1. Nexus 4?  Goes nicely with my Nexus 7 and the Nexus 10 I ordered yesterday, 720p, 3G, only 16GB and no SD card, but on the other hand, half the price of any of the others on the list.
   
   
2. Galaxy Note 2?  Big screen, easy on my ageing eyes, stylus.
   
   
3. Grey-market HTC Butterfly a.ka. Droid DNA?  Looks like a very nice phone, 1080p, but not officially sold in Australia and probably won't do 4G on our networks.
   
   
4. Sony Xperia Z?  Announced here in Oz, 1080p, but not shipping here yet.
   
   
5. Wait for Galaxy S4?  Due to launch in about a week, expected to be 1080p, but no telling how long it will take for it to ship.
   
   
6. Other?

1

I've got the Droid DNA. The big thing about it that bothers me is that if it loses coverage, it never gets it back spontaneously. The only way to get back online is to reboot the phone, which I have to do 10-20 times a week.

For that reason, I cannot recommend it. In all other ways I'm very happy with it. The display is gorgeous, it sounds fine when I'm using it, it has plenty of memory (for me, anyway) and the battery life is perfectly satisfactory. I am in the habit of charging it on Sunday and Wednesday, but on that schedule it never goes below %60.

But its inability to stay in coverage combined with its total failure to reconnect is a deal breaker.

2 It's odd that you have to reboot.  My phone sometimes loses network connectivity, and usually toggling airplane mode fixes it.

3

You shouldn't have to do anything at all; it's supposed to keep searching and reconnect automatically. (It's a Qualcomm chipset inside and I used to work on that firmware.)

I think I tried toggling airplane mode one time and it didn't work, but I'll try it again.

4 I've used the S2 and S3, both are very nice phones. If cash isn't an issue, I'd wait for the S4. If it's good, then great. If it isn't, it'll at least make the S3 and S2 cheaper, making them a bargain.

The screen of the Note 2 I feel is a little too big. The S3 hits my sweetspot. This of course is a matter of opinion, but if you already have a tablet the Note could be redundant.

5 Steven, I agree that it SHOULD automatically reconnect, but in my experience (which is basically with AT&T,) if the phone loses signal, it can't generally reconnect.  (My current phone is an HTC Inspire 4G, which has a Qualcomm CPU.  I don't know if the radio is by them as well.  If I remember correctly, your Droid DNA is an HTC as well, FWIW; perhaps HTC's doing something wrong.)
Toggling airplane mode, for me, usually works, and it's a bit faster than a reboot, so that's what I do.  I have a lot of experience with this, because the position of my desk in my office building has really poor signal. (-111 dBm/1 asu right now!  I moved it two feet and it went to -97 dBm and 8 asu.)

6 I've been trying that, and toggling airplane mode does indeed reconnect. But it takes a long time. I think the reason I gave up on it before was that I wasn't patient.

7 Hmmm.  I wonder if the phone could be defective.

8 Based on my knowledge of how the hardware works, I don't see how this could be a hardware problem. There isn't any difference at all between a search carried out when the phone is first turned on, and one carried out after losing a carrier.