it has been up for about 14 hrs and still at 90% i love this.
This is just absolutely impossible. I don't even think a StarTac got that kind of battery life.
Let's not go crazy now. I had a StarTac and I charged that thing every Sunday night whether it needed it or not.
As for my Droid, count me in the 'improved battery' category.
LOL I never owned a StarTac, but I did own a Moto V120 back in the day. It was one of those "charge it once-a-week" phones. I was shocked when I upgraded to the V710 and I had to charge the thing every other day. My KRZR K1m was similar -- I'd get a day, maybe two, out of it, depending on how many calls I made.
The Droid, when compared to those phones, has awful battery life. HOWEVER, the Droid is almost as powerful as my laptop -- when compared to my laptop, it's battery life is EXCELLENT. I can get maybe 3 hours from my laptop (Dell Inspiron 1525), at best. The Droid will go all day for me if I don't play games. If I do play games, it's been sucking down the battery pretty quickly -- about 20% per hour. But that's still much longer than my laptop will last under the same conditions.
I've only had the update now for about 2 hours. (It gave me the notice that the update was available early this morning, but I didn't install it 'till about 2 hours ago.) So I'm still waiting to see if battery life has improved or not.
On a slightly different topic, I'm noticing a lot of people complaining about the battery draining when they're "not using" the phone. The only time you're truly not using the phone is when it's powered off. Even then, there's a very slight drain on the battery. When the phone is powered on, and in idle mode, you're still doing the "sync" thing in the background, it's still communicating your position to the nearest cell tower, it's listening to said cell tower for incoming SMS and phone calls -- there's a ton of stuff going on in the background.
The style of network that Verizon uses (CDMA) is different from an AT&T-style network (GSM) in one very important respect: the farther away you are from the nearest cell tower, the more battery life the phone will use, period. All the power used by those background operations is doubled, maybe tripled, maybe more, if you're "too far" from the nearest Verizon tower. Doesn't matter if you're on a call or not (although being on a call will use battery faster than when you're not on a call, of course). So if you're at home, and your home is "too far" from the nearest cell tower, the Droid (or any CDMA phone, for that matter) will run itself dead trying to boost its power output to reach the nearest tower which is "too far" away. This is a drawback to the CDMA system, not the Droid specifically. So people who are suffering poor battery life, I'm betting you're "too far" away from a Verizon tower for most of the day. (And remember, just because you can see a cell-tower out your front window doesn't mean it's a VERIZON tower you're looking at.)
EDIT: I forgot -- the more people who are using your particular cell-tower, the more power your phone must use to keep its connection to the tower. So if you're in a very crowded area, but still close to the tower, your power-usage will go up just as much as if you were "too far" from the tower. This is another way your phone may be using more power than it should. And it's the fault of the CDMA system, not the Droid specifically.
Anyway, I hope this clears up at least a little of the confusion as to why some people seem to have great battery life, and others just don't. Most of it, I'd bet, is because of this particular flaw in the CDMA system that Verizon uses. Frankly, I think the advantages (better coverage with fewer towers, far fewer dropped calls -- especially when travelling from cell-to-cell) outweigh the disadvantage of the reduced battery life when you're "too far" away from the nearest tower. But that's just my opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary...