I have experienced, too, a sudden increase of battery performance. This happened after a reflash (I had been able to brick my device by installing 2 different cpu/mem load applets from the repos). Luckily, after reinstalling everything, the almost constant dripping of power from my battery, whatever the device was doing, even with low cpu load, seems to have stopped. Also, the firmware is the same that the unit sported when I received it.