Long read, but please bare with me here.
My friend and I both were experiencing battery problems on our new droid X's, and both using a task killer. He uses an app called 'Systempanellite', I use Advanced Task Killer. Last night we decided we would try something new. I had read that due to ATK killing services on the phone, the phone wasted battery constantly rebooting them only to have them killed again the next time you use ATK. The test was to see if uninstalling atk boosted battery life. We saw positive results, and this was done before the recent update was downloaded on either of our phones.
Last night, I pulled my phone off the charger at 8:30 pm when my friend came over with his droid X. We spent 8:30 until 2:00am on both of our phones, using them nearly 90% of the time, toying with apps using gps, wifi, accelerometer, etc. he experienced results today after changing some settings in 'Systempanellite', and ignoring all auto termination of services.
Basically, the idea is to keep your services running because the phone will just try and restart them anyway.
Battery life was extremely longer lived during that high usage time! I was down to 50% by 2am, which was a 5 hour duration. MUCH better than the 7 hours I was getting at my job, doing nothing, for the two days prior.
I work at a dunkin donuts and the service inside is horrible, nor do I ever usually get to use the phone for more than a text or two. I was getting about 6 to 8 hours during an 8 hour shift after charging it at home and then off of my car charger after a 15 minute drive. The battery basically was 99.999% full when I got through the door and started work at 7am.
Today was a different story than the two before.. My battery was still at 30% by the time I left working 9 hours today, and Battery Left widget is telling me (moderate accuracy estimate) that I have until 7:39pm until it dies. That is a 12 hour 39 minute charge. I'll bet you it lasts longer than that, but we'll see soon.
I'd like to ask a few of you, tomorrow, test your phone with ATK, and the following day, test it without. Please post your results in the poll in this thread.
I'm also having a friend of mine test this ATK vs no ATK who has not yet installed the update. I'll have a result from him in 2 days with his battery after a routine work schedule.