I’ve been an 8700 user since it first shipped so when I received my Pearl I figured I would force myself to try it for a week and then go back to my 8700 and its nice full QWERTY keyboard.
Well it’s been a couple of months now and I’m still using my Pearl. Why?
1) it’s so small that I can carry it in my pocket. No more carrying cases or holsters 
2) SureType isn’t as bad as I thought it would be - actually, it’s quite good once you learn the following trick:
Ignore SureType’s suggestions until you’ve finished typing a word - if SureType has gotten it wrong then backspace and make corrections by typing or selecting from SureType’s suggestion list.
I still haven’t figured out how to type a PIN easily using SureType when addressing a PIN message, but this is actually a bug in the Messages application as the address fields (e.g. To:, Cc:, Bcc:) are not configured to only accept PINs as they should be.