Cricket Newbie Here

[HoyaSkin]

Hi Everyone,

Newbie here, and a Cricket customer. This seems like the most knowledgeable forum I have found yet, so I hope you guys will help.

I would like to get a new phone that I can use with my Cricket account. I already ran a search on this forum and found several threads by Isriam, Drunk, kcallis, Toos, mauriciodg87and others (add HUGE sucking up noise here ) about several HTC Touch Pro Roms working with Cricket, so I guess the Touch Pro seems to work on Cricket pretty well. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Anyway, I’d like to get a better phone than Cricket offers. I guess I need a CDMA compatible phone. The Cricket people say they can flash any Sprint, Verizon or AllTel phone, so I was thinking of getting an unlocked Touch Pro. I want a Windows Mobile Pro 6.1 device with a slide out keyboard for business purposes, and one that I can tether to my notebook computer so I can surf the net on my notebook. The Touch Pro seems to do the trick, and I haven’t seen a better phone out there that fits my specs.

The HTC Touch Pro 2 seems really nice, but I can’t really wait for it to show up in the US. I also see that it’s supposed to be priced around $1,000, which is probably more than I want to pay.

The TyTN II seems nice, but it looks like it’s older technology.

So, here are my questions:

Should I be worried about having Cricket flash an unlocked phone?
Would it be better for me to flash it?
The Sprint and Verizon versions seem identical, but is either better performance-wise?
Should I get the generic Touch Pro that is neither Sprint nor Verizon?
I kind of like the Verizon version better. Seems squarer. Anything to worry about the Verizon Touch Pro?
Where is the best place to buy one online?
Should I wait for a Touch Pro 2?

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

Thanks.