There's no other feature that I really need. As long as my wife can reach me and I can get directions to some place while we're out and about.
I wouldn't ask for voice if it weren't such a good safety feature. I still swear I could punch out text faster on T9 than I ever could on a touchscreen.
I don't know about faster, but I could do it blindly...
Before iPhones and all the really nice capacitive touch screens, I had a haptic touch LG phone I could text blindly on with surprisingly good accuracy. Now... No way
yes. In a touchscreen keyboard, the only feedback if your keypress registered is to look at the echo back on the screen.
In a tactile keyboard, the feedback is via tactile sensation of the key being pressed.