Kids these days can text faster than I can type on a full sized keyboard - witness the world record set recently of 160 characters in 42 seconds. My daughters can practically text without looking at the phone - we have to be vigilant at dinner to make sure they aren't communicating during the meal. :)

As for speech to text I can see a few situations where it might be useful... if the person the message is going to is in class or at a movie or anywhere that they can't talk, they still might be able to at least read a text message. And the sending part would be useful for those of us who have a hard tmie with small keys arranged other than qwerty.

My cell phone has a function ("T9En") whereby you just have to hit the key with the letter you want once, and when you finish the word the phone figures out what word you meant - a lexicon lookup, I suppose. Sometimes it gets it wrong - mom comes out as non - but my younger daughter taught me yesterday that if you press the down key in that circumstance it will give you alternate choices.