Choosing between HTC Pocket PC models

[b4u]

Hi,

I need you guys help/opinions on choosing a good pocket pc for me.

At this time, I'm thinking about these two HTC models:

HTC Touch Cruise
HTC Touch Dual

So both of them are good looking, and touch dual seems a bit smaller.

Without thinking about the price (about 100$ more for the touch cruise), and looking for the features, I would like to have the following:

- Everything

Well, I mean I would like to have internet, GPS, WiFi.

Now for that, I would have to go for the touch cruise which has it all, but then again, the touch dual has a 20key qwerty slide keyboard, which would help in some extreme and quick typing conditions.

So having that said, I was thinking the possibility of getting an external bluetooth GPS receiver, which would complement the touch dual up to the level of the touch cruise.

Now some questions:

1# From your experience, would it be a good option to have an external GPS receiver? I mean, it would be great to have everything inside the phone, so I would never leave GPS behind, but is it really worth the extra price to have it all-in-one package? I can think that with an external GPS receiver, I can use it on whichever device I want to ... my laptop for instance ... or another phone.

2# Is the WiFi a really useful feature? HTC removed the WiFi feature in the touch dual, and included 3G (actually 3.5G) support, but is it a change for better? I have access to some WiFi LANs, so it would be great to access it through the phone, but in a remote location I really only have the ability to use 3G, and have to pay for the service. Is this WiFi drop really THAT much a penalty?

3# The choice would be easier if touch cruise also had a slide qwerty keyboard included, but it doesn't. So is a slide keyboard a very important feature for these devices? There is a software qwerty keyboard available, isn't it not good enough? Or is it not available anytime, to every software I ran inside Windows Mobile?


<edit>
Some add up:
For an external GPS receiver, I crossed across this Freedom Keychain GPS gadget, which is a very nice and small GPS receiver, that would be a nice portable device. Also it has the SiRF Star III chipset, which I don't know nothing about, except I find it in several GPS solutions, so it must be a good thing .
</edit>

Thanks in advance for your help. Keep your opinions flowing

Thanks

 

[b4u]

* bump *

 

[bigrash]

I actually like the Dual better than the Cruise. I'd rather have 3G over wifi, even though I use wifi on my phone a lot, but I think most of the time I use it at home where I can just use another computer so I'd rather have 3G for fast speed everywhere.

I used a bluetooth gps receiver on my last WM phone so the phone not having gps pre-installed is not a big deal. iGuidance and Tomtom works good on WM too.

I wish the Dual came with a full qwerty keyboard though. That would be nice.

 

[b4u]

Originally posted by: bigrash
I actually like the Dual better than the Cruise. I'd rather have 3G over wifi, even though I use wifi on my phone a lot, but I think most of the time I use it at home where I can just use another computer so I'd rather have 3G for fast speed everywhere.

I used a bluetooth gps receiver on my last WM phone so the phone not having gps pre-installed is not a big deal. iGuidance and Tomtom works good on WM too.

I wish the Dual came with a full qwerty keyboard though. That would be nice.

Do you really make good use of the 20key slide qwerty keyboard of the Dual?

The Cruise doesn't have a slide keyboard, but it has a software keyboard of the 20key as the Dual, with sufficient space for finger use, so no pointer (stylos?) needed, just use the finger.