I've played Splatoon and Smash online with one of my friends for dozens of hours and I can tell you right now that having to use a second device is anything but natural. You're physically tethered to another device for no good reason. Not to mention those without smart devices are penalized. There is no reason why it can't all be on the Switch, and no reason why delegating a feature to a secondary device would be more intuitive than all on one. For a piece of kit that people love because of it's "all-in-one" functionality, you'd think they'd be annoyed that a basic feature goes against that philosophy.

I don't think it's fair to say, "you can't judge it yet". That's the information the company put out. If they don't want to be judged on that then either don't say anything until you're ready, do a better job communicating, or deliver on what people want. The fact that they've mentioned online several times and never once said "you can talk on the console with a headset or through our app" leads me to believe there's only the one option. Or that there's both, but the console version is severely hampered on purpose because they've put so much time/money into the app so it wasn't a waste of money.