As I understand there are quite a lot of ways to optimize for memory usage. I'm guessing that Android will be far more aggressive with 'closing' (more like state saving) apps that aren't being used, perhaps on some sort of a timer. I also understand that memory segmentation can likely play a role, in power consumption, so there may be very neat hacks to the kernel in this regard.

I suspect that more GPU acceleration will take a large burden off of the host CPU for this redundant task, and should have a considerable effect on battery life.

But of course, the screen and the radio will remain the largest culprits of battery consumption. I'm interested to know if this is something that can be optimized further (eg. decreased frequency of passive cellular checking/reporting -- I have no idea what I'm talking about, please don't kill me!). In any case, if Apple can tune iOS for excellent battery life, surely Android can as well -- the hardware is virtually identical, after all.

This is of course, unless there is a fundamental stumbling block that prevents this from happening (ie. hardware feature, or OS structure). But even if this were impossible, it would be valuable to find out what the cause is.