Ok guys.. here's an update (of sorts)..
I disabled juice defender and my battery life sucked (again)... but here's some interesting reading..
After reading
this over at XDA and
fix for battery issues on Android Forums I've decided to share...
It seems as if Samsung and/or Sprint need to update our radios. Our devices are set to WCDMA by default. So they're searching for a WCDMA tower and can't find one. This could prevent the phone from going to sleep as well.
To check and see if your device has been plagued w/ this illness, to go Menu > Settings > About Phone > Battery Use > Cell Standby.. look for "Time without Service".. Mine was at 52%.. THIS could kill our batteries as well as keep the phone from sleeping. This also explains why Juice Defender works so well. It shuts down the data connection, thereby preventing the phone from hunting for a WCDMA signal and allowing the device to sleep.
(to be fair, when I was using juice defender, the biggest portion of battery usage for me was the display.. but we know the display only uses battery when the screen is active.)
The fix (from what I've read) has had sporadic results. Temporarily, we can put our phones in airplane mode, then back to normal. This is suppsoed to fix it. If you power off your device, you need to re-do this again.
I tried the airplane mode and back again to no avail. I also updated PRL and no luck. I've resorted back to Juice Defender as a fix since it seems to work so well (for me)...
I hope this helps a few of us that have problems.
(links above are also sources as to where I got this info from.. It is not my discovery, I just found the fix and wanted to share)