Hey everyone, first post here. Just bought the VZW iPhone earlier this week and have been keeping a close eye on the battery. I came from the HTC Evo and had to use the extended 3500 mah battery to get acceptable battery life.
I have been charging overnight, every night. Yesterday, I made sure that it stayed unplugged all day so I could give it a proper test. I unplugged at 9:00am, and used the phone moderate-heavily (at least for my standards) all day. I used the ipod, I watched some YouTube, I did a 3G skype video call with my wife, had several phone calls and plenty of texting/email. When I went to bed at about 1:00am my battery was at 23%. I am pretty sure I could have squeezed another couple of hours out of it, but realistically, I would never use my phone this much on an average day, and I would probably have plugged it in once or twice (in the car, at my desk etc).
I have a fairly strong wireless signal most everywhere, but also use wifi for most of the day (at work and at home). I have push notifications turned on for some things, others I do not. Screen brightness is at around the middle of the slider with automatic brightness turned on.
I am pretty confident that I won't have any issues with the battery life on this phone, seems perfectly acceptable to me, especially considering all the things I can do with this phone.