"Until battery technology changes to double or triple capacity, you will have to change your charging habits to fit the needs of the smartphone. Instead of charging it every few days, or only charging it overnight, you need to charge the phone basically whenever it isn't being used. Driving in your car--charge the phone. Sitting at your desk--charge the phone. Sleeping at night--charge the phone." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

That's just plain ridiculous. - Vincent van Wylick

That hasn't been my experience. I made it all day yesterday without having to recharge. I didn't recharge overnight either. And my phone kept going with quick little car charges throughout the day today while I was running errands. Battery life isn't any worse than the iPhone. - Jason Huebel

And they say "change habits to fit the needs of /THE/ smartphone". So they aren't saying that this is limited to the Droid. Phones are eating up more and more power as they essentially become hand-held computers. - Jason Huebel

I think the more intelligent strategy is to better optimize your power management on your device. For instance, I manage which features are enabled (GPS, wifi, email syncing and screen brightness) using Android's Power Control widget. Just adjusting the screen brightness to 50% (which is still very readable indoors) makes a huge difference in battery life. - Jason Huebel

FTA: "One site did a review specifically on the battery life of the Droid. For the study, the Droid screen brightness was maxed out, the screen was set to 'Never Sleep', MP3's were loaded and the media player was turned on to 'Repeat All Songs'. They even threw in an hour of Google Navigation usage while all of that was going on and still managed over 7 hours of battery life. Let's see your old flip-phone do that." I'd say that's excellent battery life. Now think about the amount of battery life you can expect with normal screen power settings (auto-brightness, screen auto-off, etc). - Jason Huebel

As someone who has has many Smartphones (PalmOS and WinMob, soon Droid this week), I have come to expect poor battery life with the standard battery. BUT this is the key to removable batteries. A larger battery will come to the Droid, they usually add some weight and a little bulk but have never truly ruined my experience (besides the quest for the perfect case). - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

On my iPhone I use this (http://bit.ly/3ZEfsF) to double the capacity. Droid needs a similar external battery, that preserve the internal battery, that will works only when that is empty (and physically detached) - Roberto from fftogo

I hope some of these ideas work. I got a droid and it is killer to batteries... but perhaps it just needs to go through some cycling to get it to work better. - Matt Ellsworth

@Matt, the best thing you can do is have the screen turn off sooner and adjust the screen brightness to stay at 50%. Unless you use your phone outside a lot, you won't need it any brighter, IMO. But if you do go outside, the Power Control widget allows you to increase the brightness to 100% with a single tap. Then when you go back inside, you can adjust back to 50% with a couple more taps. - Jason Huebel

@jason -- cool I'll give that a shot - I tried to turn on the auto screen dimmer thing - not so sure about that... and have the screen set to turn off after 30 seconds instead of 1 min. - Matt Ellsworth