To throw another $0.02 in ...
Aside from having fun with my phone, I count on it to help me manage my days/weeks/life. Last thing I wanna do is have to manage my phone along with everything else I have to manage. My phone is supposed to be a device that helps me ... not another thing I have to worry about.
I guess I'm used to monitoring battery life on my devices, and luckily I get decent life or better from all of them. I always have. But as far as remembering which settings I have turned on, off, paused, etc. ... and having to remember to change them for whatever I'm doing ... no thanks. Not gonna happen with me.
I run my phone settings "wide open" all the time, relative to how I use my phone. Yes, I have disabled bloat programs/apps, and adjusted all possible settings to turn off things I don't need ... but if it's a piece of software I use, or something that I want synced (email, contacts, calendar, etc) ... or something I would prefer receive notifications from (facebook, this forum, other forums, etc.) ... then I leave that stuff set to sync continuously, use push notifications, etc. Google Now is on all the time, as are location settings for all apps I want them for, etc. Wifi is pretty much always on unless there is local wifi but it's a horrible signal, then I switch it off to make sure I stay on cellular and keep a good signal. I use bluetooth to sync to my truck and other devices, so I leave that on 24/7 as well. Oh, I also have auto-brightness set ON ... all the time.
Point is, all that stuff is on ... a LOT of stuff that I feel SHOULD be one, and there should be no reason for me to have to turn those things on/off.
With all that stuff as "set it and forget it", the ONLY thing I have to watch out for is battery life on really hard-use days. And when I know I'll be away from a charger for a while, I try to make sure I don't "play" on my phone too much and abuse the power and run the battery down unnecessarily. On those days I'll also turn on power saving mode (not extreme power saving) ... and MIGHT turn off location if I'm moving around a lot, just to keep it from going haywire on me. But, let me be clear, those are kinda rare days for me. 95% of the time everything is running wide open as described above.
With all that, on a normal day for me at work, I can leave my phone off the charger, and still get about 5+ hours of SOT. I do get a higher-than-what-I'd-expect "cell standby" drain, but it's not horrible ... and I AM expecting this to get better as more updates to the OS come out. I don't expect it to go away, but it SHOULD get better.
I love my phone ... I really do, despite the fact I wish the battery were larger ... and despite the fact that Samsung has ripped out some key things I really wish were still in there (stock email app has lost features, one-touch dial/message widgets are gone, lack of customization of notification/message vibration patterns and tones for contact groups, contact individuals, etc.) But this phone is a great phone when it's working properly.
I don't know how much of it is hit-and-miss with the hardware ... or carrier specific software issues ... or third-party software installed on some people's phones ... or just a specific app I might not use that someone else is using ... or maybe even some certain combination of settings that would seemingly not be related are causing the phone to go haywire with battery drain. I just don't know. But what I do know is this phone is great for ME ... and I'm glad I made the switch.