battery life was horrible before the update, and also after. i was at 50% by 12:30pm, was fully charged at 8:30am. very light usage. wifi, bluetooth turned off. no apps running in the background. fwiw i pushed the update manually. i'm very disappointed at the battery life.
Hmm... I dunno but that sounds like good battery life to me. If your going through 16 hours at 50% battery, technically if you used your device the same way it would reach 32 hours before the battery runs out. It seems to me you're wanting your phone to last a couple days without recharging it. IMO wanting a smartphone's battery to last a few days without charging is a little unreasonable.
My LG Dare had freaking good battery life (I mean when I was on vacation internationally it lasted the whole freaking 3 weeks without recharging). But then again, I wasn't really using it. I wasn't text messaging much (touch screen was such a bother), talked occasionally, didn't surf the web...etc
IMO this is kinda defeating the point of having a smartphone, you get a smartphone to use all it's features, right? So if it lasts you all day doing what you need to do then your battery life is pretty good. You can charge it at night when your sleeping; when your not using/need your phone.
Personally my phone was on for 19 hours with light-moderate usage. I had wifi, gps, background syncing on; with brightness set to its absolute lowest setting. Not to mention I have a few apps which pull stuff off the net at given hours. I think the battery life is pretty good considering what it's capable off.
Now, if you're not getting through the day doing what you need to do and have to recharge in the middle of the day (like a certain phone I will not mention) then I would say that would be considered bad battery life.
Sublimi makes a good point, if your having (what you consider to be bad battery life) if try checking to see what is using up the battery and see if you could improve it by changing a few settings.
Here are some good apps to help check the battery and what I usually to do see how long my battery is lasting and if it corresponds to how I use my phone:
1. Stock
Battery Usage monitor in "Settings> About Phone> Battery Use" - This will tell you what is using up a lot of your battery in percentages.
2.
Spare Parts app in the market (free) is helpful in determining what is using up battery during partial wake (when your phone is asleep). This can be helpful pin pointing what program might be sucking up juice. Also it doesn't hurt to go through your apps and make sure your background notification/syncing is set to refresh at the interval you want (or change to manual if you want to save battery or set it to refresh at after a longer interval of time).
After looking at the apps above try tweaking your settings to see if it improves at-all.
Optional app: Handy but not all that necessary, I only use it occasionally.
3.
Battery Graph app in the market (free) kinda helps as it graphically presents your battery losing it juice. Check to see if it corresponds to your usage make sure it's draining when your physically using it rather than at times when your are not. It can check in intervals of 1min or 5mins (so if you're using it realize that this will affect your battery life).
If all of this fail then then you may have a faulty battery try getting a replacement.