That is a real advantage, you can use T9 entirely by feel with some experience and you can't with a soft keyboard. That said I'm currently on an Alcatel Sparq II (a dog chewed up my smartphone) and T9 is dramatically slower for me than even a shitty OSK was, much less a modern one with haptic feedback and gesture typing. Luckily this phone also has a slide-out keyboard so I don't have to rely on it