I guess I feel very different from most who have replied.
My wife and I upgraded from OG droids and we are not impressed with D3
Hers goes from 100% battery to 0% in five hours with ZERO usage. Something is making the radio work all the time ( I deleted every app I could)
My browser is slow - loads about as fast as my D1
My battery life is better than hers but not as good as the D1
The messaging app (which is almost identical to iphone) is horrible. no enter to send and I can't stand any of the other messaging apps
The gallery sucks - wish the old one was back
Cellular reception is awful - I have a network extender and neither of our D3's will stay on 3G even right next to it
About 3 times per day while trying to look at web pages I get a 'no connection' error.
Really wish we had returned them within the 14 days instead of trying to tough it out...
I agree that there is something amiss.
My wife and I both have Droid 3. It took a little work, but we both charge our Droid 3s once a day, nightly and my wife always makes it through the entire day and usually I do.
1. Turn your screen brightness way down when indoors. The default is set to automatic. Menu/Settings/Display/Screen Brightness. Uncheck automatic brightness and move the slider far to the left. The times you wish to use it in bright light and need the brightness increased, you can change it this way or use a 'Brightness Control Widget', that contains a slider. There are several in the App Market. We use our Droids 75%+ of the time indoors.
2. If you are running an 'active' task manager/killer (runs in the backgroud). Remove it as these seem to use a lot of resources. Only use a task manager to stop runaway tasks.
3. For social media apps, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. Set the sync interval to NEVER! I think the defult may have been 15 minutes. Manually sync when you want updated. (This is potentially a major user of your radio).
4. News and Sports widgets. Set the sync interval to NEVER! Do you really need continual, instantaneous updates? Manually sync when you want updates. Caveat, there are times when I change my sync for news to more frequently, when there is major news story that I feel I must follow.
5. Weather widgets. Change the sync cycle to something more realistic as 2 or 3 hours. These are usually set to 15 minutes. Again, depending on the weather forecast, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzard, I will change the sync for these events. Also, you may not even know it, but you might have more than 1 weather widget running. (This is potentially a major user of your radio).
6, Turn off services when you are not suing them. Example, Bluetooth, I turn it on, when I am traveling (and I remember my Bluetooth device). The remainder of the time it is turned off.
7. Use Wifi rather than 3G for data. Yes, the WiFi radio uses a little more power than 3G, but the Wifi signal usually travels less far than the 3G signal (in reality WiFi is using less power) and the transmission speeds are far greater resulting in less time using the WiFi radio over 3G radio.
8. Battery monitors. These also use cycles reducing battery life (time between recharge)
9. All other 'active' type widgets, evaluate the need to have these sync or update frequently. If possible, change these to sync manually or at least at a greater interval.
10. If you are not using Verizon apps (VNavigator for example), then uncheck Verizon location services. Menu/Settings/Location & Security). No need to poll Verizon, if you are not using their services.
Now, all this being said, I have the following active widgets and apps and services I usually get a full day.
Fancy Widgets Pro (Weather syncs every 2 hours)
WeatherBug (syncs every 2 hours)
Touchdown Service (corp email and calendar (auto-sync))
Go Widget Calendar (auto-sync)
Astrid task (auto sync)
Go Facebook Widget (Manual sync)
Go Twitter Widget (Manual sync)
Google+ Widget (seems to be Manual sync)
Tiny Battery Widget (constant).
Just my opinions and experience, your most likely will differ.
Bob
