I hold the world record for speed-typing an SMS

According to this story, a girl in Ohio won $5,000 for typing a 160-character text message in 2 minutes and 23 seconds on her phone (160 characters is the maximum length for SMS). The world record for this message is 43 seconds.

The sentence used to test SMS typing speed is:

The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.

This didn't seem very impressive to me, so I tried typing this myself. On my first try (without memorizing it first), I completed the text in 60 seconds. On my second try, I completed the text in 39 seconds. New world record! Given enough practice, I'm sure I could do it in 30 seconds.

What's my secret? Well, I make sure I eat right, take my vitamins, and get enough sleep. Oh, and it also might have something to do with the fact that I have a Treo 650 GSM phone with a keyboard.

I've suspected for years that having a keyboard on a phone gives the user a huge advantage in typing speed (and accuracy), but now I have proof. Despite my friends' claims that "I'm pretty fast and I think I could keep up with you", it should be clear now that if you are a very good (near world-class) typist on a typical phone I'd still be at least three times faster. For the average user, the speed increase of a keyboard over a 12-key number pad is probably in the range of ten to twelve times.

With such obvious advantages, why don't more high-end phones have keyboards? Especially now that the "mobile internet" is nearly upon us, why do consumers insist on staying with an outdated device like the 12-key number pad? I suspect that it's the same reason that there aren't more Computer Science graduates - a phone with a keyboard is just too geeky for most people.