That being said, my Nexus S tends to run out after about 10 hours now, which is intensely frustrating.
It's a major issue when traveling, which is when you want your fancy smartphone mapping features the most. If you want to be able to use it later in the day, you have to be careful not to use it too much earlier.
I've been pleasantly surprised with the Galaxy Nexus battery life though, which usually lasts me just about two days.
God help you if you took pictures or used your map application much during the actual course of the day.
The day smartphones can allow a user to use every core application heavily (maps, email, voice, camera) all day from the time they leave their bed in the morning till the time they return to it will be a great day imho. It isn't every day that you're travelling for business, but it's these users and these situations that feel the pain points of battery life the most. It happens to millions of people all the time, every day.
Just because you don't think you need x amount of hours of battery doesn't make it useless for everyone else.
Also, people who question why do you need more? Because you can do more things. Our usage of smartphones is increasing in many ways and improved battery life should not be counted in terms of how many hours of talktime it will give you, but how many hours of <insert heavy battery eating application here> use it will give you.
Wait. Are you saying I missed an expression of sarcasm on the internet? Sorry manaskarekar, but that's impossible.
But even when not travelling, I will sometimes forget to plug my phone in one night. It's really frustrating when it dies the next morning before I have a chance to recharge it again.