i don't own a switch but from reports battery life almost doubles.

I would love if my cell phone battery lasted 2x as long, and I would be pissed if I just bought a new phone and they released an improved one like a month later. It wouldn't be a huge deal if they announced it early and I had a choice to wait a few months but this was announced after the SWITCH LITE announcement so it was quite recently. I'm also sure retailers are worried about people bringing the Switches back in and buying a new one, so Nintendo is just skipping a step.

You don't know what you're talking about.

The updated Switch has a newer chipset which is more power efficient and runs cooler, there is no battery upgrade. The screen also is brighter and warmer in color.

This is for recent purchases for people who didn't realize it was coming. There's a huge difference between July 17th and "a year or so ago"

If you are aware of this difference. Someone's grandma or mom may not know, however at least now if the kid knows s/he can get it traded in. I hope its an easy process if this is true.

They could have done that with the new system. They opted to save on battery use instead. (The Tegra revised chip can clock a lot higher, but it's loafing instead to conserve the juice.)

Don't hold your breath.

My thoughts, exactly!

There must be some new improved anti piracy chip/mod in the new models.

I heard from IGN that the exploit had been patched out a while ago.

That's incorrect. Any recently purchased Switch has a 99.99% chance of being one that's not hardware hackable. There might be a tiny few amount of hardware hackable Switch's still left but they sell so well I doubt it.

Why wouldn’t anyone want to get a trade in for better battery? My Switch dies so fast it sucks . I hate playing with it plugged in

Correct on both counts. It runs cooler because it uses far less power to reach the same performance (Tegra X1 SoC rev. t214 "Mariko", up from t210 "Logan"). It could clock a lot higher for better performance, but Nintendo opted to save on battery use instead. That's why it lasts so much longer, not because the battery is any different.