While planning important management job cuts, Bell Mobility is also preparing to offer a new HTC Pocket PC to its subscribers, namely the HTC Touch Dual. Coming as the successor of HTC Touch (which is already in Bell's line-up of handsets), the Touch Dual is not too different from it.

However, the new Touch does bring more advanced features and, most importantly, it packs an alphanumeric sliding keypad, which will surely help users in better controlling its functions.

According to Mobile in Canada, the Touch Dual will be available for purchase from Bell starting August 8. While the HTC Touch is currently offered by Bell for free with a three-year contract agreement, the Touch Dual is said to come for $100 with a similar contract. Or, for those who want the device only, Bell will also sell the Dual HTC without any agreement, for $400.

Measuring 107 x 55 x 15.8 millimeters (when closed) and weighing 120 grams, HTC Touch Dual offers the following features a 2.6 TFT touchscreen display with handwriting recognition, 65K colors and a QVGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels), HTC's well-known TouchFLO UI, EVDO Rev A connectivity, a 2 Megapixel camera with video recording, front-facing video-call camera, Music player (MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, AAC+ and AMR-NB supported), handsfree, Bluetooth 2.0, USB and miroSD card slot.

Upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1, the Touch Dual also brings Office document reader and editor, Pocket Internet Explorer, email and so on.

The battery of Bell's future HTC Pocket PC is an 1120 mAh one that should be able to provide up to 5 hours of talk-time or up to 250 hours of stand-by time.

Besides Touch Dual, Bell is also readying other new and cool handsets for its users to enjoy in the next few months, including the "iPhone fighter" Samsung Instinct.