^^^ I am not saying anything against Defy as I recommended it in this forum

But this phone is much better hardware wise. Only thing it is missing is rugged body and screen size. This phone is absolutely brilliant for people who do not care about screen size. Some people might find this phone smaller. But here is my view on why this phone is good:
1) Mainly It runs Gingerbread right off the box. That is important. As you can see some good phones are still being released with froyo.
2) Any phone with this hardware is considered good. 2nd Generation Scorpion 1 ghz processor and Adrenos 205 GPU. So you will enjoy gaming and other tasks with breeze. I have used 2nd generation processor and adrenos 205. They are on par with hummingbird's gpu (Not better but in some tests they perform on par) RAM is also good and more than enough for multitasking. So good.
3) Secondary Camera is absolutely necessary for any phones regardless of whether we use it or not. It has decent 5 MP camera and lets face it, Sony knows how to make cameras. So I assume it should be good also. Also 720p video recording is absolutely good.
4) Qwerty Keypad is absolutely necessary because it is always better than on screen keypad. Sometimes I find the on screen board annoying.
5) Bravia Engine display is absolutely brilliant than Super LCD or other screens. But unfortunately I would not rate it higher than Super Amoled, but still respect its display as it is good.
6) Sony After Sale Service is better in India.
So lets see. What do we need in a smartphone to get the VFM:
CPU/GPU/RAM - Check
OS - Check
Multimedia - Check
Reliablility - Check
So this phone is a good buy IMHO. Now do you care about screen size is the big question here????? Other than that everything this has is on par with current latest single core phones in the market. Heck, it even has same hardware as Arc minus the 8 MP camera. That is a winner in my book.