Is there anyone with *better* battery performance on the 3GS?

Question

OK, there are a lot of posts complaining about the 3GS battery life. I'm now curious to find out if there's a bad batch of batteries, or if it's a software issue involving all iPhone 3GS.
My question: is there anyone out there who's getting better battery performance on the 3GS when compared to the 3G, as advertised by Apple?
I understand that there are at least 3 kinds of battery issues showing up in this forum:
1. abysmal battery life caused by Exchange Push acting up
2. defective battery
3. "it seems a little worse than the 3G, something must be wrong"
There's nothing that can be done for categories 1 and 2, and I think it's interesting to talk about case 3.
Could it be that the 3GS battery indicator is simply more linear (and better calibrated) than the one on the 3G? I am one of those people experiencing subjectively worse battery life on my 3GS when compared to the 3G. But then I stopped and asked myself how I actually measure this.
Well, the difference is that the 3G stays at 100% much longer, then starts to go down very quickly. The 3GS, on the other hand, doesn't like staying at 100% and starts going down earlier but slower. But if I let them both drain, the performance at the end of the day will probably seem similar.
I tried to drain my 3GS with some heavy Safari surfing over WiFi and 3G, 30 minutes of 3G calls, using some third party apps, and with a 1-hour Peggle play. Then I finally played some videos, and it went dead after 5 hours of usage and 15 hours of stand by.
Is that the performance that can be expected, or can we hope for more? I never did the same test on the 3G, because I never noticed the battery meter going down like that, but I'm pretty sure it would turn out quite similar.
What do you think?

Answer 1

Battery performance depends on what you have running on your iPhone.
e.g. If you have Brightness set to high (or full) with Auto Dimming Disabled, Locations Services, Push Notification (set Fetch to Manually), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (ask to join networks enabled too) and 3G all enabled your battery will get used a lot quicker, especially if you use Third Party Apps on top of all these other things.
If however you activate Wi-Fi when you want to use it, or Bluetooth etc as your needs require, battery performance will be better (as in your battery will last longer before requiring a charge). If you are on a low 3G coverage area, why have your iPhone constantly trying to join a 3G network? Switch 3G off and use the conventional carrier (2G) until you return to an area where you know 3G coverage is better.
I know these measures are less convenient than just having everything switched on, but if you want to maximise battery use between charges try activating the features you require when you require them, then disable them when you don't require them instead of having everything switched on permanently.
I have noticed when Push is enabled (3G has to be enabled also), it absolutely canes the battery