You know, reading all this makes me sooo glad I went for a Blackberry in the end - I was recently looking round for a 'smartphone' - previously I just had a Nokia 6303 - obviously quite old hat now, but a decent enough phone with a good battery life.
Battery life, was in fact, my number one priority - talked to loads and loads of people who all told me that they had to charge their smartphones once per day - sometimes with minimal use.
That alone was enough to completely put me off these type of phones fullstop!
So, in the end, I went for the Blackberry Bold 9780. Brilliant little phone - quite a steep learning curve though, coming from an oldschool Nokia - but - and here's the big "but" - the battery on this, with fairly moderate usage last week lasted exactly.....one week! Brilliant!
At last. A phone I am happy with - fairly decent camera - good applications etc..etc... ok - it may not be all singing all dancing like iphone etc... but give me this phone anyday over something you have to charge up everyday!