You can read about 8 characters at a time, but since most SMS's are pretty short if you have good fingers and get used to the buttons it's not as bad as you mig

You can read about 8 characters at a time, but since most SMS's are pretty short if you have good fingers and get used to the buttons it's not as bad as you might think (kind of like a pager). I know a guy that uses this phone as his primary. For composing, there's no T9, btw.