I have a normal Desire and I don't like two things about it:
1) internal memory is too small. Mine is already full and the warning message is annoying.
2) battery life is not great and I have to charge it every night, sometimes even during the day, but this is kind of a problem with all smart phones.
Other than these is still a great phone despite the fact that I have it for almost one year.

But now I would recommend getting a newer generation android phone with bigger internal memory.

The big problem with small internal storage (from what I've been told by a few people, my droid device hasn't arrived yet) is that many android applications won't install to the sdcard without using something like app2sd and even those aren't always fully transferred.

HTC are pretty solid nowdays, chances are the rom was the problem for the touch, the touch cruise I had was a bit slow & laggy in places but a modded rom was the solution to that

HTCs onscreen keyboards are surprisingly good, they almost manage to not be crap which is the very best I've ever seen an onscreen keyboard manage to be. I have giant hands and even I only have to correct every 4th or 5th word which puts it vastly in front of the windows mobile 6 stylus based onscreen keyboard

get the automatic task killer and only have what you need running, also maybe turn the brightness down, my HTC came with the brightness on full...

Get a speech to text app?
*grins and teases, eyeing
*

Heh well at least you'd stand a chance of getting one of the 2 tasks right if you have to concentrate more.

I must say I've heard cautionary tales about both.

On of my colleagues has the S2.
He loves it, but has to recharge the battery twice a day.

Another colleague has the Sensation but has had to return ot due to faulty touch screen 3 times!

Personally I adore my Nokia N8.
The web browser isn't great (It won't open GOG PM's for example), but the camera is Fantastic, The sat nav is great & I love the funky blue colour ;-}
The battery is internal & can't be easily replaced, but I've never got less than 3 days from it between charges.
Also the micro SD memory card can be switched out WITHOUT taking the phone to bits!

I was referring to internal storage memory not the RAM. After installing some pretty large apps that do not support moving to SD I ran out of internal storage. And move to SD is not a "complete" move even for apps that support that, as the cache (in many cases larger than the app itself) remains on internal memory eating precious space.
I think I know almost all the tricks regarding this phone but on the other hand I don't want to restrain some of it's functionality in order to preserve battery. It is the phone's "fault" being too tempting to fiddle with it all the time... :)

But I was referring to the battery life the second fault, any active app uses power and the back-light is surprisingly battery thirsty

Yep, I thought that also about myself... until I installed a navigation app, instant messenger, another app to record my tracks during outdoor walks, a trading app, updated google maps and another few small utility apps and games... and I received the warning that I have less than 10% of internal storage left. Internet browser cache, emails and SMS use the same storage so it is easy to finish it on the Desire.
I moved to SD all the apps that support that but they still take some space from the internal memory (caching), so this is not a complete solution.

PS: Texting and driving is dangerous.

You're right.
Because I'm more pissed about the low storage than the battery life I was thinking about that in the first place and misunderstood your reference about the task killer.
Though I'm not a fan of task killers.