I think you're an outlier, my friend.
The overwhelming majority of the handsets getting shifted out are feature phones and below and they are mainly shipping with T9. Have a Google round for the stats - they are not hard to find.
These stats also only cover traceable sales. There are a lot of second hand sales.
T9 with some sort of tactile keyboard and some practice results in considerably less errors and corrections being made compared to a touch screen with a standard QWERTY keyboard.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/40-percent...
Nonsense. For stats, look at that Pew poll linked in the CNN article alongside this comment. For anecdotal evidence, look at the free/sub-$50 phones offered by all major carriers with a new contract. They are almost all smartphones. It's cheaper up front to get a smartphone now than the alternative.
Burn them looms!
I genuinely think that a better solution is to buy a phone with T9 if you have input problems or like to enter stuff when not looking at it. You simply NEED a tactile interface to do that effectively.
I carry a Nokia 3330 and Lumia 710 around. The 3330 is still a thousand times easier to enter text messages into. I can use it with my eyes shut and make absolutely no mistakes. The 710 however, is painful to enter text into.