Comparing battery life between two different people isn't extremely productive. Almost every user has a different usage pattern, different set of apps installed, different reception strengths, and many other differences that can have rather large impacts on battery life that wouldn't be totally dependent on ROM and kernel. Folks that are getting 20+ hours probably aren't using their device very heavily. They are either doing simple tasks that don't make their device sweat and/or not having the screen on for a majority of the time. If I turn the brightness up on my display, and play a game that makes my processor and GPU put in some work, I could probably kill my battery in a couple hours. On the other side of the coin, if I were to just let my device sit idle somewhere I could make my device last multiple days (I get about 1% drain per hour while it is idle). For example, today I didn't use my device much at all. I did some work outside and left it sitting on my desk for a few hours, I was at 80% after 14 hours of being unplugged.
I am not saying good battery life is a myth. Just that good is subjective depending on your variables.
There are definitely some tricks you can do to possibly get more out of your device.
My VZW GNex Settings For Battery Life Thread - Galaxy Nexus - RootzWiki <-- I stumbled across that post/thread the yesterday, and it seems pretty good. Perhaps there are some tricks there to get you more battery life. I only scanned the first post, there could be some other useful tips throughout the thread.
A couple things I will say about my quick scan of it:
- The first post is for Liquid and Lean Kernel, but it should be pretty much interchangeable between ROMs and kernels as long as the options exist. I am not running Liquid myself, and do quite a few of those tricks myself.
- While he says a black wallpaper helps, it only helps if you are on your home page a lot. I often do a lot of texting with my phone, so a black background text client makes sense for my usage. This won't help a ton, especially at lower brightnesses. There apparently isn't a huge difference between white and black at lower brightnesses, but the brighter you get the bigger it is.
- Better Battery Stats or
BBM are helpful in tracking down problematic apps and perhaps other problems. CPUSpy also can help see if your device is entering deep sleep while you are idle.