Seriously, he has the most redundant, dupe, non-interesteing, so five weeks ago postings of all the editors here. What a waste of space.

I had the same experience with a iPhone 3G (not 3GS) after upgrading to OS 3.0 Some stuck process drained my battery to zero in a very short period of time. I wasn't near my charger, and initially I thought that the unit had died. I've never drained the battery before, and trying to power it up in that state didn't give a response of any kind. Once I got home I was relieved when it woke up after docking it.

This is an OS issue I think, not the battery. The side effect is heat and reduced life though. I'd imagine that the thermal monitoring isn't able to shutdown the unit when it gets into that state. I wasn't handling my unit at the time so I don't know if there was heat related to the event.