You're completely right but I think it's more about <always> getting through one day. Even if there's heavier than usual usage, or even after your phone is a year or two old.

So we actually need a phone to last for 2-3 days of regular usage so it's up to the task of lasting a full day in the worst case.

Also for periods of heavy battery use. My iPhone 6 gets roughly 3-4 hours of playtime on games (most recently Knights of the Old Republic). I'm not complaining because that's great for a phone today; but 8-10 hours of playtime would be nice a few years from now. I take a lot of long flights and it's nice not to have to carry a spare battery or plug into my laptop.

Agreed, charging every night is fine as long as I don't have to worry about whether the backup battery is charged when I'm at the airport.

When I had a phone that held a week's charge, the "low battery" notification meant I had a day's worth of charge left, so I never let that run out. Now, if something breaks my habit (travelling during the night, most often) the battery will run out in the middle of the next day with the low battery notification often being useless because I can't get to a charger within an hour or two.

My most recent phone, a Note 3, can go through fairly heavy all-day usage and end a late day at work at around 50%, which I think is pretty good. By the time I go to bed, and my long commute home listening to music on it, or podcasts or whatever, it's hit 30%. But I don't have battery anxiety with it for the first time since I last used a Blackberry (about 5 years ago).

If I use it sparingly, I can get it through a day and a half to 2 days. It sips power when in standby.

My last phone, one the other hand, a Nexus, barely got me to lunch before I had to charge, with a ridiculously extended battery in it. It was aggravating and made the phone adversarial, or like an infant that constantly needed attention and feeding.

Still, I'd welcome a 2-3 day battery life under normal usage. I'd be willing to have a phone twice as thick if that's what it took. The thinness doesn't mean much to me. My phone is already ridiculously thin. I have a flip-open case on it, and people mistake it for a moleskine notebook, but those are usually twice as thick as my phone and nobody really seems to mind carrying those around.

I see your point, but a counter example: I have a Galaxy Note 4 (a large phone, large battery) that I only charge every 2 or 3 days. I like not having to charge my phone as often, and a slight increase in weight is worth it. Also, in a pinch during travel having much longer battery life is great.

I mostly agree - it's habit to charge my iPhone every day at the office.

But, I really get killed on long weekends or vacations. My usual routine is broken, and I frequently find my iPhone running out of charge. Hardly the end of the world, just a minor annoyance.

As noted elsewhere, having the juice to get through a full day, even with heavier than normal usage, would mostly alleviate the problem. Of course, if that's going to cost me another $100 or turn my phone into a phablet, then I'm not intereted. :)

For these kinds of situations, power banks are great. I get the impression that they're not very popular in North America (dunno, haven't lived there for a while), but they are everywhere in Asia. I just bought a new one that gives me over 10k mAh. Enough to charge quite a bit of both my phone and iPad (and it comes with both USB and Lightning connectors to boot). For a long weekend or vacation, it's well worth packing these things, it's not like they're cumbersome or heavy either. About the same size and thickness as my phone for 10k more mAh.

North American here. Power banks are commonly available (ie, present in almost every electronics store), but I am one of the few people I know who regularly has one.

>10k mAh

Interesting choice of units.

I agree that I don't need more than a day of battery life, but I don't agree that i'm getting that now with my iPhone 5S. I'm OK on a day when I'm near a plug a couple of hours through the day, but a day when I'm out, or traveling, or somewhere where the coverage is less than perfect, I need to make sure I bring an external battery with me.

That's also what I feel. You either has iPad battery life or has kindle battery life. Anything in-between does not worth the effort.

2 days of battery life for you can mean just 2/3 of a day for someone else. So I'd rather all smartphones default to 2-3 days of battery life, just to ensure even the heaviest users get a full day. If you start your day with 20 percent battery life, then you have no one to blame but yourself, in that case, no?