I had this happen for two weeks when in Orlando Fl, the batteries would go dead in hours. I had to put in AP mode just to save the battery. once back to Northwest never an issue which led me to believe some issue with sprint in the Orlando area..
Agree, there has been some problem with the network causing part of this, however there is something going on with the radio drivers on the Nexus or some issue with GB itself.
I have three phones connected at this time: Nexus S, Evo 4G and Epic 4G. All are under the same signal area at home where I usually have very good service. In recent months I have noticed issues with the signal on all three devices so a call to Sprint confirmed they were doing some maintenance on the area.
In addition to that, I have noticed episodes of complete loss of data signal on the Nexus where the icon grays-out or completely disappears. When that happens I can make/receive calls and SMS but can not access any data services. At the same time, the Epic and Evo are connected to 3G services as usual. This is solved, as stated before, with a reboot; in my last instance, requiring a complete factory reset. This behavior can not be explained with Sprint signal issue as it is not simultaneously happening on the other phones. This has improved significantly since the last update, only happening once this week needing the full factory reset.
I have also noticed significant signal variability on my Evo since the 2.3 update, an issue that was not present before while running OS 2.2. This variability, sometimes causing short lasting 1x data and/or complete loss of data signal happens while the other two phones are not showing similar behavior under the same Sprint signal area. Again, this can no longer be explained by Sprint signal issues, I believe this is a bug within Gingerbread somehow affecting radio performance. On the Evo, this instances usually lasts seconds or a few minutes at most and clear spontaneously; have never lost data signal permanently like in the Nexus needing a reboot of any kind.
My opinion is that in addition to increased area-wide signal problems within the Sprint network, there is some buggy code causing this issue on GB running headsets... my observations are not conclusive or scientific so at this point, this remains a theory of mine.