Well, I actually just got the Dare over the weekend and the phone I had before was the Chocolate that slid open. I don't know what it was actually called, but it slid open. I LOVE the Dare. I think it's better because of all the extra features it comes with. It has a touch screen, virtual keyboard which you can either have the numeric pad or the QWERTY keyboard. It changes when you turn the phone sideways 90 degrees or when you touch the button that switches it. It has handwriting recognition, but I haven't figured that out yet....3.2 mega pixel camera which the pictures are actually pretty good, with a flash. Something stupid is that if you have the volume turned up....it reads your text messages for you, but you have to go into the text and push a button when in that time, you could have just read it yourself. Um, what else....oh. You scroll through anything like your contact list or song list by 'clicking and dragging' or 'flicking' as it said in the little book. It took me awhile to figure that out haha. (only because I wanted to figure out as much as I could without having to look at my book) Overall...it's just a better phone. Close to 300 bucks, but it's worth it. Just get a hard plastic case and screen protectors....especially if you drop your phone a lot.
I would say the dare. But choose the chocolate if you have problems with typing on a touch screen. It takes time to get used to. If you prefer to keep pressing keys to type chocolate. And if you want an MP3 player. DAres are thiinner but I would think they break easier.