Wow. You have to work pretty hard to kill the Inc2 on the stock battery, let alone the extended one. I had the slim extended battery that fit under the stick battery door and could easily get 30+ hours out of it.
If you're having trouble making it through the day with that setup I'd think a RAZR MAXX is your only option.
Not exactly... I just got a DNA and I came from the Inc2. Battery life, while decent, on the Inc2 did deteriorate over time. For the first year on a slim extended battery I made it 30+ hours with moderate use after that and approaching the 2 year mark I would have to re-charge every night and if it was a late night I sometimes would find a dead phone around midnight. So I know how lww424 feels.
So far i'm impressed with the DNA on many levels which I won't go into much detail here since the original question was about battery life. I am impressed with battery life, but the one thing to keep in mind is all the bells and whistles that the DNA comes with namely 4G will require more juice throughout the day. The thing I'm going to be more religious about, which I wasn't as much on the Inc2 is to do as much as I can on Wifi where available. I've got Wifi at work and at home so there isn't much need to be on 4G during a standard day. Keep bluetooth and GPS off whenever possible and screen brightness and timeout conservatively set.
I've had the phone for 2 days now and i've had to charge every night but i'm playing with it alot so I imagine after the first week when it's going to sit on my desk for the majority of the day the battery will last longer.
My feeling about holding out for "next thing" is you'll always be holding out. Sooner or later you're gonna have to jump in with both feet and get a phone and as your contract runs out there will be better things that come out. If you keep waiting for the next thing you'll always be waiting and you'll miss out on some really cool technology.
So that takes me to my next thing about the DNA. I was a big fan of Sense with the Inc1 and Inc2 but had become a bit tired of Sense at the end of my relationship with my Inc2. I was wanting a more stock Android feel. I purchased for my wife the Galaxy Nexus and I really liked it. I loved the feel of stock Android and how it worked. So looking closer at the DNA I saw that the new Sense really let stock Android shine through and sure enough after the last two days I really have come to love the way the phone OS operates. Sense has a presence but is not at all intrusive the way Sense was on the Inc2. You'll love it. It's everything you like about Sense and everything that you love about stock Android.
I hope this helps. The only thing left to do is... jump on in. The water's fine.
