[wodenokoto]

Learning pinyin is a lot easier than to learn how to write all the characters.

Typing pinyin is also a lot faster.

If you don't know pinyin or mofopo, then yes, suddenly handwriting is the fastes, but then it is pretty much by default.

[Grue3]

These methods won't work if you don't know how to pronounce the character in the first place.

[wodenokoto]

That use case is only for dictionaries/looking up words, where you never need to type anything of any length at a time, thus high speed typing is not needed, which is exactly what is being discussed.