What's the best budget Android phone right now?

I'm about to dump my sim-free Wildfire S and it's kind of difficult to figure out what droids are available in the

 

Thanks! I'd seen the XPeria Ray, but was put off by lower internal storage (1GB vs 4GB in the HTC One V) and smaller screen. I'm always wary of Sony stuff due to proprietary features too. Still, good to know about. I haven't completely written it off yet. The Neo is

 

It's about

 

Well... the HTC One V and Samsung Galaxy W are the same price here now, and I'm ready to order but completely torn over these handsets.

The Galaxy W has a faster processor and less storage space, *but* I believe it has more internal storage available for apps because the OS (Gingerbread) takes up much less space than ICS. Multiple reviews of the HTC One V are also suggesting it's unacceptably laggy while browsing, while the Galaxy W doesn't have this problem. No doubt the Galaxy W's faster processor helps, but ICS requiring more CPU and RAM than Gingerbread is probably a factor too.

So, you would think the Galaxy W would be the phone for me...

...but I've only ever had HTC / Sense UI phones before and I'm incredibly reluctant to switch to a Samsung in case I hate Touchwiz. Bleh.

 

At Amazon, the prices fluctuate all the time and are criss crossing daily. When I began this thread, the HTC One V was the cheaper phone. As of today, it's slightly more expensive:

HTC One V:

 

Anyway, I think I've settled on the Galaxy W now.

Yesterday I discovered the HTC One V has an irremovable battery and no digital compass. The latter would break key functionality of Google Sky Map which I've been using on various Android devices since 2009.

What I'm confused about now is the available internal storage for apps on the Galaxy W. Is it really 1.7GB? My big problem with the HTC Wildfire S was internal storage getting clogged with apps that could not be transferred to the sd card. There was only about 100MB available from the start though. As long as there *is* 1.7GB of space on the Galaxy W and *ALL* apps can be transferred to that storage space, that won't be a problem.

ETA: Since posting this, I've ordered it. So I guess I should acquaint myself with the Galaxy W forum. Thanks for all the suggestions folks!

 

Thanks! I have the Galaxy W now. Just waiting for it to charge. Thanks again for the recommendation. I'm really glad I didn't go with the HTC One V.