You're certainly not the only one questioning the trend. I've been looking into phones like the Desire myself over the past few days, but having finally had chance to try one at the weekend, I was a bit underwhelmed: the screen really is very nice, but the UI you see on it is just full of junk stuff I would never use: millions of apps I don't care about, integration with social networking services I don't use, and the like. I'm also discovering that the battery life and, crucially, the mic and speaker seem to suck on all these new smart phones with big screens compared to a phone from a couple of years ago that is just designed to be a good phone, and that I hate typing anything with the touch-sensitive screens. Maybe they're just not the kind of device for someone like me, but I'm not sure anyone has made what I'm really looking for yet.