1. I have not heard/read any good from Sony/Ericsson android phones.

2. HTC seems to make really good Androids as I've know a few with them and they always get very good ratings.

3. I own a Samsung Fascinate (Verizon's Galaxy S) and its amazing. I would definitely recommend any Galaxy S phone.

Samsung Galaxy S is the best in my opinion.

Desire > X10.

Now if you have read about the X10 on other sites, you will pretty much find everyone saying it is crap.... it is not bad, it is just not as good as the HTC Desire

The X10's "killer features" are the TimeScape and MediaScape app. The later is very good, but the former is very very slow to update, rendering itself near useless therefore, and it integrates with the email app, not the gmail app, which is useless..... The issue is that Sony are going to update the phone, but not for a while and so the Desire might be the better bet

Basically, the rule of Android seems to be that HTC are best. All manufactures skin their phones, and HTC Sense is widely regarded to be the best. As for which HTC phone to get, a quick look at HTC's Australian website says the Desire is the latest one, so that is the phone to get. You might miss some of the features from HTC Sense.com that might only be available in the USA, but you will still get a very good phone

So, I've played around with both for a pretty long time and these are things I've narrowed down.

The Sony screen destroys the HTC screen, I put the same movie on both and played them at the same time on the same settings and the HTC was washed out, it stretched the video to much and the contrast was significantly lower. The Sony screen looks like I'm watching a show on my HD Samsung Plasma.

The Sony camera is much better than the HTC camera, it's less grainy, the lighting looks better and it just takes a clearer photo. 

The HTC runs very smoothly. I can move between apps and folders with no lag at all, but the Sony phone can get a little jittery sometimes when I'm using Mediascape or Timescape.

The Sony design looks better, but the HTC feels more solid.

The Sony phone comes with 9 gigs of memory (including internal), but the HTC only has 2.5 gigs (512 mb internal).

The interface on both seems pretty decent, but the HTC has a better overall feeling about it, but Sony has a better media interface.

I haven't gone online on them yet, but some reviews say that they are both pretty similar.

I also found this: http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2010/05/05/sony-ericsson-xperiaâ„¢-x10-to-get-uxp-upgrade-in-q4-2010/. The Sony phone is getting an update at the end of the month.

I'm leaning towards the Xperia right now, but can anyone point out any thing specific about the HTC that would make it better.

Just a point about that SE update, it might not come until December in some regions.... and you'll probably want to get yourself a larger SD card anyway

The main advantage of the Desire is that it runs a more up to date version of android, and the X10 will be updated to 2.1 soon, but the Desire is already at 2.2

It's easy, the version of Android in Desire is newer than in x10. Everyone in the webz seems to be obsessive with it and even scared to "lag behind". Honestly I myself wouldn't care much, I don't like to have pain of being "early adaptor" at all. And I don't need to try all kinds of latest apps in my phone either, the best ones become available on all the plaforms anyways.

One of the advantages is that HTC Desire has multitouch, and things like flash come in the newer android versions

Nokia N900 had Flash long ago :) If I myself had needed the most desktop like web-browsing in my mobile, I'd pick it, it's the best handset for browsing.

However, I'm pretty happy with Opera Mini as now, it saves me tons of bucks. And if one needs Flash from time to time he could use Skyfire browser, it worked for me.

Actually my main problem with browsing is that where I am now I have no data connection of any use....

But Froyo adds stuff other than flash, general responsiveness has been vastly increased and other stuff like that

Just curious, but does the carrier you use just not offer a Samsung Galaxy S based phone?