I finally managed to get my hands on the HTC Touch Dual the other day, and what a piece of kit!  I previously had the HTC Touch, which I found to be a reasonable phone, apart from a few caveats - the phone seemed slow and slightly 'clunky' which made me want to avoid using it where possible; the touch screen was annoying for sending text messages, as you'll need to look at the screen when typing (which often requires the use of two hands).  I also found browsing the Internet and downloading email to be far too slow, mainly because the Touch is limited to GPRS connectivity only.

So obviously, when I saw the Touch Dual, I thought that HTC had managed to fix everything wrong with the original Touch, and couldn't wait to get my hands on it for testing.  It's specs are much higher than the original Touch, so it seems much more responsive to user input; one thing I've noted particularly is that when you tap the menu to view open programs, then select the 'Close All' option, the programs close more or less instantly; this took a few seconds on the original Touch.  Upon closer inspection, I found the Touch Dual to be equipped with a 400Mhz processor, which handles Windows Mobile much more efficiently than the 200Mhz processor seen in the original Touch.

The Dual also comes equipped with a slide-out keypad (not a QWERTY keyboard), which solved my problem with on-screen keyboard text messaging - I can now accurately type a message without even looking at the screen, which makes multitasking easy.  One problem I identified early with the Dual was, when using the XT9 dictionary, pressing the number '2' key, which would usually produce the letter 'a', actually produced the letter 'c'.  If you wanted to type the sentence "I have a phone", you'd likely end up with "I have c phone", which was incredibly annoying.  After searching the web for a bit, I came across a fix for the phone on the MoDaCo website, aptly named the "MoDaCo Touch Dual 'c to a' fix", which managed to solve my issue!

Perhaps the most key feature of the Touch Dual though, is the vast array of connectivity you get with it.  Sure, HTC ran out of room in the device, so wisely decided to remove the WiFi module, in favour of adding support for 3G and HSDPA, and a front-facing camera for video calling.  I agree with this move; after all, if you're in a place where you've got WiFi access, usually you'd have your laptop anyway - mobile Internet access is for when you're on the road, and no Internet connection is available.

Data transfer over 3G is so pleasurable when compared to that of GPRS.  I used to have to wait about 1 minute or so (which can seem to take forever) before my emails would start downloading after connecting using the Touch.  With 3G on the Touch Dual, I have to wait about 10 seconds for the emails to finish downloading - fantastic!