My texting speed has improved a lot on my iPhone, but that's only because it was so bad (I think everyones is) when I first started using the phone. Compared to my old envy, the iPhones keyboard is just really inferior. I typed a random sentence on both phones, and was able to text the sentence a lot faster on the envy, and if you make a mistake on the iPhone somewhere, forget about it. You're looking at another 15 seconds just to correct it. I think it's obvious that, as far as texting goes, a virtual keyboard will never be as good as a real one, at least not on a device this small. It might be comparable to a treo, but on a phone like the envy with a keyboard that's spread out more-there's just no comparison.