It's hardly surprising the battery life suffers when the phone is likely to be used much, much more during the day than a regular phone. My previous N95 was hopeless, walking into town with music playing practically killed the battery: two hours and it was dead. I use a Morphi JuicePack with mine, as I have Tune.it iCarRadio on mine and listen to 6Music in the afternoon. That's the equivalent to making a three and a half hour phone call, which drains the juicepack, leaving the phone fully charged. Mine's always plugged in overnight anyway as I use it as a bedside clock. Call quality is no different to any other phone on the market, and again, vastly superior to the rubbish fuzzy sound of the Nokia. The camera on my 3G is much better than the Nokia as well, in a year I've taken several hundred photos with mine, but no more than thirty in a year with the Nokia, because it just wouldn't focus. Plus there's loads of apps to tweak pics with. Sound quality with something like Denon AH-C252's is excellent, just use a Griffin mic adaptor. It makes an excellent ebook reader, I've got Copilot Live UK & Europe on mine as well. Fragile when dropped? Well duh! It's a complicated computer with a glass screen: try dropping a laptop on a concrete floor and see what happens. Stop thinking of it as a phone or iPod. It's a computer that you stick in your pocket.
