This is what I recommend:  go to youtube and look up a review for your smart phone of choice.  I didn't go I-Phone because I didn't like their carrier.  There are dozens of detailed reviews for these products there.  I looked at several before making my final decision and I was very surprised/satisfied with my Droid OS phone.  I don't know much about the two phones you're speaking of but by the end of those reviews, you'll know an overwhelming amount.  Even Engadget will have reviews, there.

If you own a top of the line Android phone, it's fantastic. The problem with Google's strategy is that they're allowing many levels of hardware to run Android and down the road, consumers are going to be pissed off when their own ignorance caused them to buy a phone that won't run certain features that have already been released.

I think there will be a big Android backlash in about a year as some of these cheaper phones mature and consumers realize that they will never be upgraded to newer software.

Still, I'm considering an Android for my next purchase. If you spend the coin for good hardware, it's a great OS.

This is a good answer.

If I was going to recommend an Android phone for you, it most likely would not be one of those two, but if those are your only choices I would go with the Desire.

As for Apps, Android does not copare well with the iOS environment. Mostly because there are some many Android platforms. I think when you test your app, you have about 130 devise profiles at the moment you need to test against. The hope is whatever platform you have, got tested.

The iOS world has 3. The iPad, the iPhone 4, and everything else. This makes developing (and esp testing) apps a lot easier. Because of this, the quality of the apps on the iTunes store is usually better. But houses who have tons of money to develop an app do well on both platforms, but small 1-10 man shops not so much. A ton of great apps on the iOS devices come from small shops.

The #1 complaint I hear from people I know with an Android phone, is battery life. If your not used to a smart phone, this would be my #1 priority. Any smart phone compared to a cell phone gets bad battery life, so try and minimize that lifestyle change as much as posable.

I know a lot of people who can't make it through a work day without a charge on there android phones. I recommend you don't become one of them.

Good luck! 

No, not any of them. Unless by "a cell phone" you meant that Xenium lineup of Phillips.

Since your not American, I can't advise what other phones to get based on carrier usage.

I'd go with HTC, as their phones are pretty good. HTC, Samsung and Motorola (at least the Droid series) are the best Android devices out there.

I really like my Android phone. I'm a big fan of the platform, but am infuriated with the decisions that Google has made concerning the market place, and deployment options for publishing apps.

I would say that the apps on the store are good. They aren't iOS good, but they generally will be better than any other smart phone, and have pretty good prices to them. The one big (questionable) thing Android has going for it are emulators, which are fantastic.

Android does have one awesome game coming out later this year. A PSP port of an RPG that looks very nice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRDmY0H72r8

Every cell phone I have had (and it's been dozens) got a good 3-5 days of mild use between charges. No Smart Phone I know of does that. I have an iPhone 4, and I can go 2-3 days, but that's about it. I have a friend with a Droid X, and they can't get 8 hours out of it.

Some of Nokias, like e71/e72 or others, can last three-four days pretty easily with active usage. Depending upon how active it is, of course :)

I heard somewhat decent things about BB in this regard, classic ones. Last year SE Vivaz seems to be good, too.

And yes, neither I am aware of any Android device remarkable in this area.

I've got a Desire myself and it's a really nice phone. The Desire also seems to sell much better than the Xperia, and while I've never tried the Xperia I think it's for a reason.

There are already dozens of thousands apps for Android, just like on the iPhone there is an App for just everything. Not every Android app works on every Android phone, if an app works or not is mainly a matter of what features the phone supports. The application programmer can for example define a minimum firmware version, a minimum screen resolution or that the app needs to have GPS or a motion sensor. So if for example you have an Android phone with a very low display resolution or very old firmware version, many apps may won't work due to missing features. If however you get a state-of-the-art phone like the Desire with the latest firmware and top-notch hardware, pretty much all apps will work. You can install apps by yourself, which works similar to installing an application on windows (simply open application installer files, which are .apk files - you could either simply download those files from just any website that would offer them or simply copy them over to your phone by yourself). The more common method however is to browse the android application store that is preinstalled on the phone. As others have already pointed out, Android's application store could really need some improvements, but that's something many people have been complaining about and Google is already working on this. Android apps are definitely cheaper than iPhone apps and the percentage of completely free apps is much higher.

For gaming however the iPhone is definitely better. You can find great games for Android as well, but at least at the moment the iPhone definitely has more and higher-quality games. Android apps on the other hand have the advantage of being much less restricted in what they can do and how much control over the system they have.

All in all, I would say that the iPhone still delivers a slightly better experience, but that Android is improving very fast, much faster than iOS, and that I expect Android to be better than iOS very soon. One problem about Android phones is that the manufacturers often don't release firmware updates for older models though. That really sucks and is something many people complain about, so I hope the manufacturers will change that policy soon. But as long as you have a "rootable" phone it's not really such a big problem, because the internet community usually provides builds of the latest firmware version. For example, it took a few months after Google released Android 2.2 before the HTC desire got its offical HTC Android 2.2 update. In the internet however several versions of Android 2.2 for the HTC desire were available already short after Google released Android 2.2.

Oh and someone said that the display of the Desire sucks and that the resolution is lower than what the specs say. This actually depends on the kind of display built into the phone. The original Desires all had AMOLED screens. These AMOLED screens have very low battery consumption and show fantastic colours. Many Desire reviews praise how great the display is, and they usually praise the AMOLED technology. It is however true that these displays use a little trick and that their real resolution is actually a little lower than 800x480.

HTC could not meet the huge demand for the Desire and that was mainly because Samsung could not deliver enough of those AMOLED screens. And so they started to sell the Desire with cheaper and better available Super LCD screens as well. Super LCD screens have the real resolution, but their colors are not quite as brilliant as those of AMOLED screens.

It's not like every AMOLED screen uses that "trick". But those ones in Desire, yes they did.

Interesting, didn't know that.

Anyway, about the battery: Like almost all smartphones, the battery really does not last long. But it really depends on how you use your phone and what features you have turned on.

I wondered how long standby time of my Desire is and turned off almost all non-essential features (so it was pretty much just a dumbphone) and tried not to use it at all. That way the battery lasted exactly 7 days. Under normal circumstances the battery last much shorter, I usually recharge every 2-3 days. In the beginning when I was always playing around with the phone it even only lasted about 1 day.