I agree with you on the hardware part in number 4. Determining a hardware in a phone is very important. That's why I kept waiting until now because I need the perfect beast for myself, haha.

I can only say that HTC can win with their implementation of better screen technology. Even the Butterfly uses a somewhat 'LCD3' and the M7 will use a better 1 called SoLux. They are very new in camera but HTC One X was not bad, gotta admit it, they catch up quite well despite the poor sales and marketing.

I like HTC idea of having a wide angle front camera, it's good for video calls for wider view. You don't have to squeeze with another person just to have your face & another person's face to be shown in the video call. Thumbs up.

Being futureproof is important, otherwise why buy such a high end product? Always changing phone is costly and also requires u to constantly dig for information, could be frustrating at times.

Well, I could only say now that XZ is currently the best among all for me. Sony really surprised me with this, I never paid so much attention to Sony phones before. 5" screen should be my choice, very likely to get this, wee!!

EDIT : Forgot to mention the Stamina Mode, really looking forward to see it in action if I really own one, hope it really improvises the battery management of the phone.

I would not consider HTC product yet at the moment,
They are trying to compete but i don't see any far fetch difference from their previous smartphone.
Sony really takes everything they got except for couple of few feature in NXT2012 and put it in boldly on Xperia Z and ZL.
As far as the technology future proof is just greed,there's no way for a smartphone to compare with their future generation more then 12 months.

Example HTC Desire vs Xperia Arc S

price wise HTC Desire when at launch was RM1.9k was it i can't really remember but for same specs but with faster speed at the price of RM1.4k and only a year later or now if you are thinking comparing current generation.

Xperia Live with Walkman with Xperia Go,

thickness,speed,connectivity and battery all increase within the same price range plus additional IP67 protection.

In smartphone,get what you want when you want.
That's why during PDA ages,no one cares about that but businessman would just grab a PDA from O2 or HTC for the price that would bleak many of young generation today.