Did Apple Improve Battery Life By Sacrificing Features?

In the words of a gum chewing George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, “Mr. President…I smell a big fat Commie rat!”. iPhone’s disclosed talk time seems suspiciously robust for a full screened touch device, which leads me to wonder if someone at Cupertino isn’t blowing smoke in our faces. Apple could have sacrificed any number of features to achieve this “impressive” feat in battery life. For example the biggest consumer of power in a handset of this class is the LCD. One way around the problem is to throttle down screen brightness, and limiting its highest setting. I’ve seen numberous manufacturers play this card in the past, so I wouldn’t be bowled over to see Apple follow the same path, though I’m not claiming that’s what happened here.

So what’s going on here? Are these genuine tweats or feature retardation? We’ll know in just two more weeks.