White does look absolutely lovely, but the grey is growing on me every minute I've had it.
Oh and read
this
I'm getting similar battery life ravage, but i notice that essentially, when the screen is off, it drains at a ridiculously low rate, perhaps 1% every two hours. It's only when the screen is on that the battery levels actually take a hit. Which means that I can probably get 2,5 hours screen-on time(I always use 100% brightness) whether I use that over 12-14 hours like you, or even 20-30 hours.
Completely agree about the change coming from a desire after nearly 2 years, takes a little getting used to.
Some first impressions:
The display is absolutely stunning
The sound is much better than on the desire, whether beats audio is enabled or not. Speaker is much less tinny sounding
I've not yet received the 1.29 update, which makes me tempted to just go ahead and try a custom ROM.
There's a ton of apps that need to be "disabled" fresh out the box, too much bloatware HTC. We have access to the play store, let US decide what we want.
Overall I'm still a happy chappy. Hoping a custom kernal will improve my battery stats slightly, but 2.5 hours screen-on time is ample for my average daily usage.