Phonephile - hahahah funny stuff, man!
Cosmic - IMHO, a lot of the issues you describe are relateD to the TYPE of T9 you're using ... Moto iTap is horrible. It tries to use the word that you use most 'frequently' but, of course, its always wrong. Nokia Predictive is pretty good because, even if you have to cycle through words, you will always know how MANY times to press the 'cycle' button... It doesn't try to guess which one was used last. It's 'predictable', which makes learning to use it a snap (for me at least). With symbols and numbers, there are some pretty good shortcuts for using them. One button brings up the symbol choices and one more press selects it. Numbers - just hold down the # key.