Windows Phone Thoughts: Dell Axim X3i - Amazing Stand-by Battery Life

This is so crazy I can hardly believe it: I received a Dell Axim X3i from Dell on October 18th, and it was fully charged before I left on October 19th. I brought the charger with me for the Pocket PC Summit/CTIA, but I didn't plug in the device. My usage was very light - I had the device powered up for a total of perhaps two hours over that week doing demos of a forthcoming Spb application. Since returning from Vegas, the Dell X3i has been turned on perhaps half a dozen times, WiFi used here and there. Today I powered it up, half expecting it to be dead, and was shocked to find that it still had 36% main battery power and a full backup battery. That's over three weeks of standby time! This certainly wasn't a scientific test, but I've seen similar (though not quite as good) battery performance from the X5 I have. I don't know what voodoo magic Dell's ODM (Wiston?) did to get these devices to have such awesome standby time, but they should share some of that mojo with HP - anything based on the classic iPAQ design has a standby time of days rather than weeks, which has always irked me (the 2000 and 1900 series are much better).

Kudos to Dell for making battery life such an important part of their Pocket PC design!