those handful of games built to take advantage of it rather than none/WEP that the original models are limited to) and the few interesting dsiware (think downloadable games) efforts generally got backported. Homebrew wise has a few emulators. Can be hacked to use its internal SD card to play games and homebrew from.
No GBA slot, some limited GBA emulation options (plus whatever you can get from enhanced DS flash carts).
There is also a DSi XL which is larger still.

3ds. Basically a DSi but also does 3ds games and homebrew.
There are many versions of 3ds but you can look those up on your own time (3ds, 3ds xl/3ds ll, 2ds, n3ds and a few revisions of each) and don't change much as far as DS games are concerned. Screen might be considered a tiny bit better.



On account of its screens most dismiss the original DS models these days. Maybe we will see replacements like we saw for the various GBA models to make them very nice but as of yet then nothing out there I am aware of. That said I still like my original DS despite picking up various lites over the last few years for next to nothing.
The DS lite is a choice for many.
DSi does not increase resolution which can make the screen look a bit blocky to some but it does have some nice homebrew options these days without needing a flash cart (though I still suggest a good flash cart).
 
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