dismal battery life work-'round
The only way to get anywhere near decent battery life is to switch from 3G to Edge when not 3G not required-- literally doubles battery life.
Here's how:
"...After some searching, I found that G3 technology sucks the life out of the battery. With the below fix, my battery life went from 8 hours to 2 days! So here is the fix to make the phone use "Edge" instead of G3. The major difference won't be noticeable unless you use it as a tethered device, in which case just switch back to G3 when using it as such (takes 10 seconds to do).
1. Enter *#1546792*#
2. Select Option 3 Netowrk & Call Settings
3. Select option 5 Network Mode
4. Select GSM
There is no shortcut for this code, but I save the code as "G3" as a contact so I can easily reference the code when needed."