I've owned a few different android devices, and all of them, even with a 2500MAh battery, died in 4-5h of heavy use and less even. With screen on and actively using apps i don't think there's much to be done except stopping them from launching at boot or some other events, or just use them less often, not to mention low screen brightness...
Besides not allowing apps to start, what always works is to see if the phone goes into deep sleep when the screen is off, for me it made the difference for example between loosing just 3% at night while sleeping with wifi on, to lose 15% even with wifi off. Just had to see what was causing wakelocks and deal with it. BetterBatteryStats is great for that.
Remember that each phone has a customized kernel and rom, that are usually updated to deal with drains and such, and that can account for all the differences between different phones, not necessarily faulty design, wait some more time for the phone software to mature and or maybe some custom roms ^^
Besides not allowing apps to start, what always works is to see if the phone goes into deep sleep when the screen is off, for me it made the difference for example between loosing just 3% at night while sleeping with wifi on, to lose 15% even with wifi off. Just had to see what was causing wakelocks and deal with it. BetterBatteryStats is great for that.
Remember that each phone has a customized kernel and rom, that are usually updated to deal with drains and such, and that can account for all the differences between different phones, not necessarily faulty design, wait some more time for the phone software to mature and or maybe some custom roms ^^