I fully agree with the notion of some apps having issues with IOS 5.
I have a 3GS and immediately after the IOS 5 and IOS 5.0.1 update, I too was experiencing battery drain issues. I then skimmed this forum for suggestions.
I did the following in the last 24 hours:
Disabled the following:
In Settings>Location Services>System Services>
Compass Calibration
Diagnostics and Usage
Location-Based iAds
Setting Time Zone
In Settings>General>About>Diagnostics & Usage I checked Don't Send
On a separate note...I was also experiencing equal Usage and Standby Time as well...which got me to thinking. Since I was doing all this tweaking I figured I would get rid of some apps I had installed that I simply was not using. After this, I did a hard reboot.
My Usage/Standby problem was fixed...and my battery drain issue vastly improved.
I run with Location Services on all the time (Camera/Compass/Facebook/Maps/iMapMyRide)
Notifications: Phone/Messages/(Facebook)Messenger/ScoreCenter/Reminders(Love this BTW!)/Facebook
I throttle off Wifi when I'm not home.
In total, I had a almost a days worth of Standby time with just about 7 hours of usage time. I use the IPod feature ALOT while at work and the car; some txting maybe 30 minutes web browsing, and a couple calls maybe totalling 20 minutes call time This drained down to %25 from a full charge in the morning. I consider this pretty decent for a smartphone; if I manually throttle Location Services On only when needed...I'd expect an improvement.
As another side note...lets be reasonable; are all these complaints re: battery drain on "bone stock" devices? (i.e. only have a handful of apps installed on them and they upgraded to 5.0/5.0.1?) or are the majority of the complaints from many people that I see with 1/3 of the app store installed on their phone? If the latter is the case...then I'd have to guess that the main issue is with app compatibility. I've been in the database and software business for a while...I know there is a difference between saying the ABC will work OK with version X vs. ABC is fully compatibile with version X. Something that works OK may keep all functionality but will not necessarily retain its efficiency.