I'm very much a tech person and can confirm for me personally: T9-Word in combination with physical keys was a much faster, one-handed, and even eyes-off experience. Even when I upgraded to a phone with a slide out full physical keyboard (Samsung Intensity), T9 was still faster. For any word that had repeated keys back-to-back, my hand knew to press the right arrow which would move the cursor to the next position.
I'm purely talking about typing while not looking at the screen (for instance in a pocket like OP mentioned). Not sure why you brought screen resolution into it or media players. I'm not a vintage tech apologist--I'm typing this on an S22 with SwiftKey and it's fine minus a few mistakes. But there was no way I could do this blindfolded. I'd have exited the app and be typing something regrettable into Slack by now.