Android :: Alternative Phone Keypad Style Text Entry

I've had an HTC Desire for a few months now, and I just can't get used to full keyboard touchscreen style text entry. I like old school phone keypad style T9 text entry - I find it much faster (well, once I've entered lots of extra words!) than a keyboard and like to be able to send texts with one hand.

However I'm not happy with the stock android keypad, and my phone has just received a new update that makes it EVEN WORSE.

For example, it appears to in fact be impossible to enter accented characters (e.g.). As I occasionally communicate in languages other than english this is horrendous. With the new update they've also removed the shortcuts to ! and ? and replaced them with the voice recognition button, a feature in Android which I have found to be totally pointless (most of the time after speaking something it just says 'processing' for ages, then either fails or comes up with nonsense. Far quicker to type! Whats the point?!?). It's also added some kind of auto correction which I can't work out how to turn off which will prioritise words that I haven't even typed because I guess it thinks thats a more popular word and I misspelled it and I then have to go into 'more words' to chose the bloody word I typed in to start with!

However it seems all the other alternative keyboards are more designed to replace qwerty. I tried SwiftKey for a little while and it's clever, but it's still all querty and I'm not sure I like all the autocorrection - often correcting something that WAS correct into something that isn't!

About to try HTC_IME once I've worked out how to install it, but are there any other phone-keypad-style text entry apps out there to replace the stock android? Just anything that works like, say, an old Nokia or Sony would be totally great. That can't be too much to ask can it?