It doesn't negate the argument (even if it was hyperbole). I took an iPhone 5S out on a car trip yesterday across L.A., and forgot the car charger but hey it was fully charged. Used it for navigation for about 20 minutes total, and maybe 10 minutes total of phone calls. Checked email maybe 5 times. By about 8PM, the battery was at 2%, and I still needed to drive home. So the phone was unusable to me if I wanted to have ability to make an emergency call. And if the battery had gone down another 2%, the phone would have been entirely unusable.

My iPhone 2G had better battery life than this given similar usage patterns. Sure you can cite LTE vs. 2G and processor ability etc, but battery life made the modern(-ish) phone less useful to me under what I consider are not that strenuous of conditions. This is a real problem, and battery life will definitely be a major consideration to the next phone I buy.