[jdboyd]

It seems that putting a timer on the power source (set to say 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off if the load justified it) would be a fairly simple way to significantly extend the battery life. I've been thinking of putting together something like that for myself to charge a bank of test phones for 30 minutes twice a day.

[kllrnohj]

I'm not sure it would. What would extend it is if the phone could just pull from the wall directly & not the battery, so the only charging / discharging the battery gets is from being unused & slowly re-topped back to 80-90%.

If you do your timer idea it seems like either you're going to be hitting it in the 80%+ recharge over & over & over again, which doesn't seem meaningfully different from leaving it plugged in? Or you'll be in the sub-80% quick-charge zone, which will destroy the battery even quicker.