What's the R4 DS card?

As a nintendo game fans, I believe that all most all the player know the R4 series card, but there is still a lot of people dont know what does R4 card mean. This article will tell you some features about this card.

As R4 official site www.r4ds.com said"The R4(R4DS) Cartridge is the current top-of-the-line in DS SLOT-1 flash carts. It is just an amazing little device like original DS cart size, it is a complete solution with no need to purchase any additional components or deal with any messy software and truly the easiest media enhancer you have ever done; To simply put it, this is a must have peripheral for any regular DS/DS lite owner." Truly, just about 2 years ago, if you own a DS/DSl, maybe you will feel a little trouble some when you wanna find such a flash card, which does not only used for games, you can also ues it to make your own little soft wear.

Now, there are 3  kinds of kernel version and their release date just as follows:
R4 v1.18 kernel 2008-04-24
R4 v1.17 kernel 2008-03-18
R4 v1.16 kernel 2008-02-19

So if you own a R4DS card, you can update your card to the compared new kernel.

R4DS Main features:

Features:

• Original NDS cart size R4 DS (R4DS) is the same size as original DS cartridge, which never sticks out of any DS & DS Lite.
• Support TF unlimited capacity With High-speed data transferring technology, R4 DS (R4DS) supports the ultra large capacity TF(MicroSD) cards upto 2GB(32Gbit) in size
• Support all kinds of DS roms, Using plug & Play technology. R4 DS (R4DS) directly plays in SLOT-1 of the DS without any passcard, FlashMe or WifiMe, and perfectly supports all version of DS including Fat DS . DSL .IDS . IDSL. It also uses plug & play, no Software needed
• Support GBA link function and GBA cartridge slot For using of DS Slot-1, R4 DS (R4DS) already has PassMe functionality built in, it supports GBA games which is pluged in slot-2 and also the games which are required to use DS Slot-2 such as Rumble pack, Opera Extend cart, Gyroscope Adapter.
• Compatible with Clean Roms, Movie, Music and other media files R4 DS (R4DS) supports clean ROMs , Homebrews and Multimedia files with no slow-downs or hang-up
• Very low Power consumption. R4 DS (R4DS) uses Very Low Power Consumption, which means you can play Games, Multimedia files, and Homebrew more.
• Perfect Save system There is no PC software required and no more backup and restorage, directly Drag and drop all files into the MicroSD(TF) card from Computer
• Compatible with all the DS gamesave type R4 DS (R4DS) is Compatible with all the DS gamesave type and easy to Manage your gamesave files. Menu program can be easily updated through TF(MicroSD) cards 

And a lot of producers can produce R4DS card now, and normally some seller will give a package including both card and a memory card to sell together:

• 1pc R4 DS Card
• 1pc Micro SD Card Reader 

Some body says the official R4DS card's package will package a soft disk with the kernel, but now there are a lot of R4DS cards packages dont have such a disk inside, this kind of R4DS card can still work, but need to  download the kernel to use. Now it's the main difference between the official version and the clone one. So now a lot of people would like to buy the clone one, cz the price is much lower than the official one. And it doesn't affect the use experience.