It's one press per key, even if the letter you want is the third letter.
Well now I feel dumb. So it's like Minuum but way earlier. That's pretty cool, then, and I can definitely see how it would be faster.
I loved Minuum's one-dimensional keyboard! The app disappeared from the iOS App Store, but looks like it still exists for Android in the Google Play Store (last updated in 2017). Did the developer go out of business?
It's especially easy to doubt it if you don't understand how t9 keyboards work :)
> I've never been faster and more accurate at typing on my phone than when these were a thing.
It's easy to believe the accuracy claim (after all, you can feel the keys and there's fewer of them) while doubting the speed claim (since you have to perform 1-3x the number of keypresses to get the same result).