I think we all need to revert back to the days of 3 sometimes 4 days battery life on old school Nokia's like the Nokia 3315. It's amazing how battery life on phones seems to get progressively worse even though battery technology is better, we're still cramming in battery draining features when all someone needs in an emergency is the ability to make a phone call or send a text, not a web browser, email client and a Facebook app.
Sure making a phone call or sending out a message is all that you need to do in an emergency. But that's not what the cell phone is for anymore. Back when batteries lasted 3-4 days on a charge they were there for when you needed them. Now people feel like they need them all the time. This isn't a failure of hardware or software. A mobile phone isn't a just a phone anymore, so how can we expect it to have the same battery life as something that is just a phone?
I have a spare Android phone I keep on with a SIM card in so work can call me for server emergencies even when my regular phone is on silent. With 3G, Wifi and data access disabled, it lasts for over a week on standby, even with not-so-great reception.
If you're fine with returning to the feature set of that era, modern phones have huge batteries and highly optimized chipsets that exceed the performance of the old phones.
