I believe that .75 was the only OS that has had a t9-esque feature in Multitap (the ABC, DEF, GHI, etc.)
If you use Suretype a few days you'll eventually get just as fast as you were on t9 with other phones. I had an LG vx8300 for about 7 months and used t9 religiously on it, then I moved to a Storm. Suretype is actually a pretty accurate system as well as efficient seeing as the buttons are neither too large nor too small.
Hope this helps. And I could be wrong about .75 being the only t9 OS, but I'm almost positive on this.