AngularJS: To input type=number or input type=text?

Suppose you have objects that contain numeric properties and these objects are bound to HTML form elements.
HTML5 introduced support for input type=”number” which preserves type fidelity (e.g., object.someProperty starts off as a number in the typeof === ‘number’ sense and remains that way after the user has entered a different number). Preserving type fidelity makes change detection (that is, detecting if the user has changed the model) very simple – angular.equals() can be used directly.
There seem to be two general approaches:

1. Bind the numeric properties to input type=text form elements then, on save, make sure to cast them back to numeric form (ala parseFloat()).
1. This tends to complicate the save handler. The data has to be massaged back into numeric form before sending it back to the database.
2. It also tends to complicate change detection – since the original values from the database are Numbers but angular’s binding does not preserve this type fidelity when bound to input type=text.
3. It also complicates internal manipulation – e.g., if changing one property requires the recalculation of other properties then this logic will need to account for numbers that get converted into strings via angular binding.
4. This approach is supported in pretty much every browser.
2. Bind the numeric properties to input type=number form elements.
1. This simplifies change detection (angular.equals()).
2. This simplifies the save handlers.
3. This simplifies internal manipulation since all manipulators can be certain that they’re dealing with Number variables.
4. NULL valued numerics are still a problem as these may need to be detected and then defaulted to 0 (or some other numeric default).
5. Browser support for input type=number is not good.

I would much prefer approach 2 which takes advantage of browser support for numerics and let angular preserve type fidelity throughout model binding. The potential cost of handling NULLs when data is fetched from the database is IMHO small compared to the extra cost of converting back and forth between numbers and strings. Unfortunately, if you have to support any version of IE below 12/Edge then this approach won’t work. [8/2016 EDIT - thank you HTML5 Shim!]