Review: Google Nexus 4

You have to keep an eye on the applications that run in the background. You have to adjust how often your email account syncds, your social network feeds update and which radios are on.
The battery life of the phone is not that bad if you tweak these a little bit. (it will last about a day), the display is one of the last things to worry about, it is all bad power management on the software sie, the battery itself is big enough for the phone.

Note that it seems to be okay for me because I upgraded from the HTC Inspire 4g, the battery easily makes it through a full day of use (I upgraded my old HTC phone to a 1800MAh battery, did not see a big difference however)

Of course you'd expect to have far better battery life with a device that packs such a large battery as the N4.

As I told you, the battery on the Nexus 4 itself is big enough, it is just that the phone has bad power management. Play with it a little.