[Vibrant Android Development] KWKSLVR:
Credibility for what? If people think they can do something magical to increase battery life while their SAMOLED is on, they're kidding themselves. The time frame alone should show that I was sleeping for several hours, just based on the phone's sleep time. If your phone could last 48 hours, how many of those hours would you actually use it? Am I suppose to be penalized because my "normal" use is different?

The picture is the point. "Battery Life" is subjective. It's a retarded conversation to have in the first place. I can also post screen shots of 5 hour battery life because I'm glued to it with the screen on, on NFL Sunday's between Score Mobile updates rolling in constantly, a ton of SMS, Google+ Huddle, TweetDeck, etc. Why would I mention having 3 spare batteries if I didn't use them?

I also have a laptop that can last either 8 hours, or 2 hours if my CPU is running non-stop. Should I complain to Acer because of that? Is that somehow a defect? ;)

The battery life debacle is old and retarded. A new ROM hits, 4 hours later, "Hey bros, hows ur batttaray life!!!???" "Oh, it's good" or "Man, it's fine". Subjective, Stupid, Pointless. What's more important is what your processes are doing. How strong is your signal? Are you on Edge or 3G? If you're on 3G with 1 bar you're a glutton for battery punishment. When I'm at home, I often keep data off, WiFi on and Sync on. When I sleep, and I DON'T have my phone plugged in (purely to take subjective screen shots) I leave Wifi, data and sync off. Why do I need my phone to sync while I'm sleeping? There's a difference between processes misbehaving (especially things like DRMContent Protection) and the fact that your device is syncing email, calendar, facebook, tweetdeck, google+, weather, every app known to man and automatically updating apps. You wanna increase battery life AND do all that stuff? Roll to EDGE and decrease the frequency of your sync. Having problems because the kernel on your experimental beta ROM keeps your CPU running @ 600MHz all the time? Well, wait for it to get smoothed out or buy some spare batteries. UV to your hearts content and enjoy instability or relish in a marginal increase in battery life compared to other juice-saving methods.

I've gotten 3 days on Bionix with very light use. I've also gotten 6 hours on Bionix as well. If your phone is syncing 11 million things every hour on 3G, it doesn't matter what you're doing. No stupid kernel or potentially hardware-damaging undervolting is going to make THAT big of a difference. I could also mention that in my amazing battery life experiment, I'm also OC'd to 1300MHz, but it's irrelevant.

What does "light use" mean? Give a universal definition.

What does "medium use" mean? Give a universal definition.

What does "heavy use" mean? Give a universal definition.

Subjective.

The best way to know what your system is doing is to peer into it with an app like System Panel. See what your battery life does with your "normal" use, then see what it does on it's own. If your phone is sucking battery down with Data/Sync/WiFi off (bear in mind you still get calls, you still get SMS) then there's something up with your ROM, either inherently or with your install, or there's a problem with an APP. System Panel will tell you this.

If it lasts significantly longer then you can start figuring out what it is as you add things back one by one. But at the end of the day, the damn phone has SAMOLED, and SAMOLED is battery hog. Wanna compare? Turn Data/Sync/WiFi off and with a fully charged battery measure your phone's life with the screen set always on and walk away. When it dies, charge it back up and with the same battery and all other things equal, measure it with screen off.

People are trying to fix a problem with every freaking kernel and ROM for the past year and a half that can't be fixed. The power requirements for the screen are what they are. All that said, I believe in using a smart phone as intended, so I carry spare batteries. In a given day, I might need to swap out before I get home and to juice. In my world, that's 12-14 hours on CM7. Personally, I think that's totally fantastic, but I don't expect a smart phone on a beta ROM to last all week anyway.

My point is that CM7 gets FANTASTIC battery life, it's everything else people have it do that sucks it down. People aren't realistic with what battery technology is able to support and what power requirements hardware has. Accept it, work around it and enjoy life more.