FWIW, if you have WiFi, I would use that - WiFi uses less battery and gives you a lot more bandwidth to boot.
Perhaps you live in an area with a bad signal? From home, settings->about phone->Status. What is the signal strength? Anything -100 dBm or less (meaning more negative) really makes the phone work hard to hold a signal.
I used wifi for data transfer on my LAN. I only used 3G for 2 minutes to get someone's phone number off the web.
Total 1 hour of talk, 8 minutes of file transfers on WiFi, 2 minutes of 3G browsing, 2 text messages. Battery cost in total: 40%
Sorry, but that's just absurd. It is laughable that anyone would be able to cope with this kind of performance. What are people doing, sitting at home using the phone while charging it?
Last week I went out around noon with a 90% charge. Talked about 1.5 hours, did a few text messages, listened to music for about 30 minutes, and that was IT. no web browsing, nothing else at all.
That day, from noon until about 5 PM, my phone went from 90% to 15%.
I cannot possibly live with this dismal performance. These things are supposed to IMPROVE over time, not get worse.
My Saga, Omnia, i760 - those guys would do everything I am doing with this phone, and I could go an entire day and still have like 30% or more remaining at 8:00 PM.
If the days of a decent, long lasting smartphone are gone, in favor of giving kids the ability to play angry birds and tweet their brains out on facebook, and stare at youtube all day, at the expense of being able to go a day without one or more additional charges, then it may be time I take a break from smartphones.