I hear you. Battery on my 8X (European T-Mobile) has been abysmal so far. I've had my phone for three days now and have charged it three times already after no heavy usage.
First day I was shocked to see how my battery would drop like more than 10% in an hour in a standby mode!! I knew that couldn't be normal so I researched that issue on this forum and realised that those tips in that topic about battery tricks (collected by some cool guy) are helpful - especially the unsyncing the xbox games app. But then I realized that it is not normal to have a brand new phone and force yourself to micromanage every second when you're using it. I was thinking about returning it straight away til today I read somewhere that some users reported that the HTC app (the one with the ridiculously large time tile on the home screen) has been the cause of problems. So I deleted it. And I can say that the battery life has improved SIGNIFICANTLY since I did that.
But it is really ridiculous and kinda embarassing for HTC if their own app is screwing their flagship windows phone. Anyways, I just fully charged it with htc app gone and will see how it performs in the next 24 hours. If the drain still proves to be perisistent as before, I'm returning my 8x first thing monday morning.
And btw., regarding Beats Audio, I'm not sure how to put it, but I have a feeling that my phone does this thing where when it's a HQ song/video the sound is really MUCH better. But if it's a low quality recording, imo, it just makes it worse because you can notice all the imperfections much better than before. Is that normal? Oh, and in like youtube videos, like tutorials and reviews, where you have people talking, the quality is not that perfect since I can hear some sort of humming??
All that aside, I'm really satisfied with the phone's screen, camera and its overall performance. Though I can't say I'm liking windows phone 8 as I thought I would, at least not for now. I can't believe they're actually competing with apple with their closed system, I would've gone the android route if I were in their place.
I can't believe that there's like no video player apps or stuff like that so I can play my mp4 favorite tv shows with subs on, or how they don't allow third party browser and it seems they never will. Very bizzare.
Enough with my rambling. My real question is, and the one I'm going to judge my phone's battery life on,: HOW MUCH OF BATTERY DO YOU LOSE IN AN HOUR (approx) IN A STANDBY MODE? IS IT MORE THAN 1%? of course, feel free to post any other battery ratio (like an hour with wifi surfing took away xy% of my battery) so it can help other people like me to see if my phone is normal.